Influencers
Of Vienna
By Anna Fraser
This exhibition is the uncovering of a bel canto time capsule. The inclusion of images and items reimagines the reconstruction of a musical scene, in this case, a parlour in the mid-tolate 1700s, Vienna, with particular focus on Marianna Martines and her contemporaries. The methodical steps back in time, however, could be utilised to recreate any historical scene with similar informed results. The guided listening event on Mon 7 Apr, 6pm, to be presented next door in the Music Café, will showcase music which correlates with items and pathways laid out in this exhibition, with the intent to sound examples over a 250-year period. Attendees will experience the evolution of the continuum of singing practice, albeit reverse engineered.
Reconstructing a Bel Canto Scene
Is it possible to re imagine how late eighteenth-century singers sounded—and to reconstruct the spaces in which influential musical figures gathered to exchange ideas, techniques, and aesthetic values? Influencers of Vienna explores this question by sonically and scenographically, re-envisioning the learned musical environments of eighteenth- and early nineteenth century Vienna where figures such as Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Metastasio, Porpora, and the remarkable Marianna Martines (1744–1812) shared expertise with highly trained listeners and practitioners.
Supported by the University of Sydney Library
About the Performer
Anna Fraser is a highly-acclaimed Australian soprano, lauded for her crystal-clear tone, stylistic awareness, and interpretative depth. Based in Sydney (Australia), Anna has forged a distinctive career captivating audiences with performances that combine “theatrical flair” and “stylistic nuance” (Sounds Like Sydney)….
The Three E’s
The processes of Emulation, Embodiment and Extrapolation, afford us, as modern trained practitioners, rich opportunities to expand the palette of expressive devices available to explore what these earlier practices feel like in our bodies. The visual and interactive elements of the items on display aim to bolster engagement and direct interest to areas underexplored and less appreciated, particularly the plethora of extraordinary early recordings to guide and inspire creative diversity in expression and interpretation.
Emulation is the close imitation of early recordings by singers—for example, Schumann Heink, Johanna Gadski (1870–1932) and Lev Sibiryakov (1869–1942)—trained before the modernist uniformity of technical approach had become standard. The process embeds the feel of pre-modern timing, articulation, timbre, and ornamentation, counteracting habits of today’s training such as relative tempo and rhythm stability, long and uninflected lines (legato), constant unvarying vibrato, infrequent portamento, and evenly equalised registers—smooth, homogeneous, and uninterrupted across the range, with no perceptible break, bump, or change of quality.
Embodiment involves in-depth honing of the emulation stage to absorb and embed the historical singer’s expression to effect a metamorphosis “in which the living musician feels the dead musician’s practices in their own body and allows these to sound out anew, as their own” (Fraser and Peres Da Costa, 2026). We experiment cyclically—testing portamento, tremolo/vibrato variations, registral shifts, speech-like rhythmic inflection (declamato, stilo parlante), agogic accents, dynamic hairpins, and timbral shading (light and shade or chiaroscuro produced by flexible laryngeal height and pharyngeal shapings). The aim is to embody these effects physically to feel how different colours and articulations animate words and structures, and then to integrate these instinctually
Extrapolation occurs through practical trials to: i) translate (reverse engineer) information from documentary sources into sound; and ii) create novel interpretations of repertoire (across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) for which there are no relevant historical sound recordings.
View the full presentation here
Emulation and Embodiment
Drawing on recent developments in embodiment based, practice led music research, this project builds new knowledge of pre recording era bel canto through systematic reconstruction rather than historical abstraction. Manuel García II (1805–1906)—celebrated pedagogue and inventor of the laryngoscope—was the first to document these vocal practices in physiological detail, but the absence of sonic evidence from earlier periods demands innovative methodologies. This research adopts a two stage process:
1. Emulation of expressive techniques preserved in early recordings of nineteenth century bel canto singers
2. The sonification of documentary evidence through practical experimentation, extrapolating backward to imagine earlier sonic practices and atmospheres.
This method expands the expressive palette available to modern singers while offering embodied insight into what historical vocal practices may have felt like in the body. It reframes bel canto not as a fixed technique but as a living constellation of adaptive, improvisatory practices.
Video: Emulation and Embodiment
Emulation is a novel, practice-led method imitating historical recordings. The emulation process
uses performance body skills to reimagine musical practices from the past. Early sound recordings of late-bel canto singers (trained in the second half of the 19th Century) reveal such practices in abundance before the rise of modern style in the early 20th Century. These musicians’ expressive traits were part of a continuum of practice going back several centuries. Vocalists are asked to undertake close listening and detailed annotation of scores, as well as record their singing to come as close as possible to the vocal styles heard on historical recordings.
Garcia’s Laryngeal Positions
Another key figure in this exhibition is Manuel Garcia II (1805–1906) who provides us with pedagogical treatises and annotated examples and arias that describe how bel canto can be practically achieved. García successfully pinpoints a gap in understanding how to describe physically (with physiological diagrams), articulate instructively and, define tonally the common expressive and timbral vocal practices which we can identify in early recordings such as Patti’s
Video: García’s Laryngeal Positions and Registral Colours
Expressive Singing
Contemporary classical singing practice often demonstrates limited engagement with the continuum of creative techniques that characterised the bel canto era. Yet both aural evidence (early recordings) and written sources consistently attest that singers employed highly flexible and improvised expressive strategies. These included tempo rubato, rhythmic alteration and agogic accentuation, elaborate ornamentation, varied registral colouration, portamento, trembling effects, and adaptive laryngeal positioning. As John Potter observes, such practices were integral to “[demonstrating] the performer’s unique talents as a creative artist” (2012, p. 93).
Key for Identifying Bel Canto Expressive Practices
Symbols for Tonal Colour and Laryngeal Adjustment
