gsanders@b... wrote: gsanders@b... wrote: > Operatic countertenors have exactly as much right to use > their fachname as tenors do theirs. > > Can we please get this correct. Fach is a subdivision of a > voice not the voice type.
How I wish we could, Graham! Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like countertenors have been given the same sort of treatment within the fach system that other voices have. Most attempts I've seen to include it add it as an afterthought to the "tenor" infragroup, which to me ludricrous, and would probably make Reg go into convulsions ;-) Of course countertenor is not a fach, but it is treated that way - size, tessitura and color don't seem as important as "can he sing the notes?"
Most countertenors have been expected to do the same roles. I've seen sopranists do Oberon, for instance. Things are getting better, at least in practice - higher CTs are doing Sesto, Nero, lower ones are taking Rinaldo, Oberon, but I don't think there's any official recognition to these differences in CTs sizes and ranges within any house's rosters. Wasn't the fach system was devised to protect singers contractually, so singers wouldn't have to hurt themselves at the whim of a house? CT deserve that sort of consideration, but it's not there yet, as far as I know, anyway.
The irony is that there is almost as much variety in countertenors as there are in all female voices, let alone a range group, like mezzos (of course, there don't seem to be enough "dramatics" out there to warrant that category for CTs, at least yet). I tried to categorize David Daniels last week as a "medium lyric countertenor" (to be more specific, I would have like to have said medium lyric mezzo-sopranist countertenor).
It's hard enough to get people to recognize it as even a legit operatic voice as a broad voice type, let alone start having people think of us as "lyric alto countertenors" or whatever. One step at a time!
Tako
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