Is it advisable for singers to start their careers as early as adolescence?

Wolfram Seidner

Opinion is divided as to whether adolescents should undergo intensive training for a singing career. The question is whether singers starting their professional or semi-professional career in adolescence might not use up their voice potential early on and whether a further career would then be possible at all. Impressive case statistics are cited by both advocates of and opponents to intensive voice training in adolescence.
We analysed one thousand biographies of singers to find out how many of them debuted as adolescents. Taking into consideration the singer’s voice class and the century in which he/she debuted we have come to interesting insights and conclusions which may be relevant for the development of singers in our time.
The age at which singers debut has risen continually over the past three centuries with sopranos almost always being the youngest and male singers always starting their careers later than all female singers. Based on the findings for the 20^th century, we have come to the conclusion that most singers, even with intensive training, have to wait until they are 24 to 26 years old before they are ready for the stage.

Prof. Dr. Wolfram Seidner
Pforte Heubnerweg 6
14059 Berlin, Germany
Tel. 0049 30 450 555 115 Fax 0049 30 450 578 922
wolfram.seidner@charite.de