> A final thought on the castrati and CTs. Without going "under the
> knife" it's impossible to draw a concrete comparison between the CT
> of today and the castrati of yesterday. A countertenor can never
> achieve the exact registrational events the castrati had because we
> must factor in the hormonal effects the operation had on the boy
> soprano voice.
Agreed; perhaps the "hormonal" male sopranos can approach the nearest to the
castrati, but
their voices do not seem to be as powerful as those of the castrati allegedly
were; and they
lack, to some extent the "agilita".
> When Duprez sang the first tenor high C from the chest(April 17th
> 1837- Paris Opera- William Tell) he created quite a scandal. The
> public had never heard such singing and simply detested it.
Poor Adolph Nourrit; scandal it may have been, but once accepted, tenors felt
that all had to
try out the high C from the chest, and Nourrit paid the price of apparent
failure by committing
suicide.
Elsa
http://www.cix.co.uk/~velluti
Award-winning site;
Historian, not musician
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