The "Open Throat"

The greatest of all tenors, Enrico Caruso, once advised a young Italian—American soprano named Rosa Ponselle (who became one of the greatest sopranos of the 20th century) to try to sing as though there were a “square” in the back of her throat. Caruso was not simply offering a metaphor or an abstract guiding principle to help her sing better: he was telling her that she must keep her throat open, physically open, when she sang.

In the Catona Voice Building System, we take Caruso’s advice to heart, but expand it considerably to include not one, but five open throat positions—that is, five laryngeal, pharyngeal oral cavity, and soft palate adjustments and configurations. In this view, the vocal musculature, as a whole, must make a variety of standard changes in order to keep the throat open during voice building (and singing).

During the voice building process, the vocal musculature is in a constant state of development; this means that your voice is continually reshaping itself until all five open throat positions and configurations (in all registers) are built into it. We must be careful not to misunderstand what it means to open the throat.  Building in the open throat positions does not mean that the muscular adjustments and configurations remain static or fixed—far from it. They change and alter their dimensions continuously. Modulations in pitch, volume, and emotional intensity, for example, are registered in the muscular adjustments of the larynx, pharynx, oral cavity, and soft palate and cause them to contract, expand, and adjust in a variety of ways.

Image source: serazetdinov/Shutterstock.com