I have recently discovered the beautiful counter-tenor voice of David Daniels!!
Several friends have been lucky enough to hear him in person and have backed up
my esteem of his voice, of course, based entirely upon what I've heard from his
cds.
I worked with a British-trained counter-tenor quite a number of years ago. He
was of the hooty, Alfred Deller school, heterosexual (lovely wife sang beside
him in my alto section!) and the father of two charming sons! The little
community combined church choirs at Christmas that year to perform Handel's
"Messiah" and David sang "O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion". I trained
the alto section for that performance and treated them to recordings of Louise
Homer and Russell Oberlin performing this aria. ALL the female altos selected
Louise as "the man" and Russell as "the woman"!! The day of the performance is
permanently etched in my memory.
The performance went well. David sang "Behold!" and "O thou" with phrases
intact and did an excellent performance. My lyric coloratura sang "Rejoice
greatly" with an interpolated high B flat to the delight of all. Immediately
following the final applause, my Pastor, with a smirk on his face, pulled me
aside and put forth the question, "They are all asking if David is gay!"!! I
never cease to be amazed by the redneck minds of the Southeastern US!! At a
RSCM event a colleague heard countertenors for the first time EVER!! "Damn!
There's a dude up there who looks like a Greenbay Packers tackle and sings like
Marilyn Horne!"!
These counter-tenor voices are indeed fascinating! I once spoke to Russell
Oberlin, who thought of himself as a very, very high tenor voice and stated that
he wasn't a "falsettist". These voices are very light, lyric voices and
traditionally don't pack the volume of a female contralto, lyric, dramatic or
d'agilita.
I've always contended that the mezzo-soprano in all flavors: dramatic, lyric,
dramatic coloratura and lyric coloratura, sings the contralto repertoire. There
are pitifully few contraltos of any flavor anywhere. One day I hope to hear a
genuine contralto. In the meantime, I'm THRILLED to keep purchasing David
Daniels' flawless cds!!
Ed
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