Emotion, Character, and Vocal Performance in Opera: Toward an Integrated Model of Emotional Revivification and Performative Regulation

Operatic performance requires the simultaneous integration of vocal production, musical execution, dramatic action, bodily communication, and emotional expression. Yet the emotional component of operatic singing is often discussed either as an interpretative effect or as a psychological state of the performer, without clearly distinguishing emotions intentionally recruited for character construction from emotions contingently generated by performance itself. This paper develops a theoretical and exploratory framework derived from Il canto delle emozioni, in which the operatic singer is conceptualized as a singer-actor whose performance involves the interaction of vocal technique, embodied dramatic action, emotional memory, character construction, and emotional self-regulation. The framework establishes a distinction between revived emotions, intentionally recruited through processes related to Stanislavskian emotional memory and character identification, and contingent emotions, such as performance anxiety, fear, excitement, or excessive enthusiasm, which arise from the immediate conditions of performance. The study combines theoretical interdisciplinary analysis with an exploratory survey of 34 active opera singers originally conducted for the source volume. The survey investigated acting education, character preparation, emotional involvement, stage anxiety, emotional control, and singers’ conceptions of vocal production and dramatic interpretation. The findings reveal substantial recognition of emotional involvement and character identification among respondents, while also showing conceptual inconsistencies between declared approaches and descriptions of actual practice. In particular, 52.9% selected “revivification” as their preferred acting approach, whereas qualitative responses suggested that only approximately six or seven of the 34 respondents described practices closely corresponding to Stanislavskian psychotechnics. The paper argues that emotional authenticity in opera should not be understood as uncontrolled emotional experience. Rather, effective performance requires a regulated interaction among technical automatization, character-directed emotional activation, bodily and paraverbal expression, and management of performer-generated contingent affect. The proposed model is theoretical and exploratory rather than experimentally validated and is presented as a basis for future empirical research on emotion regulation, character construction, and singer-actor training.