A real-time MRI scan shows what happens inside an opera singer’s head while he sings.

Ever been curious about what goes on inside an opera singer’s head? Now you have the chance, thanks to a study being conducted by researchers at the Freiburger Institute for Musician’s Medicine. Scientists at the institute used a real-time MRI scan to capture footage of German Helden-baritone Michael Volle singing O Du Mein Holder Abendstern (Song to the Evening Star) from Wagner’s Tannhäuser.

Volle is one of his generation’s leading Wagnerian baritones and therefore the perfect person to show how it’s done. He was a member of the Zurich Opera before joining the Bavarian State Opera and has performed at the Royal Opera House, the Paris Opéra, the Berlin State Opera, the Metropolotan Opera and La Scala as well singing the role of Hans Sachs in the acclaimed 2013 Salzburg Festival production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. He is certainly no stranger to this aria, having sung Wolfram in the Bavarian State Opera’s Tannhäuser.

The fascinating video uses Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or MRI, to show a cross-section of Volle’s head and neck, clearly depicting the action of the throat, soft palette and tongue as he sings Wagner’s aria.

The performance was organised by Professor Matthias Echternach, who was a boy soprano and tenor himself. The study involves 12 professional singers of different voice types singing scales at varying volumes and investigates how singers’ vocal tracts function in performance. Echternach has been studying the voice using MRI technology for some time, and this video of Volle is just one part of the key to unlocking the mysteries of the beauty of the human voice.