Odette's Voices

Odette has two voices: Liz Callaway (who sings in The Swan Princess), and Michelle Nicastro (who speaks in all three movies and sings in the two sequels). Both are stage performers with beautiful singing voices though sadly I have not seen either perform live. Here I'd just like to mention a few other places I've heard them sing.

+ Michelle Nicastro +

There was a little fantasy tv series a while back called Xena: Warrior Princess. It was cheesy, it was fun, and it had a warrior princess who dressed in leather and roamed the countryside generally trying to save people and stuff. One of the most surreal episodes they had was a musical episode called The Bitter Suite. In it, everyone sings because... well... It'll take too long to explain, so suffice to say that everyone sings.

One of the characters is a blonde warrior princess-wannabe called Callisto, played by Hudson Leick. She too, starts singing in that episode, and when I first heard her I thought, hmm that sounds oddly familiar... I got the episode soundtrack quite some time later and to my surprise, found that Callisto's singing voice was none other that Michelle Nicastro.

Ms Nicastro's singing voice in The Bitter Suite is quite different from the voice we hear in the Swan Princess trilogy. She manages to hit harsher almost rock-like notes at times, though the general honey-sweetness is still there.


Duration: 11 secs, Size: 178 kb

As an addendum, Michelle sadly passed away in 2010, RIP.

+ Liz Callaway +

Ms Callaway's singing voice has been used for quite a number of animated heroines other than Odette. Those I know of are:

  1. Anastasia, in which she was, unsurprisingly, Anastasia. Ms Callaway brings a depth to Once Upon a December that was totally different from what she did for Odette, so I couldn't recognise her at first. It was only when I was listening to Learn to do It that the bells started ringing on my head.

    Duration: 16 secs, Size: 262 kb
  2. The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride. The song in question is Love Will Find a Way, the duet between grown-up Kovu and grown-up Kiara. Ms Callaway is grown-up Kiara, and easily recognisable. This song is deliberately soft and gentle, not trying to be the power ballad that Can You Feel the Love Tonight. Though kudos to them for their own sound, I do wish that it had been a power ballad for Ms Callaway would have delivered wonderfully.

    Duration: 18 secs, Size: 278 kb
  3. The Return of Jafar and Aladdin and the King of Thieves. In these two movies, she is the replacement for Lea Salonga, who was Jasmine's singing voice in Aladdin. I quite liked Liz Callaway's performance in these two movies, especially for Forget About Love. I couldn't recognise her voice at the time, though I did notice that it did have a higher range than Ms Salonga's. It was only when King of Thieves came out did I notice that it was indeed Ms Callaway doing the singing.

    Duration: 11 secs, Size: 174 kb

comments powered by Disqus