This one started differently. I didn't want to be interviewed as though I were some kind of authority across every vocal method going — I'm a singer who has tried things, not a theorist. So we changed the shape of it: a fictitious name, Leo, holding the theory and the history, while I bring whatever I've actually felt trying to apply it. What follows is a discussion, not a lecture, and it doesn't land on a tidy conclusion — we said as much to each other partway through. It circles the Melocchi method, the old low-larynx technique behind Del Monaco and Corelli, and ends up somewhere neither of us expected: an anatomical mismatch in my own throat, an exercise that's basically visualisation training, and an argument about what stillness is actually for.
LeoMelocchi's whole idea was locking the larynx down and back into a low, fixed position, using an expanded pharynx as the main resonating chamber — it's what gave Del Monaco and Corelli that dark, spinto weight. When you've worked toward a lowered larynx yourself, what's actually happened? Has it been more physical, or more about how it sounds?
OscarDifficult, honestly. One teacher told me I have a smaller larynx paired with an unusually large vocal chamber — she said it was unusual for a baritone. Forcing the larynx down has never gone well for me. But there's one vowel where it happens without any pushing: a neutral, unshaped "uh". On that vowel the larynx just settles and oscillates freely.
That mismatch is genuinely interesting on its own terms. A smaller larynx usually means shorter, thinner folds — a source that would naturally sit brighter and lighter, closer to a lyric voice. But an unusually large resonating space, the pharynx and oral cavity, can darken and thicken that sound after the fact, which may be exactly why the voice reads as baritone despite a source built smaller. It would also explain the neutral vowel: an unshaped "uh" narrows nothing and retracts nothing deliberately, so it invites the larynx down acoustically instead of muscling it there.
LeoWhen you try to force it down on a more open vowel instead, does it feel like you're fighting your own anatomy?
OscarYes. There's no way it goes lower once I'm sustaining and moving upward. I do understand it as a natural reaction of the body to something perceived as difficult — and it's so hard to work against that.
Which is where a specific exercise came in — one aimed less at the larynx directly than at the fear response built up around it.
OscarWhen I reach a note that's genuinely troublesome, one that brings all sorts of tension with it, I don't sing it straight away. I sing the note before it, and instead of attacking the hard note I put my body into the relaxed position I want it to be in — without making the sound. I do that three times, training the body into that shape, and only on the fourth attempt do I actually add the note. It works. Not always easily, but it works.
That's motor imagery training crossed with something close to systematic desensitisation, and there's real science behind why it holds up. The nervous system builds a specific fear response around a troublesome note — the anticipation of strain — so rehearsing the target position without the vocal folds engaging teaches the body the shape is safe before it's ever asked to make sound there. It's the same principle behind an athlete visualising a jump before attempting it: separating the motor plan from the anxiety trigger that usually rides along with it.
OscarIt's something a teacher only recently advised, so it's not always consistent yet. But when it lands, I can feel it's a genuinely good way to get to that free position.
That inconsistency is normal, if it's any comfort — this kind of retraining rarely clicks every single time before it compounds.
A fixed setup, or one that resets
Melocchi's method is often summarised through a single word: impostazione — fixing the vocal setup into one stable configuration and holding it across the entire range, rather than shifting mechanics as the pitch climbs. Corelli was notorious for this, refusing to lighten or mix as he ascended.
OscarI do think it's a good concept, actually — I don't find much value in singers who contort themselves in every direction with no dramatic reason for it. When I watch myself back on video, I catch myself moving more than I'd want to.
There's a genuine parallel in other disciplines built entirely around economy of movement — something close to a martial-arts principle. In Iaido or Tai Chi, stillness is the default state, and every motion has to justify its own existence; otherwise it's just energy the system could have spent on the actual technique. Contact improvisation works from the opposite direction, movement is the whole point, but even there the strongest dancers keep an anchored centre they return to. Either way, the throughline seems to be the same: one stable reference point everything else organises around. For a singer, that's the vocal setup — everything extra on top of it is just noise.
Melocchi's method was built almost entirely around a single foundational vowel: a pure, deep "U", trained first until the larynx became obedient and flexible, before a student ever moved on to E, then I, A, and O. He left very little of it in writing — most of what survives comes down through his students, particularly Mario Del Monaco's older brother Marcello, and through tape recordings of actual lessons rather than a published method. Corelli sought Melocchi out too, but modified the approach for himself, keeping the larynx buoyant and mobile rather than fixed rigidly at the bottom. More on Arturo Melocchi →
OscarBut on the other hand, I don't want it to look like I'm trying to stay still. It should be a natural stillness, not a robot stillness — and that's the kind I see sometimes that isn't appealing to me at all.
That's the crucial distinction. Forced stillness reads as tension, held breath, even to an audience member who couldn't name why it bothers them. Natural stillness comes from genuinely not needing to move — the economy is real, not performed. That's probably the actual difference between a singer who's found genuine vocal ease and one who has simply disciplined themselves into holding rigid.
OscarIt's a general thing across opera, you see either too much stillness or too much movement — musical theatre performers often seem to move more naturally. But here's what I actually wanted to ask about the Melocchi approach: don't you get tired holding one position? Because what I do, before a difficult high phrase, is completely relax to zero tension and then rebuild the setup fresh for the hard bit. What do you think about that?
That's a fair challenge to the strict picture. The "fixed setup" in Melocchi's method is about the mechanical configuration, larynx position, the shape of the space, staying constant — not about the muscular effort staying constant. Corelli and Del Monaco weren't clenched at maximum tension throughout a performance; they were maintaining a stable acoustic space while the actual muscular engagement still had to ebb and flow with the phrase. So a relax-to-zero-then-engage approach might not contradict Melocchi's idea at all — it might be the missing piece that makes it sustainable across a whole opera rather than three acts before something gives out.
LeoDoes that relax-to-zero moment happen while you're still holding the lowered, spacious throat position, or does everything reset completely, larynx included, before you rebuild for the difficult bit?
OscarEverything just goes to a relaxed, reset position. And then it's rebuilt — like taking it all down again.
A full system reboot, then, rather than idling in gear the whole time. Not maintaining tension through the easy passages hoping it holds, but dropping everything and rebuilding fresh right as it's needed — which is probably far less taxing over a whole night than trying to sustain one locked position for hours. Recruiting the setup on demand, rather than locking it and never letting go.
OscarIt's just my own version, something I've tried — and something a different teacher recommended, not the one who mentioned the smaller larynx.
The vowel that does the work
Which loops back to that foundational U — and to the fact that Oscar's own breakthrough vowel isn't the one Melocchi built his whole method around.
OscarThe neutral "uh" really works for me, because it relaxes the larynx into a lower position instead of me pressing it there. I don't think I've mastered the pure "oo" the same way — I bring in some tension with it, in the lips, in the shaping.
OscarBut isn't the "oo" a narrower, more focused vowel, where the "uh" is a bit more dispersed? A lot of people put real weight on the "u" specifically. What am I missing there — how do I get that same relaxation and low larynx feeling inside the "oo" as well?
Both things are true, and they're not actually in conflict. A pure "oo" is a narrower, more constricted vocal-tract shape, so acoustically it concentrates the sound into a tighter formant — that's exactly why so many teachers lean on it, it's an excellent forward-focus and resonance tool. A neutral, unshaped "uh" gives up that focus for something more diffuse, but hands over the relaxation and the low larynx for free, without asking anything of the lips or jaw.
So what's likely missing in the "oo" isn't a different larynx approach at all — it's probably that the shape is being built with the lips and jaw first, and the larynx is picking up tension compensating for that effort somewhere else. The usual fix is to find the "oo" shape internally, in the back of the tongue and the throat space, while keeping the lips almost passive, so the focus arrives without recruiting the front of the mouth into a tense pucker. One practical way in: start on the easy, unshaped "uh" and narrow slowly toward "oo" without touching the lips at all, moving only the tongue and the back of the space, watching whether the larynx holds its position the whole way there.
We didn't land anywhere final on that, and I think that's honest — this is a live experiment on one particular instrument, not a method being handed down. What's actually useful here isn't a conclusion, it's the shape of the questions: where does a technique built for one kind of throat meet a throat it wasn't built for, and what has to be adapted rather than inherited whole.
References
- Melocchi, Arturo — vocal pedagogy associated with Mario Del Monaco and Franco Corelli. Wikipedia
- Terranova, Gianluca — Metodo 3 Punti (M3p) vocal technique, as trained directly with the author.