Libero Canto is a way of teaching singing that was first developed by Lajos Szamosi (1894-1977) in Budapest before the Second World War. Szamosi was an opera singer, cantor, and singing teacher. He called his approach, “the path to free singing,” la via al libero canto.
“The freedom of singing and the inner freedom of the human being are deeply interconnected.”
Lajos Szamosi
Founder of the Libero Canto Approach
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Szamosi’s ideal was free singing. In his younger years, he had a small vocal defect that neither the best Hungarian teachers, nor the most famous teachers in Vienna, Paris, or Berlin were able to fix. He decided that he would try to find a solution himself, and therefore he read, studied, and did a great deal of thinking about the problems involved in singing. In the course of his studies a number of questions arose. For example, what is singing, really? Why do people sing? What is meant by artistic singing? How do the sound-producing organs function? What is meant by the word “voice”? And so on. Read George Sebok’s Tribute
Freedom in singing was not a new concept at the time. It had been an ideal in the classical singing tradition for centuries, and it could still be heard in the 1920’s and ’30’s, particularly in Italy. Singers like Tito Schipa and Amelita Galli-Curci inspired Szamosi’s ideals. Szamosi developed not a new way of singing, but a new way of teaching – a new way of restoring or developing the free response of the vocal organs.
Two of Lajos Szamosi’s children, Edvin and Hedda Szamosi, took up his work and developed it further over the course of nearly fifty years.
Edvin Szamosi (1924 – 2014)
“Singing is learnable and teachable for every person – within the scope of his physical, emotional, and mental capacities – and each person can participate in the liberating joys of singing.” Read More
Hedda Szamosi (1931 – 2023)
“The teacher must have the feeling from the beginning, that he TRUSTS the student to succeed – each within the scope of the possibilities given to him by nature… This gives the student the courage to venture out into the unknown.” Read More