Word: counter-tenor
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...wigs and gilded breeches; the lovestruck and the lunatic both mingling with gods. Fate is lowered from a trap door to walk with hunchbacks and adulterers. The fornicators wear brocaded robes and the chaste are no less adorned. What matters is the glittering recitative--the strange power of the counter-tenor and his haunting arias. The characters and their conflicts are secondary amusements; harmless distractions as each singer is guided or goaded into glory by the basso continuo. What matters is the music...
This year's performance runs through December 14 at Boston's Shubert Theatre, and will feature Dominique Labelle, David Walker, Ray Bauwens and Eric Owens, though the December 6 performance was held in Symphony Hall and featured counter-tenor Steven Rickards insteaof David Walker. Associate Conductor John Finney leads H&H's marvelous chorus and period orchestra. Despite the press of weekend afternoons during the holiday season, Sunday's matinee performance was packed, with not an empty seat visible. The audience was richly rewarded for their time and responded with a thunderous, almost raucous standing ovation after the final "Amen...
Steven Rickards, who sang the counter-tenor in the December 5-10 performances only, was downright magnificent, displaying a remarkable range and amazing facility in both a smooth, unornamented style and a more decorative, vibrato-filled voice. Certain fast high notes, especially quick jumps up the range in the first few tenor solos sounded a touch over-breathy. However, as the piece progressed, Rickards' slow high sections became a real asset, showing off his incredibly pure, sweet timbre and bell-like resonance. Rickards' runs were exquisite and flawless, his style characterized by very creative use of flourishes, including several impressive...
...character of the Sorceress, who takes on the role which the gods held in the classical story of Virgil's Aeneid. This part, an alto role traditionally assigned to female singers, is performed by a male student, Christopher Thorpe '98, who someone must have decided was a counter-tenor of some sort. However, all of his lines sounded as if they were sung in a bad falsetto. The odd effect was emphasized by a very strange makeup job which made Thorpe's Sorcerer seem not like something supernatural or frightening but merely a werewolfish extra from a very bad horror...
Following the probing harmonic and contrapuntal explorations of Gesualdo, the madrigals of Luca Merenzio sounded a bit parochial and stay-at-home. Yet his two villanellas for three voices offered a great and rarely heard texture: soprano, counter-tenor, and basso. (Counter-tenor Carlo Tosti's sense of humor was, incidentally, crucial for the success of several of the Banchieri and Marenzio madrigals...