The Sarah Siddons Audio Files

The theatre scholars daunting but irresistible quest to recover some echoes of performance of the past has never been more engagingly presented than in Pascoes account of tracing the long-silenced voice of Sarah Siddons. Her report is a warm, witty, and highly informative exploration of the methodology and the pleasures of historical research. Marvin Carlson, author of The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine During her lifetime (17551831), English actress Sarah Siddons was an international celebrity acclaimed for her performances of tragic heroines. We know what she looked likean endless number of artists asked her to sit for portraits and sculpturesbut what of her famous voice, reported to cause audiences to hyperventilate or faint? In The Sarah Siddons Audio Files, Judith Pascoe takes readers on a journey to discover how the actors voice actually sounded. In lively and engaging prose, Pascoe retraces her quixotic search, which leads her to enroll in a Voice for Actors class, to collect Lady Macbeth voice prints, and to listen more carefully to the soundscape of her life. Bringing together archival discoveries, sound recording history, and media theory, Pascoe shows how romantic poets preoccupation with voices is linked to a larger cultural anxiety about the voices ephemerality. The Sarah Siddons Audio Files contributes to a growing body of work on the fascinating history of sound and will engage a broad audience interested in how recording technology has altered human experience.