Male Sopranos
A friend gave me the first season of Glee last week, and I've been watching it here and there. I was very enamored of the gay male character, Kurt, and was sort of stunned by his voice. Wikipedia lists him as a 'male soprano'.
Click to viewI pondered this for a minute, because I was under the impression being a male soprano was a feat only capable with the help of biological quirks. In pursuit of the answer, rummaging through wikipedia and google, I became thoroughly confused by the many divisions of the higher ranges of male and female singers: soprano, alto, and counter-tenor and the differences between the modal and falsetto voices.
I do instruments. The bigger the wind instrument, the lower it can go (and the harder it is to carry while marching. Damn those unpadded baritone saxophone neck straps! Those flutes had it too easy).
Any way, normal, testosterone laden men can sing soprano parts, but only in falsetto (and with a great deal of training, I would think), falsetto being that higher range your voice can achieve when the notes literally seem to be produced in your head instead of your chest. The falsetto voice, apparently, "is more limited than its modal counterpart (chest voice) in both dynamic variation and tone quality". Which makes sense, as you can kind of tell when you're trying to hit those high notes in the shower.
True male sopranos are those who can reach that high octave without shifting to falsetto voice, like female singers can (I certainly can't). And true adult male sopranos, or sopranists, are rare, the most obvious example being the infamous castrato.
Castrati are these mysterious figures to me in history. They had amazing, supposedly angelic voices that caused women to swoon and straight men to question their sexuality. They were the original rock star and opera Divas; poor boys who had their testicles clipped between the ages of eight and twelve. Women were not allowed on stages or in church choirs in much of Europe at the time, so in order to preserve the beautiful high voices of young boys, the boys were mutilated, either forcibly, with parental permission, or by choice. I can't deny the brutality of such an act on a child, just like I can't deny the mystique of a man with an altered sexuality bending towards the middle of feminine and masculine.
The sexual appetite of the Castrati seems to be in contention. According to Anne Rice, in her book Cry to Heaven, male Castrati have a large sexual appetite and are capable of having sex. Certain physiologists might disagree. If your hormonal glands are removed before the onset of puberty (say, eight) you never develop a sexual appetite (and your balls won't drop). Of course, this doesn't mean you wouldn't get into bed with some one in the pursuit of physical intimacy or love. Boys castrated later, around twelve, would have partly developed physically. Maybe. But thanks to Hannah's copy of Bonk by Mary Roach, I know erection, ejaculation, and orgasm for men are all entirely different things, and one can occur without the other. So who knows.
But was the voice of the Castrati really so angelic and heavenly? Or did they just sound like girls? It has been argued that, no, a castrato has a large male chest cavity and child sized vocal chords, so he would sound different from an adult woman. (On a funny side note, Casanova met a Castrato in a tavern once, and was enamored by his voice and feminine physique. Drunk, he assaulted the poor thing, and revealed the Castrato was actually a girl in disguise! She couldn't get a singing gig as a female, you see, and had to resort to drastic measures).
Of course, no one can really claim to know how a Castrato at the height of his career sounded. Castration became illegal long before recording devices were available. There are left over opera parts that can only be sung by this extinguished class of singer, and it's sad and kind of strange. There is one recording of an aged Castrato, Alessandro Moreschi, taken at around 1900, and it's usually touted as not very good. Excuses given by wiki include: it was done when the singer was past his prime (in his 40's), in a much older style (he does this sort of warbling thing...) and he wasn't a very good singer in the first place. I admit that it sort of breaks hard on my ears, and he seems off key several times, but I'll be damned if those aren't extremely high notes.
In modern times, hormonal defficiencies, childhood traumas, and strange happenstance can leave an adult male with the castrato voice. Michael Maniaci, for some unfathomable reason, has undeveloped vocal chords that leave him with the ability to sing male Castrato parts.
A part of me wants to see some form of male castrato singing in a symphonic metal band, breaking apart the current gender roles in the music industry forever more!