Tenor Voice: A Brief Introduction

Throughout the years the tenor voice has seen many incarnations. From the Castrati, to the Counter Tenor, Lyric Tenor, Dramatic Tenor and the drawing room tenor. The latter, as I see it, is slightly different to the others in that it has a more limited range and lighter voice.

The human voice is truly a unique possession. It can help to take us out of our every day lives and make us feel as though we’ve travelled to a different place. Not only this, but it can make us happy, excited, sad: a whole range of emotions which is what makes the voice so powerful.

In an opera where the story is being unfolded before your eyes and ears, you can be in the clouds one moment and on the floor the next. The colour of the music underlying the voice takes whatever emotional crutch you thought you had in place, and pulls it firmly out from underneath you.

The tenor voice it has to be said is the most popular and has always had an adoring and fanatical fan base for the said tenor to hold in his hands and take them with him to wherever the music leads them too. Throw in dashing good looks, acting ability and charisma and charm and you have a very volatile and dangerous mix for the female fraternity to cope with, But they love it, and rightly so (us males just lower our bottom jaw and wish it was us).

There is a huge pool of vocal talent for you to get into once you start looking, from Giovanni Battista Rubini to Rolando Villazon and more. I will warn you now, though, that once you start listening, you’ll quickly begin looking for more people, comparing the way they sing – it can get very addictive! And there are hundreds of singers for you to get into.

I share this same fascination and curiosity of the tenor voice, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing! There are plenty of fantastic sounds and videos around if you can’t manage to see them live. I recommend you take a look – you’ll never forget that wonderful experience.

I’ve truly enjoyed listening to tenors throughout the years, and would love to do justice to as many as I can in time. The project will take a long time and will be constantly growing, but will be extremely rewarding and pleasurable. Please join me at http://www.tenorvoice.net . I’m creating a Facebook page so we can talk tenor, please go to http://www.facebook.com: the page id to join is Tenor Voice.