From another group, originally from the Bay Area Reporter, California. Also re
castrati. John W.
--- On Fri, 21/1/11, <....@gmail.com> wrote:
From: <.........@gmail.com>
Subject: [TGN&F] [News/Music] [USA] Real men sing countertenor
To: TNUKdigest@yahoogroups.com, transgender_news_and_features@yahoogroups.com,
transgender-news@googlegroups.com, transgendernews@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, 21, January, 2011, 1:40 AM
Bay Area Reporter, CA, USA
Music
Real men sing countertenor
by Tim Pfaff
Published 01/20/2011
Whether or not Handel was gay – unknown, probably unknowable, but much
harder to argue no than yes – the evidence of his 40-plus operas is
that he had insights into the feminine granted to few composers of any
age, and that he created his most compelling male characters for
singers with treble ranges. Great male roles composed for tenors and
basses don't figure much in his work before the later oratorios.
Theatrical conventions of his day and the ready availability of
castrati (to anyone new to the unique pleasures of early music: yes)
to star in his productions move the issue of the degree to which he
relished the genderfuck (also unknowable) to the sidelines, but it's
clear that it did not inhibit him. In the last quarter-century, over
which time his operas have gone from rarities to repertoire staples,
we sophisticated moderns have completely accustomed ourselves to the
countertenor sound – not in itself Handelian – to the point that even
audience members with only a passing knowledge of the field no longer
assume that any particular countertenor is gay (no more certain a bet
than whether Handel was).
Yet despite the profusion of exemplary countertenors working the scene
these days – the competition is so stiff you wonder when the next real
castrato will come along – the subcategory of the Handel aria CD, a
booming industry for decades, has hardly favored them. So Max Emanuel
Cencic's Handel Mezzo-Soprano Opera Arias (Virgin Classics) and Bejun
Mehta's Ombra Cara (Harmonia Mundi) provide important check-in points.
Whatever team they're batting on, these are real men with important
things to say about the male characters they're portraying.
The Croatian-born, Vienna-based Cencic's own background may explain
his CD's misleading title (David Vickers' fine notes explain that most
of these arias were for the castrato Carestini, not for women
singers). A boy soprano who went on singing in that range even after
his voice broke, Cencic has made it a point, since a long break in his
career to retrain as a male mezzo, to sing higher roles and, in
William Christie's recording of Stafano Landi's Il Sant'Alessio, to
sing the explicitly female role of Saint Alex's wife. Still, nothing
on his new Handel disc is sensational from the gender-bending
standpoint, and in fact it seems a bellwether of the state of the
countertenor art.
Cencic's is a rich, highly flexible instrument with the principles of
historical vocal performance deeply ingrained in it. Although Cencic
clearly relishes extroverted, bravura singing – the CD begins with a
volley of impressive passagework from one of Handel's last operas,
Imeneo – he's equally convincing in the more inward passages that
constitute the composer's work at its most memorable. The CD goes back
and forth from the spectacular to the sensitive so skillfully that you
can listen to an hour of countertenor excerpts without tiring, which
is saying a lot.
Diego Fasoli's I Barocchisti players, a big band by today's standards,
favor a plush sound, not always to the advantage of the music, though
they're in complete synch with Cencic. You just wonder why, with all
the opera arias available to him, Cencic chose two from the serenata
Parnasso in festa, both with chorus (from Swiss Radio-TV), which show
no one, including Handel, to best advantage.
The overlapping item in the two CDs – and the single best-known item
on either – is "Ombra cara" from Radamisto, and it says all there is
to say by way of comparing the two. Cencic's cultivated, emotionally
engaged rendition of the aria leaves you wanting nothing more. Mehta's
singing draws you into places you didn't know were there to go in this
deeply felt music, transporting you there on a sustained filament of
sound so refined and achingly beautiful you wonder what's happening to
you.
The American-born Mehta (a distant cousin of – and vastly better and
more interesting musician than – Zubin Mehta), also a one-time boy
soprano, became a cellist when his voice changed, making his way back
into treble singing relatively late, but decisively. In fact his voice
sounds considerably higher than the one Cencic deploys today, but
everything from range to degree of vocal agility comes second to his
sterling, wrenchingly communicative singing.
He, too, comes blazing out of the gate with "Sento la gioia" from
Amadigi di Gaula, the obligatory display piece, but from the instant
the CD shifts into the tortured harmonies of Handel's Venetian opera
Agrippina, we're in a different world, as far from musical Kansas as
historical performance gets. The incandescent playing of the
Freiburger Barockorchester under Rene Jacobs fuels the voyage, and
Rosemary Joshua is an expert partner in two transcendental duets,
Handel specialties.
For the most spellbinding Handel singing since Lorraine Hunt
Lieberson's "As with rosy steps the dawn" from Theodora, go directly
to Mehta's "Con rauco mormorio" from Rodelinda.
Bay Area Reporter, a division of Benro Enterprises, Inc.
http://www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=music&article=820
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