Esta semana les traemos un interesante video de youtube en el que se muestra didacticamente la forma de cantar con “voz engolada” a través de varios ejemplos de cantantes de ayer y hoy. Este video viene muy bien como complemento al artículo de Arturo Reverter sobre Jonas Kaufmann.

Jose Cura, Jonas Kaufman,Giuseppe Giacomini are good examples of the Italian term Voce Ingolata.Which means swallowed,or throaty voice.This video isn’t about who is better, it is focussing on a vocal fault.
Voce ingolata is an obvious constrictive problem.Most of the issues relating to this comes directly from the tongue.The tongue is pushing down onto the hyoid bone, then it is depressing and constricting the whole mechanism.Even when the tongue isn’t interfering, the voice is overly tensed and the sound is thick.The artificial dark sound which is characteristically woofy and thick is not indicative of true scuro,the voice loses core and clarity.
Singers who don’t sing with ingolata.Mario Del Monaco, Enrico Caruso, Beniamino Gigli are used as side by side examples.Notice the fine line when singing correctly and incorrectly.
Other negative conditions can also amplify the ingolata, such as a wobble or inverted vibrato. Jonas Kaufmann doesn’t sound as bad as Cura because his vibrato is more normalised.

Many comments have suggested some of these singers could not be ingolata because they have squillo.This is untrue.
Many think squillo is achieved by placing the sound forward in the mask, (a place that many think of as a resonator) this is one of the most wide spread misnomers of singing, even great singers in master classes will always suggest “placing” the sound in the mask. Singing forward is a constrictive action that raises the larynx and closes the throat. It produces a hard metallic sound which people interpret as squillo.It is not. Squillo, core, ring, clarity etc. comes about through thyro-arytenoid function,i.e. Chest voice function.
The increased use of chest voice in the sound increases the squillo, providing those overtones which give the voice core, (demonstrated by the lack of overtones in pure falsetto. Falsetto being void of chest voice function, it only has crico-thyroid participation).
Franco Corelli clearly states in the Stefan Zucker radio interviews, that he didn’t sing in the mask and it is wrong to do so.95% of singing is resonated in the pharynx.
Below is a quote taken from Joseph Shores website. The full article; (http://www.josephshore.com/a_right_to… the original experiment conducted in the early 50s by Warren Wooldridge. Shore also quotes another vocal scientist who conducted the same experiment, William Vennard (The mechanism and the technic 1967). Singers Joseph shore, and Jerome Hines (The Four Voices of Man 1997) also conducted the same experiment.
“In 1954, Wooldridge attempted to Isolate the contribution of the nasal passages to the singing voice by comparing the vowels produced by six professional singers under two conditions: – normal, and with the nasal passages filled with cotton gauze. He was unable to find significant differences between the spectra of the vowels produced under the two conditions, and a jury of expert listeners was unable to distinguish the two conditions by hearing tape recordings. Wooldridge concluded, “The term ‘nasal resonance’ is without validity in describing voice quality in the singing voice,” (p. 39). A repetition of this experiment by five male singers, including myself, confirmed the original findings, (Vennard).
“In the experiment on nasality to which I have referred (Par. 343) we not only filled our nasal passages with gauze but also had our maxillary sinuses more than half filled with water, (Fig.41). These are the largest of the sinuses, and putting water in them would change their resonant properties noticeably if they were of any importance. Our singing under these conditions was compared with our normal singing by 86 vocal authorities from the United States and 25 from Holland. The Dutch judges were included because Europeans frequently judge American speech to be nasal but they were no more able to detect the difference between the normal and the abnormal singing than were the American listeners. Our conclusion was that neither “nasal resonance” nor “sinus resonance” has validity. To dispose finally of the idea that these tiny air spaces, with their minute openings into the other resonators, could be of any value other than as indicators to the singer himself, let me quote a typical scientific authority, Schaeffer.
It is very unlikely that the paranasal sinuses exert any influence upon vocalization. The ostia of the sinuses are so small and not infrequently encroached upon by neighboring parts that one naturally wonders how the chambers can have any modifying influence on the sound waves. Moreover, the great variations in the size and arrangement of the sinuses would preclude any constancy of influence. The theory that the paranasal sinuses impart resonance to the voice must doubtless be abandoned.”Resonance the amplification of sound is confused with sympathetic resonance, which are body parts that could vibrate in sympathy with the sound, there is no, or little amplification, no participation in sound quality or production.