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A castrato (Italian; pl.: castrati) is a male singer who underwent castration before puberty in order to retain singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto. The voice can also occur in one who, due to an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity .
A countertenor (also contra tenor) is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of the female contralto or mezzo-soprano voice types, generally extending from around G 3 to D 5 or E 5, [1] although a sopranist (a specific kind of countertenor) may match the soprano's range of around C 4 to C 6. [2]
It is a type of tenor voice with a compass not much wider than that of the coeval baritenor, but able to sustain far higher tessiture.It means that the basic range remained substantially the classic one, from C 3 to C 5: only the best baritenors, however, were able to reach up to such heights and used to pass anyway to the falsettone (or strengthened falsetto) register [2] about G 4; for ...
Countertenor voices span a broad range, covering C4 to C6 (some as high as F6) to a range just above tenor covering D3 to about D5. [citation needed] Countertenor subtypes: Countertenors are often broken down into three subcategories: sopranist or "male soprano", the haute-contre, and the castrato.
Michael Maniaci (born May 3, 1976) is an American opera singer. Possessing a male soprano voice, Maniaci is noted for his claim to be able to sing into the upper soprano range without resorting to falsetto, an otherwise common phonation for men who sing in high registers, such as countertenors.
In June 2005 Clapton became a Doctor of Liberal Arts of the Liszt Ferenc Music University. In 2006 he presented the documentary Castrato for BBC Four television, and curated the exhibition Handel and the Castrati at the Handel House Museum, London. [4] His second book, Budapest, City of Music, was published in March 2009. [5]
The musical term alto, meaning "high" in Italian (Latin: altus), historically refers to the contrapuntal part higher than the tenor and its associated vocal range.In four-part voice leading alto is the second-highest part, sung in choruses by either low women's or high men's voices.
To answer your question, a countertenor is neither a vocal range or genre identification but a voice type. The term countertenor is a classical music term and really shouldn't be used elsewhere as there are certain assumptions inherent in the terms use and definition that would make it falsely translated to other genres.