The Sopranista reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Sopranista

A sopranista is a male singer who uses special vocal techniques to perform music written in the soprano range. These techniques apparently require the use of only a part of the vocal cords, and do not use the falsetto voice.

There is a quite large body of music written for male soprano, though this was written when it was common to use the services of a castrato. Sopranistas are very rare, and do not have the power of voice which a castrato would have had.

Present day sopranistas include:

• Simone Bartolini
• Jorge Cano
• Ouatu Florin Cezar
• Aris Christofellis
• Philippe Jaroussky
• Radu Marian
• Javier Medina
• Angelo Menzotti
• Jörg Waschinski

A famous sopranista from earlier times was Giovan Battista Velluti, for whom Rossini wrote the role of Arsace in Aureliano in Palmir.

External Links

• Velluti (in Italian)
• The Male Soprano
• Jörg Waschinski's website

This is the "Sopranista" reference article from the English Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.