HIGH MALE VOICES OF COUNTERTENORS TO SOAR : CORONA DEL MAR’S FESTIVAL TO OFFER NEW SOUNDS

Every spring for the past six years, Burton Karson has turned the upscale beach community of Corona del Mar into a Baroque music venue.

“My original intention was to do something in Corona del Mar because nothing actually happens here of a cultural nature,” said Karson, who founded the community’s Baroque Music Festival in 1981.

“Corona del Mar is a bedroom and a playground,” said Karson, who lives in the enclave at the southwestern edge of Newport Beach.

“It doesn’t have concert venues, galleries, concert rooms. People who live here go away for their culture. . . . That’s why I started it.”

The opening concert of the seventh annual Corona del Mar Baroque Music Festival will be held Sunday at 8 p.m. at St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church, featuring a program of organ concertos by Bach and Handel, plus solo organ works. Robert Bates will be the soloist. Subsequent events through June 14 will take place at the church or the nearby Sherman Library & Gardens.

“There is a heavy emphasis on English music this year,” Karson said. “And, also, for the very first year, we will be using two countertenors (the highest mature male voice).

“That will be a very new sound for many, if not most, of our audience,” Karson said. “They’re going to think it’s very strange. But I hope they will hear that it’s very right. The music was written for countertenors, and so our audience will be hearing it authentically done.

“Usually when people hear such music, if they hear it at all, it is sung by (women) altos. But whereas the music lies low for a woman’s voice, it is very much higher in the male voice, and so it sounds brilliant against the instrumentation.”

Countertenor Dennis Parnell, who will be a featured vocalist at the festival, said he believes there is still a great deal of misunderstanding about the countertenor voice.

“It’s a method of singing, rather than a voice type,” he said. “A countertenor is any male voice who has extended the upper range to be able to sing over instruments. Any male voice can do it. In fact, different voice types do take on singing countertenor, with equal success, I might add.

“It isn’t falsetto singing because falsetto can’t be heard over an orchestra. Countertenors can be heard over a large orchestral force.”

Parnell used pop singers as an analogy to describe the sound.

“You might liken the tone . . . to that of a female pop singer,” he said. “For instance, one does not label Barbra Streisand a ‘soprano,’ although she is a soprano. But the way Streisand sings, not the style, but the kind of tone quality she uses, could theoretically be closely aligned with what the male voice does in that same area of singing.”

Parnell admits that the sound of a high male voice can create difficulties for people.

“Last year, I had a student from San Francisco who had the most incredible male soprano voice I’ve ever encountered in my life,” Parnell said.

“But his father had an identity crisis with his boy singing soprano. He pulled him out of school and sent him to another teacher who promised he could lower the boy’s voice for a musical theater career. So the world has lost a great singer.”

Parnell, who is married and has three children, said the whole area is “muddled up with such misunderstanding. People who sing it, we don’t have any problem.”

Parnell, 44, was born in Los Angeles and began his career as a countertenor in the role of Oberon in Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 1964 as a guest with the UCLA Opera Workshop. He also sings lyric tenor roles such as Rodolfo in Puccini’s “La Boheme” or the title role in Gounod’s “Faust.”

“But I don’t mix the two (voice types),” Parnell said. “They are two different singing techniques, and mixing them makes for very difficult (vocal) problems.”

Singing countertenor is actually “very tiring on the voice,” Parnell said. “That’s the problem. We’re stretching our voice up to the highest range we can sing. And actually, it’s (usually) more singing at a time.

“Floria Tosca (in Puccini’s opera ‘Tosca’), for instance, sings for a total of about 27 minutes in the whole opera. That’s all, and she gets rest. But in Blow’s ‘Ode,’ you have two countertenors singing for 25 minutes without a pause. It’s really tough.”

In addition to concert appearances, Parnell teaches at Cal State Fullerton and California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. Joining him for the second countertenor part in Blow’s “Ode” will be Guy Babusek, a former student of Parnell’s, now studying conducting (and continuing to sing) at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.

Programs and locations for the Baroque Music Festival are as follows:

- Sunday at 8 p.m. at St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church, 3233 Pacific View Drive. Solo works for organ by Buxtehude, Sweelinck, Bach, Guilain and Charpentier; Robert Bates, organist. Also, concertos for organ and orchestra by Bach and Handel. Burton Karson will conduct the Festival Orchestra.

- Wednesday at 8 p.m. at Sherman Library & Gardens, 2647 E. Coast Highway. Songs and duets by Dowland and Purcell. Soprano Su Harmon, countertenor Dennis Parnell and guitarist David Grimes. Also, there will be excerpts from Goldsmith’s “She Stoops to Conquer.” Members of theater and dance departments, Cal State Fullerton, directed by Barbara Covington.

- Friday, June 12, 8 p.m. at Sherman Library & Gardens. Cantatas by Caldara, Vivaldi, Monteclair; John Blow’s “An Ode, On the Death of Mr Henry Purcell.” Soprano Su Harmon, countertenors Guy Babusek and Dennis Parnell, baritone Christopher Lindbloom; Andrew Charlton, recorder; harpsichordist Burton Karson, string quartet.

- Sunday, June 14, at 8 p.m. at St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church. Purcell’s “Come, Ye Sons of Art, Away,” other works. Soprano Jennifer Smith, tenor Gregory Wait, countertenors Parnell and Babusek, baritone Lindbloom, Festival Singers and Orchestra conducted by Karson.