Those of you with current or former babies know that they can lie there and just scream for hours on end. And I mean scream! How is this possible? If you tried to personally scream as loud and as long as those babies (like you did at that Justin Bieber concert that one time), you would lose your voice and have a sore throat for days. This is because you are not using your opera voice.
Babies know about the opera voice. Babies love the opera voice. The opera voice is what allows opera singers to, well, basically scream at the top of their lungs for hours on end and not lose their voice. Now, I must stress right away that opera singers do NOT scream at the top of their lungs. It just sounds like that much of the time. But it is not screaming. It is the opera voice.
You see, we opera singers have a unique challenge, having to sing over an entire orchestra and still be heard. We do not have microphones and sound systems. Sometimes we don’t even have decent acoustics. All we have is our voices, and so we go through years of expensive training to basically condition our voices back to their infant-like state of being able to do what we were born being able to do but somehow forgot.
Once trained, we opera singers are able to just relax our bodies and esophagi and let the sound flow freely from our vocal folds, going for hours without getting tired, and also creating such resonance that we can be heard over very large amounts of noise. This is done for the express purpose of singing operas, but there are many fringe benefits of having an opera voice as well.
Need to get a crowded room’s attention? Can’t do that finger in your mouth whistley thing? Try using your opera voice to get everyone’s attention. I guarantee that they will all hear you and quiet down.
Trying to call to a friend across a noisy bar? There are too many people between the two of you to get through, and they will never hear you screeching at them, but one blast of their name using the opera voice and you will have their attention. And the best part is, everyone else will be too drunk to pay attention to your call, so they will not quiet down and pay attention to you like in the previous example.
The opera voice can also travel great distances. I have found that, using my opera voice, I can get someone’s attention who is standing much farther away from me than I could otherwise. A city block? Easy. Opposite end of a field? No problem. 6 stories up, hanging out of a window? I got this.
The last and best use of the opera voice is clearly in the field of child discipline. I hope that my children do not build up an immunity to the opera voice, but at the moment, the best way to let them know that I mean business, is a resonant and triple-forte “Hey!” sung in their direction. That will stop whatever mischief they are up to in a hurry.
So even if you are not planning to become an international operatic sensation like me, I would strongly advise you all to go take a few voice lessons and tap into your inner opera voice. It doesn’t matter if you are tone deaf or have perfect pitch. You don’t even need to sing a note. Just think about what a wonderful place this world would be if everyone was just 20% louder! Oh. Ummm…. actually, nevermind.
Regarding a baby’s ability to scream for hours without getting tired …. I’m told that at 18 months I screamed for 24 hours straight. After about 4 or 5 hours, my grandmother convinced my mother to call the doctor. The doc came, examined me, and then charged my mother $5. “Your baby isn’t sick. Nobody can scream that loud for this long and be sick. I’ve just charged you $5 to tell you your son is having a tantrum. Give him a little spanking, put him in his crib, shut the door, and let him cry.” My mother told me after that 24 hours I stopped crying, slept for a while, and then I became “the perfect son”.