What is a countertenor? Hong Kong singer on how men hit high notes like a female soprano

“It’s not that a countertenor is rare, but that the singing style is rarely followed,” says Ding.

Consider a falsetto, he says, of the voice used by male singers — particularly tenors — to sing notes above their normal range. Everyone, he says, is capable of hitting high notes, but some choose not to.

“If you see a mouse running across the floor, you might let out a high-pitched scream,” says Ding, 25.

Ding, who holds a master’s degree in musicology from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Britain, and a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Hong Kong, also enjoys how countertenors challenge audiences’ — and society’s — expectations.

People often associate pitch with gender, he says. Many who hear a countertenor might assume they are hearing a woman.

“People expect women to have high voices and men to have low voices – this happens often in our daily lives,” he says. “It’s not bad that a man can sing or speak in a high voice, or a woman in a low voice; people just don’t expect it.”

There are many examples of male artists who have built successful careers by adopting falsetto – and not just in opera.

In the 1960s and 1970s, British pop trio the Bee Gees used falsetto in many of their songs, with “Staying Alive” being a prime example. Even Bruce Dickinson, lead singer of 1980s metal rockers Iron Maiden, hit a few high notes.

The golden age of the countertenor, Ding says, was in the 15th and 16th centuries, when women were banned from performing on stage, paving the way for men to play roles that were normally reserved for women.

But maintaining a high tone came at a high — and painful — price.

To preserve the pure, angelic voices of the prepubescent choir boys, they underwent castration—the removal of their testicles, usually without anesthesia. Known as castrati, they were the rock stars of their day.

According to a study, “Castrati Singers: Surgery for Religion,” published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the training procedure to become a castrato singer was intense, lasting up to 10 years, with boys typically castrated before the age of nine.

When they grew up, they had feminine characteristics, such as a smooth, hairless body, breasts and a childlike penis, the text says.

The Italian Carlo Broschi, born in 1705 and better known by his stage name Farinelli, is considered one of the greatest singers in the history of opera. He was a product of this unnatural practice, which ended in 1878 when, as head of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIII forbade the church from hiring castrati.

Nowadays, singers, with the help of vocal training, can naturally raise their normal voice by manipulating the muscles of the larynx and the position of the vocal cords.

A countertenor’s repertoire encompasses a wide range of baroque and early music, including works by composers such as Handel, Vivaldi and Monteverdi, Ding says.

“In Chinese opera, we have a call Tale of the White Snakewhere a green snake, companion of the white snake, is played by a countertenor.”

There is also a growing number of contemporary pieces written for voice. Ding cites Flight, an opera by British playwright April de Angelis.