From Leonard Cohen “Master Poems” from Music for Humans
Choice bits:
To use this word it is not necessary to make the voice weigh less than an ounce or equip it with small dusty wings. It is not necessary to invent a sunny day or a field of daffodils. It is not necessary to be in love, or to be in love with butterflies. The word butterfly is not a real butterfly. There is the word and there is the butterfly. If you confuse these two items people have the right to laugh at you.
At the same time, I’d add, to avoid dramatic flourishes is no excuse for giving a dead boring reading that disinterests the reader first, and the audience second as the reader is fumbling and unfamiliar with your own material. One needs to care about what one says or say nothing as in any case.
Do not work the audience for gasps and sighs. If you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. It will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. It will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence.
Of course it helps if you have voice training so it is pleasant to listen to or listen past. Let the meaning rise above the sounds.
If your voice is unconsciously taking the forefront of attention, interrupting your words with squeaks, breaks, or plume of nervous energy then that would make the audience sympathetically uncomfortable but uncomfortable and distract from the words as well. It’s the same problem as stilted amateur league dramatization. Be a conduit for the meaning and yourself at ease.