What highlights an opera star?

WHen Haruka Kondo entered the singing stand, she was determined to eliminate the mystery behind a successful vocal performance. A starting ground on a digital piano made it up My dear benThe Italian baroque Aria, which Kondo sang In a recording device, a cappella. The stand was narrow – it could touch all sides if it stretched their arms – and almost entirely soundproofed, specially designed by Kondo for its last experience.

Kondo is a award -winning soprano and a doctorate. Student at Music Neuroscience Laboratory of Keio University in Japan, where she helps to develop the study of vocalization in science. The purpose of his experience was to “scientifically Identify the key elements of an award-winning performance, “she told me by e-mail.” For centuries, the singers were guided by abstract and subjective instructions as “rich in your voice”. His experience is looking for data behind glare.

The vibrato is the audible equivalent in a trembling voice of sensation.

My dear ben is a must in vocal training in Japan: simple, introductory, with “simple structure” and “universal familiarity”, Kondo explained why she chose the song. But it is also a subtle room, with a delicate air and a wide emotional range, the perfect test bench for opera prowess. In the stand, Kondo was only one blow on recording, imitating the high pressure conditions of a song competition. Nine others, all of the artists, followed suit, each recruited in the professional network of Kondo opera singers.

What they found is that the vibrato has the most. “Our analysis revealed that the perceived vibrato was the most important predictor of a high global [performance] Score, “said Kondo, something she feels is a deep discovery for the field. Vibrato is the regular change and pulsating in the field of a single sustained note, the audible equivalent of a trembling voice with feeling. It is a brand of a brand of classic Western singing. Think of the Elvis, Billy Holiday, rock and roll holidays, a Robert plant.

In the study, Vibrato prevails on five other parameters used by judges – four qualified instructors with decades of experience in votes teaching – to mark performance. It was a resonance (amplification), of the

“I don’t necessarily agree that [vibrato is] Something that is neglected, “said Taylor Colton Stone, a musician and scientist who specializes in vocal and speech therapy pathologies.” But part of the problem with Vibrato is that we don’t really understand why it happens, “said Stone, who was not involved in the study.

Although it is possible to learn the vibrato, it is rarely taught and is generally considered to be the result of a good overall singing technique, rather than a skill. “The predominant theory at the moment is that it has to do with certain neural oscillations which are linked to the levels of natural tremors in your body,” said Stone. “And whenever you have aligned everything and sing healthy, with good support, good pressure from breathing, a relatively relaxed larynx, these oscillations will naturally come out in your vocal folds.”

As part of the study, Kondo also analyzed the spectrograms of recordings for their acoustic characteristics, which could only be deduced by calculation, and compared them compared to the overall score that the judges allocated each performance. “Since the opera singers must project their voice on an orchestra in a large room without a microphone, we predicted that the song power ratio – an acoustic measure of the power to transport the voice – would be an essential element,” she said. The results of the study corroborated this hypothesis: the more singing they had, the more the judges evaluated them on a scale of 100 points.

Kondo hopes that his discoveries can now be usefully translated into teaching. “Imagine a voice lesson,” Kondo told me, “instead of simply counting on the teacher’s ear, a student can see his voice on a screen. Using acoustic analysis software, a teacher can indicate a specific number – the song power ratio or SPR – and say:” Let’s work on the increase in this value. “This gives the student a concrete target: Increasing energy in the key range from 2 to 4 kHz which carries voice.”

Kondo is not the first to analyze the spectrograms of singers’ performance in search of the formula to their success. In 2004, Patricia Howes with colleagues from the University of Sydney studied the vibrato of several renowned opera singers, notably Maria Callas, Edita Gruberová, Joan Sutherland and Leontyne Price. The judges were particularly perplexed by the performance of Price, where 34% had found its extent vibrato too long, while 20% had found it too quickly, none of which affected their overall note of its song. The same study revealed that Maria Callas was unequaled in her vibrato expressions of “madness”, while Gruberová and Sutherland were the best to use them to express a “tender passion” and “sadness”.

“I don’t think we will never get to a point where a kind of acoustic measure will really capture the complete multidimensional nature in a voice,” said Stone. “We still need someone’s ear to listen to them.”

Main image: Kondo Haruka from Keio University

• Elena Kazamia

  Published on September 17, 2025

  Elena Kazamia is a scientific writer from Greece. She holds a master’s degree in conservation of the University College of London and a doctorate. in the vegetable sciences of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom