The art and science of voice
You’ve seen the online videos, and maybe you’ve tried it yourself — piercing the air with the high notes in “Let It Go” from “Frozen.” Now imagine trying to do that eight times a week for audiences who have saved up their pennies to pay a premium ticket price.
They expect the powerhouse Broadway belt, and that’s what singers deliver night after night, on stages worldwide.
The belter long ago earned a place beside operatic voices and falsettos on the stage. It’s a trend that may not have started with Ethel Merman, but the stage and screen diva certainly set the standard.
To take a deep dive into the art and science of the Broadway belt, we start with Christine Laitta, among the folks in Pittsburgh who can belt to the rafters and who recently finished a gig channeling her childhood singing hero: Ethel Merman.
“When I was little, my parents had an Ethel Merman album, and I loved it. I would emulate her, and it was sort of a party game: ‘Sing like Ethel Merman,” Laitta said before a CLO Cabaret performance of “The Book of Merman” — as in Ethel, who encounters a couple of Mormon admirers in the hybrid musical.
Laitta first got to play Merman for Pittsburgh CLO’s production of another parody, “Forbidden Broadway,” even auditioning as the diva whose first Broadway show was “Stir Crazy,” for the Gershwins in 1930.
(Video: Steph Chambers/Post-Gazette. Visualization: Sam Underwood/Post-Gazette)
In her dressing room at the Greer Cabaret, Laitta added an inflatable mattress. She also is an adjunct teacher at the Pittsburgh CAPA school by day, so resting as often as possible is a must.
“When I think about [Merman], I think about huge breath support and relaxing between each number, because her volume and intensity is bigger than most people’s,” Laitta explained.
Onstage eight times a week, Jan. 30-March 8, she played the look and the voice of the singer best known for notes that reach out from the stage and grab an audience from the inside out.
Maestro Arturo Toscanini, the great New York Philharmonic conductor, said of Merman, “Hers is not a human voice. It’s another instrument in the band.”
“I guess I’ve got good lungs,” the late singer told The New York Times in 1982.
Merman’s “No Business Like Show Business” is a standard Broadway belt song that paved the way for the likes of Patti LuPone on “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” or Betty Buckley on “Memory” or the latest belter to take stage and screen by belt, Idina Menzel.
From “Defying Gravity” in “Wicked” to “Let It Go” in “Frozen” on Broadway, Menzel and those who have followed in her roles have pushed the envelope for vocal range eight shows a week — and launched millions of online videos of squealing imitators of all ages.
“For me, the belt … is very physical. People talk about the diaphragm and breathing from that, but really, it’s your lungs that are the powerhouse that’s going to sustain that constant, not only volume, but the quality of the note,” Laitta said.