Heard But Not Seen-Swedish Opera Choristers' Thoughts on Occupational Environment and Vocal Health, an Explorative Qualitative Study

OBJECTIVE: Professional operatic singing is vocally demanding, making the maintenance of professional vocal health a paramount concern for the opera chorister. Occupational environment has been shown to affect vocal health for other vocally dependent professions. Hence, the objective of the current study was to explore what occupational environment factors affect the professional vocal health of Swedish opera choristers.

METHODS: In total, 12 focus group interviews with a total of 47 opera choristers at the three main opera houses in Sweden were conducted. The singers were grouped according to sex and age (≤45 and ≥46 years), discussions were aided by an interview guide. The interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using systematic text condensation, a thematic qualitative analysis.

RESULTS: Five main themes were identified: (1) varying vocal demand, (2) adequate recovery, (3) instrument care, (4) psychosocial work environment, and (5) management measures. An underlying core prerequisite emerged highlighting the importance of the opera house management to understand the vocal as well as the psychological and emotional demands of the opera chorister profession.

CONCLUSION: Our findings support the supposition that occupational environment affects the professional vocal health of opera choristers. We suggest that if management can provide both adequate vocal recovery and succeed in alleviating psychosocial factors, this would improve vocal health and strengthen the singers' ability to handle the intrinsically high occupational demands of the profession. Further research is needed to understand how the findings may be implemented in the work place.