# Cause of injurious singing?



## music20

What could be the cause of injurious singing? What is the best way to avoid it? Is the food we take can be one of the factors that will affect our voice?


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## Keemun

music20 said:


> What could be the cause of injurious singing? What is the best way to avoid it? Is the food we take can be one of the factors that will affect our voice?


What is injurious singing? 

If the listener is injured by bad singing, I don't think the singer's food consumption can have any effect (unless it's the result of "garlic breath"). If the singer injures himself while singing, I would think the singer is doing it wrong and it still has nothing to do with the food consumed.


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## Manuel

music20 said:


> What could be the cause of injurious singing? What is the best way to avoid it? Is the food we take can be one of the factors that will affect our voice?


That's an easy one. Decline any invitation or contract to play Brünnhilde.


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## Tigerlily

One of the most important things classical singers can do is to keep the vocal folds hydrated. It helps regulate the mucus production in your folds and when the slipperyness dries out, you run into a lot of problems. We all know that sensation of their being "gunk" in the back of our throats that inevitably makes us want to clear our throats which we all know is bad for us. That means you arent hydrated well enough.

Other things to think about are whispering(you fatigue your voice even worse by doing this), singing for extended periods of time in difficult passages of music, using too much weight in the passagio, screaming, or singing in the car with the radio. 

If your voice feels tired after singing a piece of music, stop! Either reevaluate your technique or put it away until your voice matures enough to sing it healthily.


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## Guest

If you are injured, you can take some cortisone....!

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/23/arts/EU-A-E-MUS-Overdosed-Opera.php?page=2

http://www.chicagotribune.com/featu...a0830aug30,1,4836156.story?ctrack=1&cset=true


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## Guest

There are many other injuries that opera singers suffer from. I found in newspapers those examples of accident, which occurred on stage:

At the met

in 1905 at the Met, the bridge across which Carmen was to make her escape suddenly collapsed and sent 15 members of the chorus sprawling.

When Georg Anthes was singing Lohengrin in 1903, his swan-boat upset and flung him flat upon a painted ocean.

In 1924 Curt Taucher, as Siegfried, was climbing the fire-girt rock when he unluckily stepped through a trapdoor.

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We can report an anecdote from Tito Gobbi's memoires: Maria Callas was Tosca, and during the 2nd act she came too near the candles burning on Scarpia's desk and ignited her hair (or wig). Gobbi immediately improvised a raptor-like motion: he jumped on Tosca, embraced her and extinguished the flames. Tosca rejected him with disgust, but then whispered him a "thank you, Tito"... just before killing him.

Also memorable is Placido Domingo's headlong fall while rushing down from the scaffolding during Act 1 of "Tosca live at the real times & places": he smashed into the bottom of the fence of the real Cappella Attavanti, giving a definite hint of realism to the broadcast.

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From the front-page headlines in Italian newspapers: "Cavaradossi has been shot!"...

At the Macerata summer festival on 30 July 1995, the tenor (Fabio Armiliato) was shot in the 3rd act - as usual. But this time when Tosca (Raina Kabaivanska) rushed to him she heard a whisper: "Call an ambulance!...", and then she fainted at the sight of his blood. Because of a blank charged with too much powder, the tow had pierced Cavaradossi's boot and hurt his leg. It is possible that the gun was overcharged because of another accident at the same festival, some years before, when the headlines read: "Cavaradossi dies from heart attack" (the guns did not go off!). Armiliato, after an hour of surgery, said he "had been lucky that the soldier did not aim at the right height". But he should have been grateful to the stage director for not sticking to the realism Puccini wanted: he staged the shooting on a staircase, with the soldier's head at the level of Cavaradossi's feet. (5 days later, going on stage at the beginning of act 2, Armiliato's crutch slipped, causing a double fracture of the other leg...) An even more realistic execution supposedly took place in the first years of Tosca's stage history: in the title role was Lina Cavalieri, known as the "world's most beautiful woman" and known also for her courage and boldness: actually she did not faint when Cavaradossi was really shot to death!

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In an interview in New York in 1935, Florence Eastonshe, suggested the reason for her absence from the Metropolitan Opera: "It was an accident during a performance of Carmen in England a year ago which incapacitated me for a number of months last year. Reeling in Carmen's death-throes, I happened to catch my heel in the skirt of my dress and fell, twisting my spine, directly in the path of the curtain. The audience hadn't the remotest idea that the apparently lifeless Carmen who lay there was almost lifeless - and indeed, I actually would have been two minutes later if I had not retained sufficient consciousness to edge out of the path of the descending curtain on its way to deposit about a ton of iron weighting on my head. However, all these things must be taken in one's stride".


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## Manuel

Well done Alnitak. Here I show the funny ones:



> The tale of the bouncing Tosca: This supposedly occurred at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and involved a British soprano. As Tosca, she was supposed to leap to her death from the walls of Castel Sant'Angelo. Usually, the actress lands on a mattress. But the stage workers had thoughtfully improved her safety by replacing the mattress with a trampoline: the result was that Tosca appeared two or three times from behind the wall. (Another version describes this as an act of revenge for troublesome behavior by the soprano.) Eva Turner has admitted to being that Tosca, in a TV special hosted by Robert Merrill in which he interviewed some of the greatest Toscas of the century, including Eva Turner, Grace Bumbry, Renata Tebaldi, Zinka Milanov, Ljuba Welitsch and Birgit Nilsson, among others.





> Famous baritone Tito Gobbi, a very original Scarpia, recalled a prima, or premiere, with Maria Callas (considered the greatest Tosca) in which he had to improvise to save the diva in Act II. While he was on the floor, having just been killed, he realised that Callas was walking around the stage unable to find her way out. She had severe myopia and, while she could wear glasses during rehearsal, her eyes would not tolerate contact lenses. Gobbi tried to discreetly point out the exit, but started laughing so intensely that both his laughing and his pointing were seen by the audience. The morning after, the newspapers raved about his memorable portrayal of Scarpia's death throes. In other performances, he was able to whisper directions to her so that she could make a satisfactory exit.





> Gobbi also paid tribute to the ferocity of Callas' acting in this role, noting that he was often afraid during their performances that she really would kill him in Act II. She very nearly did so, when the knife she was using failed to retract. Gobbi was cut, but not severely hurt, and with a cry of "My God!" went right on with his death scene.


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## Guest

Thank you, Manuel, I didn't know these stories. They show that singing can be as funny as dangerous…

Callas's myopia reminds me of this one:



> In the days before contact lenses, a very nearsighted soprano was singing the title role in Tosca. For the second act, where she stabs Scarpia, the diva instructed the prop master to place a knife at a specific spot on the table so she could pick it up at the right moment to attack the baritone. Either the knife was not placed according to her instructions, or she forgot where it was supposed to be. At any rate, as the tension grew, and she needed to grab the knife, she could not find it, and in desperation grabbed the nearest long, narrow object on the table - a banana - and lunged at Scarpia, stabbing him with the fruit. After he died, she intoned "E avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma," and threw the squashed banana down.


And about Tito Gobbi…..



> Tito Gobbi was fascinated since childhood by the dramatic power of Rigoletto's first act ending, and he wanted to accentuate it with a spectacular fall from the steps. At the last rehearsal of the production conducted by Tullio Serafin, Gobbi yelled his "Ah, la maledizione" rolling down the entire set of stairs and falling heavily on the floor among his astonished colleagues. Maestro Serafin remained perfectly calm, and said: "Va benissimo per il circo Barnum, ma per Verdi è troppo" (It's very good for Barnum Circus, but for Verdi it's too much).


In order to come back to the thread, about injuries, I'd like to indicate you this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/2077833.stm

"Singer catches fire at Royal Opera" -

Soprano Susan Chilcott has escaped unharmed after her dress caught fire on stage at London's Royal Opera House…


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## barkingbartok

I think a lot of singers underestimate the importances of cool down exercises. We all warm up, but often we sing some pretty heavy stuff and then just stop. Our vocal chords are pumped full of blood, and then craps up when everything instantly goes cold. So for me, much of my vocal health is achieved by properly warming up and cooling off the voice after a good rehearsal.


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## Manuel

barkingbartok said:


> I think a lot of singers underestimate the importances of cool down exercises. We all warm up, but often we sing some pretty heavy stuff and then just stop. Our vocal chords are pumped full of blood, and then craps up when everything instantly goes cold. So for me, much of my vocal health is achieved by properly warming up and cooling off the voice after a good rehearsal.


That's interesting, and I must confess I never thought about it. (But I'm no singer anyway)


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## LFcatface

*Injurious Singing*



music20 said:


> What could be the cause of injurious singing? What is the best way to avoid it? Is the food we take can be one of the factors that will affect our voice?


Most of the vocal injuries I have seen occured when a singer continued to attempt to sing when they were either sick or over-rehearsed. Illness and vocal fatigue cause edema of the vocal folds, when the vocal folds swell up

My advice as a singing teacher and vocal rehabilitation expert is;

1) Don't sing if you feel hoarse, singing with a head cold or sore throat is usually ok but if you have any involvement with the vocal folds , the only choice is to rest

2) If your choral conductor does not rehearse wisely in a way that conserves the voices of his/her singers, such as singing the high parts down an octave until they are learned, giving sections a break while working with other section, chanting the text in rhythm etc, a singer must protect his voice by not continuing to sing once vocal fatique has set in.

It is a sad fact that many choral conductors do not care about the individuals in their choir, they only care that the ensemble will be together and they will look good at the performance

Human body tissue in genera lwas not designed to vibrate, the only parts of the body that vibrate are the vocal folds. As they vibrate edema occurs,there is a limit to how long phonation can continue before the edema interferes with the normal functioning of the voice.

The leading role of Tosca involves only about 45 minutes of phonation and it usually performed by a very highly trained singer. Unskilled singers are often asked to sing for in excess of two hours at choral rehearsals.

That being said, in the hands of a skilled choral conductor the rehearsal process can be a breeze.When I was a member of the Houston Grand Opera Chorus under the expert direction of Richard Bado, I often used to leave rehearsals feeling as though I had enough vocal stamina to sing an entire concert!


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