My research explores the emerging connection between voice and subjectivity in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Italy. Theorists of voice typically locate this shift in the French Enlightenment, but my project argues for Italy as the site of a more radical ideology of voice, one born of uniquely Italian musico-cultural practices and anxieties. Amidst mounting criticisms of operatic voices as artificial and inauthentic, progressive singers, composers, and literati experimented with transforming voice into a privileged medium for individual expression. I explore such attempts through the lens of three lyric figures—Orpheus, Sappho, and Ossian—reading them as both opera characters and representations of different types of “lyric” voices. In defining voice as, at once, a broad metaphorical category and a set of culturally contingent practices, my project aims to position Italy as a central force in historical narratives about voice and selfhood.