But the head register (or, as I’ve taken to calling it, the “Upper Family”) does not merely govern the high fifth of the tenor range. Its infusion informs the entire voice. In addition to strongly influencing its timbral elements, its successful cultivation enables a balanced position in the vicinity of the passaggio, and in particular the ability to give or withdraw volume there, and (as a result) to play with the various shadings of the mezza voce, including those of the voce velata and the voce finta.^(I) And we hear this cultivation often at work here—my notes are replete with comments like “Nice mezza-voce above passaggio;” “good control of dynamics upper-middle;” “Lovely m.v. on A-flat;” “Good diminuendo to ‘held-back’ half-voice G;” “piano has some of the “withheld’ quality;” etc., and even “good pp A-flat, like an echo.” The standard virtues of Italian instruction—legato, portamento, well-formed vowels, evenness of vibrato, sustained breath control, and all the noted devices of variation of volume—are in evidence in the majority of these singers. What the Italian instructors (and their English successors) could not convey to their Northern pupils, except in a few instances, was the extension of the full-voice range to the modern top, and a true lusciousness of tone. Italian technique, yes, and in most of these cases well assimilated—but as applied to British voices.

Here are two seemingly contradictory comments. One, regarding the absence of “il diavolo in corpo” in English voices, comes from Chorley by way of Aspinall, lamenting the polite speaking habits of polished English society. “It has cost the world many an impressive and interesting artist,” says Chorley. The other is from George Bernard Shaw, looking back on the vocal scene of his youth from the perspective of 1950. Shaw concedes that there were great tenors in England then (he mentions De Reszke, Mario, and one Brit, Lloyd), but says of the great run of them that they were “. . . proletarians who had developed stentorian voices as newsboys, muffinmen, infantry sergeants, and humble, vociferous cheapjack auctioneers, who mostly shouted their voices away and are forgotten.” We allow a shakerful of salt for G. B. S.’s customary colorful exaggeration, but at the same time recognize in many of these tenors a curious melding of his and Chorley’s observations, as if the velvety, pharyngeal tone of the Belgravian parlor (so ingeniously designed to allow emotional expression only via sotto voce insinuation) had been drawn like a cowl over the lusty bawl of the newsboy or sergeant, thus allowing for the aforementioned inflectional niceties, and in some voices for a good, gathered ring—but this last for only one full step, or at most a minor third, depending upon which side of the registrational boundary the G-flat falls in a given instance. And with this, in many cases, goes a relative plainness of tone, so that we get the impression of a sturdy but rather sober-sounding, baritonal voice that attains to the A-natural, but pushes up against that pitch as a ceiling, often with straightish tone and no sense of “room” above it. Or else, we hear very heady, more “tenory” voices that are adept at lower dynamics, but at forte evince a little “tug” that bespeaks the range limitation. And all that makes sense, because if the full-voice laryngeal engagement with the support system is not taken to full stretch, the voice is unlikely to pick up either the higher partials that are necessary to the quality (call it “ring,” call it “squillo,” call it “singer’s formant”) that gives the instrument tenorial life, nor the positional platform from which a free upper range can spring.