Dear Michelle & Listers, One of my best friends is a mezzo-soprano, so I feel I can honestly say this. Given the dearth of contraltos out there, if you're not willing to "drag up" and do the "old geezer" thing, you're losing alot of wonderful repertoire! Yes, some talented C-T's are stepping into some of this repertoire. A point to ponder is that a great many Counter-Tenors out there these days are good ol' red blooded heterosexuals! The one Counter-Tenor who sang in my church choir years ago was straight as a stick and sang beside his (short-ranged soprano) wife in the alto section. They practised their parts together in the evenings! Generally speaking, these C-T dudes do not put on dresses and primp and preen onstage and in very litte way do they usurp the repertoire of most mezzo-sopranos out there! Elizabeth (my mezzo friend originally from Illinois) always says that mezzo-sopranos have to "Geezer up", "Frump Up" and "Whore Up"!! If you forgo the Geezer repertoire, you can still frump and whore to your heart's content, but you'll miss out on Orfeo, Octavian, Adriano, Cherubino, Sextus, Arsace, etc, etc.!! Personally, I'd enjoy the "Whoring Up" much more than the "Frumping Up" (one dear mezzo friend played a GRANDMOTHER at the ripe ol' age of TWENTY-FIVE!!!!). Counter-Tenors, as much as I DEARLY love them, aren't likely to step into Carmen, Dalila, Maddalena or Leonora, must less any of the Wagnerians, but those do tend to be less whorish and more on the frumpy side. Adriano might make more sense sung by a man, but he'd have to be packing a high-octane C-T to pull THAT off! I will admit I've wondered how "Rigoletto" would fly with a C-T "cross-dresser" as Maddalena, but I'll bet the good ol' hog farmin' Southern USA newspaper reviewers would not look happily on an "Anything That Moves" version of the Duke! Then we have the Deep-Dish Frumps: Azucena and Fides! Not many C-T's out there are going to want to deal with dresses and underpinnings, must less the Mrs. Doubtfire bodystockings involved there! You have nothing to fear in this area but fear itself! Oratorio might get a bit scary for you, however. There's some safety for you there, tho. I bet there wouldn't hardly be a C-T alive who'd want to sing the "Queen" in "Elijah"!! The "Angel" would certainly work. David Daniels would do a stunning job with that part and even my Mom thinks Andreas Scholl looks like a cherub... Again, a dear, dear (very heterosexual) mezzo friend finally had a opportunity to sing "Dalila"! The tenor was gay and had halitosis so bad that he nearly burnt the hair out of her nose! There will always be plenty of repertoire out there! Do try to listen to David Daniels at www.danielssings.com You'll probably end up liking Counter-Tenors after all! Ed
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