Surviving a Night at the Opera

Wexford, is it, and the opera festival, and nothing but grand music and elegant audiences and good humour? Don't be talking, man. Fierce rows go on in the operatic world that most people would be only dimly aware of. It turns out now for example that the role of the counter-tenor is still the subject of enormous controversy, and some of us thinking the whole thing had died down.

For background you could do worse than to take a look at Peter Giles's book, The History and Technique of the Counter-Tenor (Scolar Press). As Peter sees it, one of the main problems is that a proper distinction is not always drawn between the male alto (a baritone singing falsetto) and the countertenor, who is really only (only!) a tenor singing in his highest register. But I need hardly tell you that the debate doesn't end there. Oh no. The big complication is the ongoing argument about what exactly "falsetto" means - how strained the sentiment should be, how forced the range, to actually merit the term - and what part is played by pharyngeal resonance in the production of the sound.

By coincidence (simple, not sheer), I was having a couple of pints up in Lamb Doyle's the other night with a few of the old DGOS crowd. By unspoken agreement we rarely if ever discuss opera matters - the issues are far too divisive - so there was an awful silence (I suppose you could say it ensued) when out of the blue someone (I will not name names) coolly suggested the term "falsetto" should be abolished.

Some harsh words were exchanged, but fortunately Michael J had the presence of mind to step in quickly and stop things getting out of hand. Still, the mood was shattered and a few of us have now moved over to Gleesons on Booterstown Avenue until things quieten down. The place attracts a fairly giddy young crowd but the pint is sound. We will wait and see.

A few nights later I had a word with Harry S, the Pharyngeal Resonance man over in the Mater, and an avid opera-goer. Harry is up for the consultancy for a third time but his politics may go against him again (at least the business with the St Bernard blew over, thank God). Anyway, Harry is adamant that the pharynx has little or nothing to do with the production of the true falsetto sound.

Where would it come from then, I asked him - surely not the larynx? No: according to Harry it is all in the diaphragm! That, combined with a certain mysterious unlocatable pressure in the groin area, usually dating from the age of three or thereabouts.

There were huge rows over all of this down at the Festival in Wexford a few years back. I saw married couples seated together at the first night of Mascagni's Iris who wouldn't exchange a word, that's how bad things were.

The atmosphere in White's Hotel afterwards was little better: the larynx crowd was at one end of the bar, the pharynx party at the other, and right in the middle the diaphragm die-hards. Separate barmen, no communication whatsoever between the different parties, and an atmosphere you could cut with a knife.

The truce held for the duration, but a fierce row erupted going back to Dublin on the opera train (a first-class carriage too, with some very well-known people involved). It was all very civilised for a while. Charlie H and myself were chatting about sonata-form overtures and the engaging naivety of certain libretti (with Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix mentioned in the fondest way), while Joe R and the wife (Betty) were arguing politely about the limitations of the buffo role in the opera semi-seria and how much weight should be given to the typical Tchaikowsky string phrase and off-the-beat configuration.

The next thing was, a certain party made a quite uncalled-for remark about poor old Alfred Deller, the great falsetto who is of course dead a long time now. I heard the vulgar word "gender-bender" mentioned and I believe the young person who uttered it - in the course of a rather self-important lecture on the Handelian castrato repertory - had no idea of his anachronism.

It was foolish for anyone to get upset, but in the heat of the moment passions can arise quickly, especially when drink is involved. Fortunately, there was a mature Iarnrod Eireann attendant close at hand who did a good job of calming things down and cleaning the blood off the windows. It was an unfortunate way to end the evening all the same and some of the ladies were quite upset.

In my book Fred Deller was the best falsetto there ever was, and I speak as a modernist myself, very happy with the less wraith-like counter-tenors of today such as Mera, Chance, Daniels, Ragin and Asawa Bowman. The old coloratura fairly belts along with these lads and it is hard to beat them for excitement. Still, it is Fred's stuff I always go back to when I am feeling down.

bglacken@irish-times.ie