Abstract
The  voice  is  one  of the  actor’s  most  important  instruments  of  creative  expression. Therefore, the process  which  leads  to  learning  how  to  speak  and  sing  onstage  with  clarity  and  power  forms  an inseparable part of the performer’s training. The present  paper is a discussion of the contribution of the contemporary  music  theatre  repertoire  to  the  actor’s  training  through  the  liberating  effect  of  music  and technical and imaginative work on text and extra musical sound. The paper examines Berio’s ‘radiophonic documentary’  A-Ronne  described  by  Sanguineti  as  a  ‘privileged  laboratory  situation  for  exploring  the human voice’ and Marsh’s Pierrot Lunaire as representative works of the late twentieth-early twenty first century  music  theatre,  from  both  a  theoretical  and  a  technical  point  of  view.  The  two  works  share important  common  characteristics  –  the  non-conventional  relationship  between  text  and  music,  the juxtaposition  of  different  languages  and  vocal  behaviors,  the  exploitation  of  the  performer’s  body resonators through the expression of heightened emotions – whose study offers an invaluable tool to the accomplishment  of  the  vocal  performer’s  most  challenging  task:  to  find,  using  the  Word  as  a  starting point, a way through the labyrinth of sonorities towards the Works essence and its inner rhythm.

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