Chest Voice

La Cieca has this thing going about chest voice.

I have my own opinions, of course. There are two things: chest mechanism which cannot be avoided no matter how hard you try, and chest resonance which is what the usually quoted sopranos are talking about. Heavy mezzos all use chest resonance. They would be idiots not to.

Eileen Farrell when she was teaching at IU used to claim she never used chest voice, and the other voice teachers would laugh at her. She meant one thing and they meant another. I have to say she bridged into her chest voice better than anyone I've ever heard. Perhaps it was the complete invisibility of the transition that made her think she didn't use it.