人已去看歌剧than a few years can remember a time when countertenors were thin on the ground. Male singers with a high, strongly developed falsetto range were considered an asset, or even a necessity, for Baroque opera, where they took on roles originally written for castrati. There was a small number of artists who made a specialty of this repertoire, but it was a niche undertaking.
但是，现在，反对者无处不在。更重要的是，他们已经成为歌剧戏剧性的偶像，这种明星地位通常为男高音保留。
Look at Jakub Józef Orliński, the Polish virtuoso whose伯克利独奏会in March offered a memorable display of vibrantly physical musicality. Or the British countertenor Iestyn Davies, who takes the title role in Handel’s “Radamisto” with San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale on April 20-24.
Then there’s安东尼·罗斯·科斯坦佐（Anthony Roth Costanzo）, who supplements his busy performance schedule with a tireless second career as a producer and theatrical innovator. And coming up on the outside is San Francisco’s ownAryeh Nussbaum Cohen，他于2016年加入了Merola Opera计划（旧金山歌剧院训练局的第一阶段），并在三年后在战争纪念歌剧院的主要阶段首次亮相。
我认为，这些艺术家和像他们这样的其他人所代表的崛起是对反对者在当代歌剧世界中所扮演的角色的批发重新评估的开始。他们曾经是很重要的人，以便我们可以听到汉德尔，维瓦尔第和斯卡拉蒂的18世纪舞台著作，而不必完全依靠裤子里的毛索斯式陶醉。现在，他们正在摆脱自己的音乐领域。
这怎么发生的？作曲家正如他们经常这样做的那样。
关于现代反对者的职业，最引人注目的事情之一是，它不再如此坚定地关注巴洛克曲目。这些艺术家在Verdi，Wagner或Puccini的标准浪漫作品中仍然没有任何地方，也许永远不会，但是当代音乐正在欣赏懈怠。
Just to stick with the four singers cited above, Orliński was a major figure in the Metropolitan Opera production马修·奥科因的发光“ Eurydice，”representing the artistic inner life of the musician Orpheus. “The Exterminating Angel,” Thomas Adès’ magnificent 2016 opera based on the Luis Buñuel film classic, includes a role written expressly for Davies.
Philip Glass’ opera “Akhnaten” dates back to 1983, but it took Costanzo’s vivid and illuminating presence in the title role — in a series of productions in London, Los Angeles and New York through the 2010s — to return the piece to the central place in the repertoire that it deserves. And when Cohen makes his Metropolitan Opera debut in May, it will be together with fellow countertenor Christopher Lowrey, playing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in “Hamlet” (2017) by the Australian composer Brett Dean.
What’s happened, in other words, is that composers have embraced the unique sonority of the countertenor voice — its combination of ethereal clarity and vibrant physicality, its ability to stand a little outside the traditional male-female binary that underlies most of the operatic repertoire — and recognized it as a key resource for creating new musical and dramatic worlds.
这不是第一次发生。通常认为，与英国歌手阿尔弗雷德·戴尔勒（Alfred Deller）的现代思想通常是在20世纪中叶开始的。他的职业生涯主要致力于文艺复兴时期和巴洛克式的音乐。
但是戴尔的歌声引起了作曲家本杰明·布里顿（Benjamin Britten）的注意，他的1960年歌剧《仲夏夜之梦》包括一个反演奏者角色 - 奥伯隆（Oberon），是伟大的童话之王 - 为戴尔（Deller）创作。作为历史悠久的旁注，这部歌剧在一年后在旧金山歌剧院举行了美国首映，这是总干事库尔特·赫伯特·阿德勒（Kurt Herbert Adler）带给该国的无数新作品之一。戴尔（Deller）的伟大同事和继任者罗素·奥伯林（Russell Oberlin）出任奥伯隆（Oberon）。
For decades, though, Oberon was one of only a handful of new roles available to countertenors who wished to branch out stylistically. Britten wrote for a countertenor again in his final opera, “Death in Venice” (1973); there were opportunities in stage works by such composers as Krzysztof Penderecki, Judith Weir and Hans Werner Henze.
But it wasn’t until the current century that the presence of the countertenor became as mainstream as it is now. As with so many artistic advances, this has been a collaborative, iterative process — great artists show composers what is possible, composers provide more demanding and varied opportunities for artists, and so on, repeatedly, back and forth.
我们在观众中是受益者。
“Radamisto”:Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 20; 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, April 22-23; 2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 24. $15-$120. Bing Concert Hall, 327 Lasuen St., Stanford. 415-295-1900.www.philharmonia.org