My Kingdom for a voice!

LJMU’s Face Lab is part of a British team which has recreated the living voice of King Richard III.

Cranio-facial identification expert Professor Caroline Wilkinson, director of the lab, was joined by linguists and historians to recreate the 15^th Century monarch’s speech from the shape of his skull and knowledge of his environment.

It will be heard publicly for the first time in a world first production at York Theatre Royal in November.

It follows the reconstruction of the face of the monarch in 2013 by Caroline’s team.

Digital avatar technology

Professor Wilkinson, who is also Director of the Forensic Research Institute, said: “Since we produced the facial reconstruction of Richard III in 2012, we have dreamt about bringing him alive, to see him move and speak his own words.

“With the help of advanced digital avatar technology and Yvonne’s voice team, we have been able to realise this dream. The result has exceeded our expectations and represents the most authentic and realistic portrait of this great king, based on all the evidence available.”

Caroline and theatrical linguist Yvonne Morley-Chisholm have done the media round this week to explain the genesis and significance of the project.

Yvonne said: “Face Lab at LJMU has animated the face from real-time motion capture, providing the physical nucleus, while my work provides the vocal nucleus.

“This is the new science of Historical Human Reconstruction or Postmortalism using an avatar of the real King based on the reconstruction of his head.”

What started for Yvonne Morley-Chisholm, expert voice teacher and vocal coach, over ten    years ago as an after-dinner entertainment to compare Shakespeare’s character with what we know of the real man, developed quickly into a research project to create a literal voice for a long-dead historical figure.

So does he sound posh as we would imagine?

No, says Yvonne, who normally works with vocal profiling to prepare actors to play parts of historical figures. She says, the ‘received pronunciation’ accent was popularized by the Victorians and medieval aristocrats and Richard would have spoken in a medieval Yorkshire accent.

The research will provide historians with an entirely new way to learn about the past and paves the way for other historical avatars in the future. 

Experts from across the UK and abroad joined in the unique, pioneering collaboration. Some of them will share presentations during the international launch event at ‘Voice for a King’ York Theatre Royal starting at 12 noon through to 6pm with the final ‘reveal’ at 5.30pm on Sunday, 17 November.

Taking the rostrum with Yvonne and Caroline will be Professor David Crystal OBE, internationally acclaimed linguist and leading specialist in Original Pronunciation, playwright Dr Bridget Foreman from the University of York, as well as historians Matthew Lewis and Philippa Langley MBE.

King Richard was famously killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, and his body dug up in a Leicester car park in 2012.