Researchers at the Institute for Musical and Acoustic Research in Paris used a computer to achieve what was formerly possible only with radical surgery: an operatic voice with a range of three-and-a-half octaves and the ability to sustain a single note for an entire minute. The program attempts to recreate the voice of legendary opera singer Farinelli, who died in 1782.
Farinelli was a castrato, a male singer castrated before puberty. He is now the subject of an upcoming French-Italian film, Farinelli, Il Castrato.
"The effects of castration on the voice are to preserve the vocal chords of childhood which then coexist with the vocal tract of manhood," says Xavier Rodet, head of the team that recreated Farinelli's voice.
No modern singer could have approached the vocal acrobatics needed to approximate his voice. Rodet's team recorded and combined two opera singers - a male contralto and a female coloratura soprano - to reproduce the 18th-century music. The computer was used to smooth out the different voices so they sound like the product of a single set of vocal chords. The results can be heard in the film (scheduled for release later this year in Europe) and on CD (from France's Ovidisc).
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