The stratospheric voices of classical coloratura sopranos like Ruth Welting have a chilling, thrilling side. They are like circus high-wire acts; the whole audience barely breathes, waiting to see if she'll hit the notes or if she'll fall short or crack.
The male singers had the Three Tenors to look to - the magnificence of Pavarotti's lush voice with its full-throated high Cs; the intelligence of Domingo's approach to singing; the passion of Carreras.
Even higher are the countertenors. These are the men who sing as high as women, using modern vocal techniques to approximate the art of the famous castrati. The rock stars of their day, the castrati were boys who had been castrated to keep their voices high and pure. The practice was eventually outlawed, but the legends of their astonishing voices continued to inspire, yielding the 1994 film Farinelli and Anne Rice's Cry to Heaven.
Last night was the opening concert of the First Annual Edmonton Early Music Festival. The featured artists were local soprano Jolaine Kerley, cellist Josephine van Lier (who moved to Edmonton from Europe some years ago), harpsichordist Gilbert Martinez from San Francisco, and the amazing American countertenor Brian Asawa.
Asawa is a big name in countertenor circles. He won the major competitions and he has sung at the Met and all over the world. His performance in the concert made it clear why he has been so successful: a marriage of wonderful tone, terrific technique, and a flair for the dramatic. He is shameless - and good.
The concert was not well-attended. Edmonton has a huge number of concerts every weekend - and competition for audience share is tough. I only heard about this concert by accident the night before.
In two shows in my past I have been cast in parts that required stratospheric singing. One was in the comedy Farelinelli at the Fringe Festival. The role was of a choir boy who had been the object of...interference...by a priest, and he had consequently refused to grow up and had remained a boyish treble. The other was The Singing Blade, in which I played the castrato Gaetano Guadagni. I had no idea what I was doing technically. But it gave me an appreciation for countertenors, because it certainly was not easy.
Asawa was slated to do a masterclass the day after the concert. A masterclass is where a master (in this case Asawa) listens to high-level students and gives them some coaching. Masterclasses are sometimes closed to the public - only the students who are singing can attend - but sometimes they are open. This one was open, and I was looking forward to attending and finding out how the countertenor approached the technical aspect of his art.
I mentioned to the organizers how fabulous it was going to be, and they revealed that one of the slated singers for the masterclass had cancelled. They were short a singer, and did I want to sing?
The bass-baritone repertoire is my usual fare. Just last week I sang the role of Pooh-Bah in The Mikado, performing in the very church where Asawa sang last night. No doubt Asawa would have given me lots of excellent feedback on my singing. I asked if any of the other singers was a countertenor, and the answer was no.
I made a deal. I would happily sing for the masterclass, but only if I could sing in the countertenor range. The organizers agreed, and introduced me to Asawa.
Panic set in. What had I done? I had committed to sing repertoire that I do not usually sing in front of one of the world's leading countertenors. Insane! The oldest of the other singers would still be young enough to be my child.
The panic was not enough to disturb my sleep (nothing short of a full-scale disaster stops me from falling asleep), but in the morning I found myself swithering about what to sing. I had thought I would sing But Who May Abide from Handel's Messiah, but I sang it as a bass recently and I wondered if that would make it more difficult. I considered Caccini's Amarilli, mia bella.
There are astonishing countertenors on YouTube. Jaroussky. Marian. Gall. Daniels. Asawa. I knew I did not have the technical ability to sing anything too florid. I finally settled on Handel's Lascia ch'io pianga, a soprano aria from Rinaldo. In the opera it is sung by a woman, but does that really matter when it is being sung in a concert or masterclass situation? To some people it might. I think it is very beautiful, and it is the right range for me, and since I was already breaking all kinds of rules...
I went to the university to get the music from their music library. But the library was closed this weekend. I went to the downtown public library, but all I could find was an online instrumental score. I knew I had a copy somewhere in my files, but where?
Not in my Handel folder.
Then I found it: on page 1103 of the sixth volume of a 1917 anthology. The music had awful Victorian editorial markings - lots of crescendos and decrescendos etc. an the text was not quite right. But it was music.
The first two singers in the masterclass were truly lovely. A lyric/coloratura soprano singing Bach, and a very tasteful mezzo singing Dowland to guitar accompaniment. While I listened to them, I thought "I am going to make such a fool of myself coming after these fine young singers..."
When my turn came, I prefaced it with an explanation of why I was there and why I wanted to sing the countertenor range for the masterclass. There were some people in the audience who know me as a bass-baritone and who have been very supportive of my work, and I was a bit worried about losing face in front of them. I asked one of them - a wonderful speech therapist I have known for many years - if she would push the button on my recorder and record the session for my private listening later.
Marnie Giesbrecht had kindly agreed to play the accompaniment on the harpsichord, wich was tuned to baroque pitch. Baroque pitch is a bit lower than our modern standard - with an A at 415 instead of 440. She asked if it would be a problem, and I didn't think it would.
I was wrong. Listening to the recording when I got home, I am surprised the audience didn't throw tomatoes. My tuning was awful - mostly sharp. and I know it is because I was using my eyes instead of my ears - trying to sing the pitches on the page. This has occasionally been a problem for me when music is transposed up or down. The result in this case was a strident, ugly sound and very out of tune.
Mr. Asawa had agreed to treat me as a beginner, and he was true to his word. He took me through some exercises before we tried the aria again. Then we started over. By this time I was more attuned to the pitch of the harpsichord! Painstakingly, pitch by pitch and phrase by phrase, Asawa teased a countertenor voice out of me. By the end of the half hour, the sound was much improved.
Not once did he show dismay. and no-one criticised me for taking the risk, although I can imagine some of the dinner table conversations that evening, particularly from the other singers.
The last singer was a young bass-baritone. Tall, slim, blond, chiseled features and huge eyes. A resonance, velvety voice. He seemed intelligent, artistic, and blessed with a real gift. Listening to him and the approach he had been encouraged to take (he is doing his Masters) took me back through my years of study and the frustration my teachers experienced - and I experienced - when my voice did not "settle". The more young male singers I hear, the more I wonder if countertenor ought to have been my fach. I remember, though, that I had NO access to my falsetto at all. Already I was too tense, too anxious to please and to do it right. So if I was meant to be a countertenor, no-one would have known.
On the way home I called my friend David in Toronto. David and I had been talking some months ago about Jeffrey Gall and that perhaps I should make a trip and study with him for a bit. I did not see the point at my age. After the class with Asawa my knees felt weak, but my voice felt fabulous. I told David that I was still conflicted about having done the masterclass - and that is true. No-one who was there would have known that I am atually a quite accomplished singer. My issues around singing countertenor clouded everything else.
The triumph here is that at my age I still had the courage to get up in front of people and try something new, something I felt was likely to fail but fail in an interesting way. Mr. Asawa was generous, gracious and intelligent; at the end he commented on how quickly I caught on. I wanted to say "My career is almost over; I have not caught on quickly enough."
