SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Yvonne Morley-Chisholm was on an annual retreat with other professionals when she had sort of a eureka moment.
YVONNE MORLEY-CHISHOLM: We were meeting in the city of Leicester. And I thought Leicester, Leicester - oh, didn't they just find that guy under a car park?
DETROW: That guy she's referencing is Richard III, the English king from the late 15th century - one mostly known these days as one of Shakespeare's most iconic villains. His skeleton had been found two years earlier, buried under a parking lot - an exciting enough discovery for the general public, sure, but a game-changer for Morley-Chisholm, who's a voice coach and a vocal profiler, because it turns out there is a lot a skeleton can tell us about a human voice.
MORLEY-CHISHOLM: We can predict the likely pitch range of a voice from a skeleton.
DETROW: One professor had already taken this skeletal discovery a step further - a craniofacial reconstruction of Richard III, meaning his entire face had been digitally mapped. That got Morley-Chisholm's attention.
MORLEY-CHISHOLM: Well, I took one look at that and thought, they know the muscles. Wow. What else could we know?
DETROW: That question became the catalyst for a decadelong project to re-create Richard III's voice. Morley-Chisholm assembled a team of specialists across every field.
MORLEY-CHISHOLM: Dentists, doctors, surgeons...
DETROW: Also forensic psychologists, linguists and historians - she and her colleagues looked for puzzle pieces everywhere about the factors that may have shaped Richard III's voice. And some of these clues turned up in unexpected places.
MORLEY-CHISHOLM: A man with an incredibly similar scoliosis to King Richard's - I could talk to him about, you know, does this affect your breathing and your voice production? The answer is no.
DETROW: Eventually, the signs pointed to a specific region, Northern England. They discovered Richard III likely had a medieval Yorkshire accent, a dialect that set him apart from the typical upper-class tones of his successors.
MORLEY-CHISHOLM: The modern Yorkshire - the sun is shining. He would say, the sun is sheening (ph).
DETROW: So what do you do when you have all of these clues about a dead king's voice and you want people to hear it? You put out a casting call.
MORLEY-CHISHOLM: For 10 years, I was looking for a man with a face with the right proportions to the reconstruction of King Richard's face. And it's amazing we only found him this year.
DETROW: That actor studied up. He learned everything about Richard III's personality and life experiences and geared up for an unusual kind of performance because the audience would not see his face, but Richard III's.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As Richard III) The claritay (ph) and charitay (ph) of the sun's licht (ph) is so great that, when it is poured on the other heavenly bodies, the sun sheens (ph) with no less licht and splendor.
DETROW: That's a digital avatar of Richard III reciting a real address from his reign as king. It's currently on display at York Theatre Royal in England, and the team behind it believes the voice is 90% accurate. Morley-Chisholm says the public response has been overwhelming.
MORLEY-CHISHOLM: I was amazed when I walked into the lobby area. People were crying. They were weeping and saying, this is so moving.
DETROW: She says it's also been an opportunity for the public and for herself to learn about the real Richard III rather than the one depicted in the Shakespearean play.
MORLEY-CHISHOLM: Our vocal communication - we can tell a bunch of things about them. And I think it's been incredibly important to allow this to reconsider Richard's words in his pronunciation, driven by his personality, how he chose to communicate.
DETROW: As for what's next, Morley-Chisholm and the rest of her team have gotten a lot of requests for more voices.
MORLEY-CHISHOLM: People are keen for Robert the Bruce. They're keen for Mary, Queen of Scots, for the poet Keats, Johann Sebastian Bach...
DETROW: For now, Richard III will live on in York, where you'll be able to hear him through his own words - as best as we can re-create them today. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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