The Fact of the Castrato and the Myth of the Countertenor

Abstract

Over the last generation or so, the music world has witnessed an astonishing growth in the number of singers commonly dubbed countertenors. The major use for these newly labeled countertenors has been to sing featured, if not starring, roles in baroque opera. Most baroque opera revived in this period has been by Handel, and it has become common practice to cast a in roles that Handel had written for castrato (and, in the last few years, even in roles that Handel had written for mezzosoprano). What accounts for this development, and why do we have this sudden interest in countertenors? The inclination upon introduction to the vocal category known as countertenor is to assume that the voice simply centers on the octave above the tenor voice. And, indeed, the earliest references to it appear to have been in choral (church) music, where the sang the line above the tenor. Normally, when discussing a vocal category in Western art or religious music, the differentiation between vocal categories is based simply on range. Whatever the variations, the timbre is fundamentally the same (although it may darken or lighten depending on whether it is descending or ascending) and, most important, the vocal production is the same. It is by these standards that the vocal category of countertenor is judged. Since the is the extreme of the upper range of a natural male voice, it is by definition a relatively rare voice and, in any generation, something of a freak of nature, much like the comparable, relatively few sopranos who can sing in the octave above the normal high soprano. Though rare, such voices do exist. In the second half of the twentieth century, perhaps the best example of the phenomenon of a true was Russell Oberlin, whose voice was naturally produced and had the full body of a tenor. But today, the brace or two of new countertenors that appear to surface every other week make it obvious that we are not discussing the same voice as a true countertenor. These singers are in fact male altos. Their range is more or less that of a countertenor, although a good coun-