On Fri, 9 Mar 2001, Tako Oda wrote (of countertenors):
> You have to admit, though, no other voice type ever has to convince anyone
> else that their fach is legitimate,
Not entirely true. I have a friend whose voice teacher told her there was
no such thing as a TRUE alto/contralto. That we were all just lazy
sopranos. (The teacher who made that statement clearly had never heard
anything but lazy sopranos in her sadly limited and apparently
professionally dubious carrer.)
The other "fach" that has been questioned was one represented by the late
great Ruby Helder, "The Girl Tenor". Anyone who has heard recordings of
this lady (active in the first decade and a half of the 20th century) must
admit that she truly WAS a tenor, in the "typically English" vein later
epitomised by Gervase Elwes, Peter Pears, and Anthony Rolfe-Johnson. The
voice had an indisputably masculine quality to it, disqualifying it (to my
ears at least) from ever being accused of being "a lazy contralto".
But I do understand the "questioning" issue with countertenors. Even
among those who do recognise the existence of the fach there seems to be a
lot of controversy over which singers are true countertenors, and which
are "merely" male sopranists. Perhaps one of the true countertenors on
this list can explain to me what the difference is. And how do those two
differ from the French haute contre, which I've heard characterised as the
equivalent of the countertenor, but also as "merely" a high tenor.
It was so much easier when the only men who sang soprano did so because
they'd been gelded. At least they could PROVE the fach existed!
KM
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