United in Unusual Voice

In the middle of his aria during a rehearsal a few weeks ago, blond-ponytailed countertenor David Walker turned an effortless, spontaneous cartwheel. The pianist didn’t stop playing. The director registered no surprise.

The flashy agility of that cartwheel is in a sense the perfect metaphor for what has come to be known as the Countertenor Revolution, and everyone in opera is getting used to it.

Outside of opera, it’s a little different. “People still say to me, ‘You look like men but sound like women,’ ” said Walker, who sings Nirenus in the Los Angeles Opera production of Handel’s “Julius Caesar,” which opened Friday. “I just say to them, ‘Well, we are men, so, of course, we look like men. And we really don’t sound like women. We have our own voice.’ ”

Alone, Walker could be considered intriguing casting in “Julius Caesar.” But he is joined by two more countertenors, David Daniels in the title role of and Bejun Mehta as Caesar’s Egyptian nemesis, Ptolemy. The three of them are arguably the top countertenors in the world.

“This is the cast I always imagined,” director Francisco Negrin told the full company--indicating not just the men, but also Elizabeth Futral (Cleopatra), Paula Rasmussen (Sextus) and Suzanna Guzman (Cornelia)--when they met for the first day of work in L.A.

He would later elaborate on the countertenor’s contribution: “How many times in your lifetime do you experience the development of a whole new voice type? It’s an enormous transformation. The biggest advance in this type of singing, and it is happening now. The new sound can’t be compared to anything else. And, so, it forces us to listen anew.”

What is that “new” countertenor sound?

The standard definition is a start--countertenors are adult males who reach into the usually female alto and soprano range using a head voice, often a falsetto. It’s a contemporary version of the castrato voice--which is to say, it’s natural, no surgery required. Until recently, however, it has been a truly rare voice, and serious, formal training for it was almost nonexistent. The tonal quality of the few countertenors who sang professionally was generally considered flimsy or hollow.

In the 1960s, however, the voice gained respect with the appearance of Alfred Deller, an Englishman for whom Benjamin Britten wrote the role of Oberon in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The next two generations of countertenors (including Drew Minter, Michael Chance and Jeffrey Gall) advanced the voice type by concentrating on style and ornamentation. But, as Negrin implies, there is something different about the current crop of countertenors represented by Daniels, Mehta and Walker.

All are American, and that is significant. They have found ways to successfully send their highest registers to the farthest seats, as if they were singing from the chest.

“The largest houses are in America,” Negrin points out, “so there’s a practical reason why we are seeing the greatest advances here.”

And they are--simply--talented. The best add muscle to the beauty of tone and agility associated with the soprano voice. They are also vigorously praised as actors, complete performers.

“The countertenor is, finally, no longer a curiosity,” wrote The Times’ Mark Swed, reviewing Mehta in 1999 but taking into account the rest of the revolution as well.

Certainly, Daniels, Mehta and Walker come close to the sound Handel had in mind when he cast the original “Julius Caesar” in 1724 in London. Handel’s best male parts--the heroes and villains--were meant for castrati, whose high but strong voices were a fixture in the Baroque sound palette. Castrati dominated opera until about 1800, when mutilating boys in the name of art was banned--which coincided with the waning popularity of Handel’s operas. The male soprano roles that remained popular in the repertory, such as the many “trouser” roles in Mozart’s operas, went to women, usually mezzo-sopranos.

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It’s only been in the last decade or so, as interest in Baroque opera has exploded, that there has been a renewed appreciation of male singers who sound like women--sort of. This time around, many think the sound is here to stay.

“I’m not a countertenor activist,” says David Daniels, 34.

He may not think of himself that way, but as Opera News pointed out, “There are countertenors A.D. and B.D.: after Daniels and before Daniels.”

“I just concentrate on the music. That’s hard enough,” he says, in response to the notion that his is the voice most responsible for the countertenor vogue. He is sitting in his rented L.A. apartment, where minutes earlier his queen-size bed was moved out to make room for a king--a size perhaps more befitting a Roman emperor.

The truth is, Daniels does think about the big picture. First, he makes the definition clear: “It is a male voice. There are no countertenor women.”

And he has concerns that the voice’s popularity might be its own undoing: “We need to be careful,” he says, “because the voice type is so hot right now that it’s at risk for people thinking that anyone with a gift for falsetto can do it.”

Still, he says, the future looks secure: “There is a generation below me coming up, and there’s lots of new music being written for this voice type. So I think countertenors are definitely here to stay.”

Indeed, last month in San Francisco, John Adams unveiled his new oratorio, “El Nino,” with important solo parts for three countertenors. In 1984, Philip Glass wrote a countertenor role in his third opera, “Akhnaten.” And Hungarian composer Peter Eotvos’ “The Three Sisters” (1998) calls for countertenors in the title roles. It has gained an international audience with the release in 1999 of a Deutsche Grammophon CD.

Daniels’ history with L.A. Opera is itself a testament to the increasing use of his androgynous voice type. “Julius Caesar” marks the fourth time he has worked with the company and his first outing in a leading role. In 1992--the year he started singing countertenor--he covered for Gall in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” here. He never got onstage, but it was his initial opera engagement, and he has had a special place in his heart for L.A. ever since.

He is also attached to “Julius Caesar.” In 1999, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Sextus, and the press declared his performance an operatic breakthrough. A year ago, he tackled the nine-aria-and-one-duet challenge of the lead role, in director Mark Lamos’ production for the Florida Grand Opera in Miami. Now, in Los Angeles, he’s learning a different approach to the role from director Negrin in a 1994 production that comes from Australia. And, having worked previously with Negrin--notably in Handel’s “Rinaldo” last year for New York City Opera--he’s found that not much needs to be said to fix on an interpretation that satisfies them both.

“Francisco loves good singing and he knows good singing, but he’s coming at this opera from an actor’s point of view,” says Daniels. “The singers’ physicality matters to him, as well as our personality onstage.”

Although as Caesar, Daniels has to be imperious, offstage he’s just a regular guy--as his voluminous press clippings repeat again and again. Few opera singers have gotten as much media attention. Details of Daniels’ life--including that the South Carolina-born singer started out as a tenor and only with a psychiatrist’s help “discovered” his countertenor voice; that he is a serious basketball fanatic--have become common knowledge, particularly after profiles on him appeared in the New Yorker and Time. “The next Pavarotti may sound like a woman,” the New Yorker’s subhead said titillatingly.

That level of celebrity makes one wonder if, with three countertenors sharing the same stage in Los Angeles, there isn’t a competition among them.

“Oh, there’s a healthy competition,” Daniels says. “The three of us all sound different. But that’s the great thing about countertenor voices in this generation, because we’re all individual. I rarely do an opera where I don’t have at least one other countertenor. We’re all good colleagues.”

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Bejun Mehta, 32, and Daniels have crossed paths before. They both sing on the recording of “Rinaldo” just released by Decca, featuring Daniels and Cecilia Bartoli in the leads. Mehta’s role in “Rinaldo,” as it is in “Julius Caesar,” is second-tier, but his star is rising.

Mehta has only been a countertenor since late 1998. His experience, however, is more extensive than either Daniels’ or Walker’s. He was a boy soprano from Ann Arbor, Mich., who, in 1982, at the age of 14, made his first solo recording, “Bejun.” After his voice matured, he tried singing professionally as a baritone, but he eventually stopped altogether because, he says, singing baritone left him feeling empty. It was during this off-period that Mehta first encountered Daniels, happening upon the New Yorker feature. It inspired him to explore his own countertenor range. The rest, as they say, is history.

“[Mehta] puts himself forward without reservation; there is something raw and strong in his singing, something eager,” wrote Paul Griffiths in the New York Times of Mehta’s recital debut, when he pinch-hit for an ailing Daniels in 1998. “Then he raged up and down the ladders of sixteenth notes with great force and total command. This was astonishing.”

Mehta’s musical background (his father is conductor Zubin Mehta’s cousin and his mother was a singer) and his intellectual fervor (he graduated magna cum laude from Yale in 1990) make him someone young male vocalists have looked to for operatic instruction. As a teacher, he sees the ongoing impact of the countertenor evolution firsthand.

“The next generation is different from David [Daniels] and me, because we both started trying to be another kind of singer and then we switched,” he said. “The next generation is never going to try to be something else. Those countertenors will bring some quality to their sound that is different and worthy because of never having tried to do something else.”

One lesson he tries to impart, which he learned from quitting and then starting over, is that “the voice mechanism works best when you hold it gently in your hands and let it go.” In other words, expecting things from it and pushing it into places it doesn’t naturally want to be makes for disaster.

His approach matches a current aesthetic in casting opera singers that looks at not just voice quality, but how well they suit the character physically. Short and slight, with dark eyes behind lids that appear half-closed, Mehta seems well-suited to play the young Ptolemy.

“The key to [Ptolemy] is to remember he’s a teenager,” Mehta says, “a spoiled brat teenager. And when people are spoiled and don’t get their way, they pout and sulk and don’t see other avenues they might take. That’s what I am going for.”

The ebullient Walker, 34, is also well-matched to his role. He plays everybody’s friend in “Julius Caesar,” and throughout rehearsals, it seems to be typecasting. At all times in the production, he is surrounded by eight dancers, and he is in almost constant motion.

Like Daniels and Mehta, Walker also initiated his singing career not as a countertenor. He didn’t take his first voice lesson until he was 25. His background is exceptionally varied. He holds an industrial engineering degree; he once managed a $1-million budget for an Episcopal cathedral in his native Florida; and he is trained in gymnastics, ballet and jazz dance. Walker, a former tenor, is known among countertenors as “the buff one” who will try anything physically onstage. His part as written in “Julius Caesar” is minimal (many productions cut the single aria Handel provided in later editions for Nirenus), yet at L.A. Opera, Walker will be in every scene as the master of ceremonies, a cupid-like character responsible for leading the others toward enlightenment.

Walker says he accepted the role precisely because of the challenges of not singing much, yet still being onstage a lot. He viewed it as a test of his ego, having sung lead roles in the past. As Nero in “The Coronation of Poppea” recently in London, he made a completely naked entrance that--along with his voice--knocked audiences off their feet by all reports. He has also sung Ptolemy before, and has been directed by Negrin in Handel’s “Partenope” and “Rinaldo.”

The ego situation is much on his mind. Countertenors, he says, “have been put into the diva world with all the trappings--the press, the politics, the glamour. When David [Daniels] and I did ‘Rinaldo’ in Germany, we were treated like rock stars. Fans sending us things, taking pictures with us--it was crazy.”

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At the first meeting of cast and crew in Los Angeles, Negrin told the “Julius Caesar” company that he was going to take Handel’s opera for what it is, namely, a “didactic morality play” that contained lessons for each of their characters. Mentioning that this was the sixth time his production had gone up, he said he thought of the stage space as a kind of empty slate onto which those lessons would literally be drawn.

“Julius Caesar,” he emphasized, is about “a ruler who learns to be a better ruler because he’s guided by his heart.” And Handel’s message--the one Negrin wanted the company to internalize--is that “love is all that matters--seeking for power is something one has to learn not to need to do.”

Later, all three countertenors spoke about the life lessons they’d gained from singing in general, and from Handel in particular, and Negrin’s interpretation of “Julius Caesar” seemed to resonate. They all indicated that they were better singers and better people if they “got out of their own way”--put their egos out of the picture--and all emphasized that finding their voices was a matter of being guided not by external pressure, but by, in essence, following their hearts.

Negrin sees all kinds of parallels between the opera and life--especially for those on the stage.

“What’s the point of communicating art, if you are not applying it to your own life?” he asks, and then answers his own question: “The whole point of being an artist and communicating metaphysical issues and lessons is to explore them--and feel them somewhere inside you. Life is [about] reality and metaphor.”

It is Walker who most directly applies such ideas to the countertenor revolution. “The life lessons from this experience are making me realize what is truly important,” he says. “Like staying grounded and genuine. Because it’s really easy these days for a countertenor to get sucked into the political end of his career and lose himself.”

Back in the rehearsal hall, Walker’s spontaneous cartwheel will turn out to be its own kind of test of flying high and staying grounded. After the first one--just for fun--the question came up: Should he keep it in the performance? And then: Could he pull it off? He launched another one, this time seriously. When he landed on his feet with breath to spare, the other performers broke into applause.

Countertenor reality and metaphor, in action.

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“Julius Caesar,” Los Angeles Opera, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. Tonight, Tuesday, Friday, and March 4 and 7, 7:30 p.m.; March 10 at noon. $28-$148. (213) 365-3500.