Countertenor (Hardcover)

A lively and revelatory exploration of the history of the countertenor by Anthony Roth Costanzo, the Grammy Award-winning star of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten and “one of opera’s biggest stars” (The New York Times).

The sound of a countertenor―often described as ethereal and otherworldly―is both familiar and foreign. It is a high voice close to what we might expect from a female opera singer. Though we recognize the range from contemporary pop music and cartoons, from Michael Jackson to Mickey Mouse, experiencing its penetrating power unamplified in an opera house can be surprising, elemental, and profoundly moving.

In Countertenor, Anthony Roth Costanzo, one of the world’s leading opera singers, takes us on a journey through his life, his education in art, and the history of his extraordinary voice type. Countertenors, he tells us, have helped define contemporary opera for more than half a century, having inherited a repertoire originally written for castrated men in the baroque period. Part oddity, part divinity, the castrati were surgically altered before puberty. They are key to understanding the development of opera as a form, from its very origins to its expansion in the public sphere. The striking beauty and sheer otherness of the high male voice provide fertile ground for creative invention and innovation, evocatively challenging conventional notions of gender, sexuality, and identity.

With wit, humor, and an irrepressible, irresistible energy, Anthony Roth Costanzo offers fascinating insights into the contours of the countertenor and his own extraordinary artistic career as both an opera singer and a savvy producer and curator. The result is a lively and stirring account of an art form in flux, in constant reinvention, of the excitement of new, boundary-pushing work, and of the development and triumph of a remarkable, uninhibited voice.