Tonight Emilie and I went with her mother and a friend to St. Prex -- a small lakeside town between Lausanne and Geneva -- for its annual "Classics" festival. The festival consists of various vocal, music and dance performances over a two week period, and we had tickets to see Philippe Jaroussky & Friends, a vocal and musical performance.
Philippe Jaroussky is a reknowned French sopranist countertenor, which effectively means that he sings in a falsetto style equivalent to female voice type such as mezzo soprano (I learned all this after the fact thanks to Wikipedia...). My interpretation during the show was simply that he sounded like he had been kicked in the groin prior to the performance -- albeit in a way that preserved the beauty of his voice.
I also learned that the popularity of sopranist countertenors has an interesting history. When women weren't allowed to sing in the church, the role of female voice types often went to castrati -- men whose prepubescent voices were preserved through castration. After this practice was no longer en vogue, there was a resurgence in interest in such vocal types thus leading to the increased popularity of those who could hit the high notes naturally (Wikipedia again...).
The performance was very good, with various combinations of vocals, piano and cello. Each performer was clearly a virtuoso with his instrument and did a very good job of playing off the others. I think the hardest job of the night went to the poor girl who had to turn the music sheets for the piano player. She by far seemed to be the most nervous and concentrating the hardest.
For the encore, all three performers sat at the same piano and played a very impressive piece. During the performance it seemed like something that they just had improvised, but I'm sure they must have put some time in beforehand practicing it.
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