The Use of Vibrato in Belt and Legit Styles of Singing in Professional Female Musical Theatre Performers

Shaped by the popular music of its time, musical theatre blends storytelling with an ever-evolving range of vocal styles—from classical legit singing to jazz, hip-hop, and powerhouse belting. Whether it’s the lush, operatic sound of South Pacific, the jazzy bite of Chicago, or the rap-driven score of Hamilton, each musical reflects its musical influences while still drawing from shared vocal techniques. As MT has evolved from the Golden Age to today, performers are now expected to master both legit and belt styles. One of the clearest signals separating these styles is vocal vibrato. However, to what degree vibrato is used for different styles by the same performer has not been well studied.  Despite its importance, much of what we understand about vibrato comes from laboratory-based studies that strip singing of its musical, stylistic, and performance context. This raises an important question: how do professional musical theatre performers employ vibrato in various styles?

This course takes vibrato out of the lab and into real-world performance. Drawing on recordings from five well-known professional musical theatre performers, the study examines vibrato use in live performances. By examining authentic performances rather than controlled vocal tasks, this work offers a rare glimpse at how vibrato functions as a stylistic tool in professional musical theatre singing.

This course connects current research with real-world pedagogy, revealing how elite musical theatre performers strategically use vibrato to shape style and storytelling, and showing how these insights can be applied in the voice studio to train stylistic flexibility and control.