FL SHED WITH S CCESS

Henrietta Bredin on singing and the menopause

The female voice is more vulnerable to hormonal changes than the male voice and one particular change that looms large in anticipation for all women singers is the menopause. Every symptom that can come with this change will have its effect on the singing performer incapacitating hot flushes, sleeplessness, memory lapses, escalating anxiety, mood swings and, as the great mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig once trenchantly explained, dryness—‘The vocal cords are very much like the vagina. It is the same type of tissue, so when one is dry, the other is also.’ That means a loss of suppleness and control, potentially wayward vibrato and the possibility of the voice dropping in pitch.

The voice teacher David Jones, based in Manhattan and teaching singers from all over the world, has developed a special interest in working with female singers between the ages of 5 and 60, or older. He has compiled a list of some of the potential vocal symptoms of menopause:

1. Voice becomes dry with less flexibility. 2. High range suffers because the upper passaggio becomes difficult to negotiate. 3. Break between the lower head voice and the chest register becomes wider and more difficult to negotiate. 4. Lower head voice loses colour and can become weak. 5. Chest voice becomes overly dark. 6. General hardness or thickness of tone, often accompanied by a vocal wobble. ‘I believe,’ he says, ‘that most people who consider themselves to be old sound old. But it’s possible, with the right exercises, to keep the voice supple and flexible. It really is essential to vocalize every day and not to push the voice with too much breath pressure, which is easy to do because it’s an involuntary response to feeling a loss of control. If singers stop singing, the muscles atrophy from lack of proper exercise. There were singers in the past who probably retired earlier than they needed to because of not knowing how to manage the change—Birgit Nilsson, for example, was in wonderful shape until she was about 52 or 53 and then she couldn’t access the middle voice.

‘It’s useful when the medical profession connects with the teaching profession. There’s a top laryngologist here in New ork, Dr Benjamin Asher, and he has sent people to me who have been in dire trouble vocally, so we now have a good complementary understanding of each other’s specializations. The psychological effect can’t be underestimated either—a singer’s identity is inextricably connected with the act of singing. When the voice is no longer healthy or functioning properly, both vocal and mental self-esteem suffer. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have burst into tears when they discover during a session that they can recover what they thought was a lost function.’

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Opera, March 2018