Tenor Nicky Spence examines the fragility of the voice, exploring vocal injury, illness and the journey to recovery with singers and medical experts who understand the stakes.
For singers, the voice is both a source of freedom and a source of vulnerability. Unlike any other instrument, it cannot simply be replaced when it breaks.
In this essay, tenor Nicky Spence confronts the fragility of the voice, exploring what happens when our most personal instrument encounters difficulty. Alongside voice specialist Mr Declan Costello, he investigates the causes of vocal injury and illness. With an archive interview from Dame Shirley Bassey and throughts from soprano Lucy Crowe, Nicky explores the emotional and physical challenges singers face when their voice is under threat, and the resilience required to recover and return to performance.
It is a story of risk, repair and recovery, and of the deep connection between voice, identity and artistic survival.
Produced by Calantha Bonnissent
On radio
Broadcast
- Thu 17 Sep 202621:45BBC Radio 3
Death in Trieste
A 1760s murder still informs ideas about aesthetics, a certain sort of sex, and death.
Watch: My Deaf World
Five compelling experiences of what it is like to be deaf in 21st-century Britain.
The Book that Changed Me
Five figures from the arts and science introduce books that changed their lives and work.
Podcast
![]()
The Essay
Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.
