A VOICE HELD IN HIGH ESTEEM

Countertenor maestro is one of the few male performers with a command of soprano style delivery, Chen Nan reports.

Singer Liu Shen enjoys the high life. He certainly relishes hitting the high notes and his ability makes him a rarity as a member of a small group of professionals — a countertenor.

As one of the most in-demand countertenors worldwide, Liu is working on his latest project — the role of a prosecutor, which was especially written for his voice, in the opera Cumming & Goerings written by London-based Chinese composer Li Zhenyan and directed by Sophie Daneman.

As part of a triple bill of operatic works, Cummings & Goerings will have its world premiere on Sept 7 during London’s Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival 2022. This is Britain’s largest festival of new opera productions and it provides opportunities for artists to develop.

“I am very excited about this opera and the role,’’ says Liu.

“I always love singing in original and contemporary works, which is very different from performing classical operatic repertories.’’

Liu was once coached by Grammy Award winner Michael Chance, a world renowned countertenor at The Royal Academy of Music in London.

“He is a phenomenon,” Chance says. “Steeped in the language and culture of classical music, and clearly gifted, his youthfulness belies a surprising sophistication and an understanding of a wide range of vocal repertoire.”

A countertenor is a male singer who can sing as high as a soprano or mezzosoprano. One of the two questions that Liu is often asked is “do you sing female parts?” and “how high do you go?” When people hear falsetto or countertenor, they assume it is from a female singer.

Liu says that there is always a misconception that it is imitating a female voice.

Countertenor, or high tenor, requires special skills and techniques to sing a work composed specifically for this voice, in order to fully display the unique range and expressive power of this special tone. As the highest-pitched voice of a male vocalist, its timbre is unique, a mix of a true voice and a falsetto voice.

“Generally speaking, a countertenor’s core range overlaps with mezzo-soprano and alto, but I am closer to soprano,” says Liu, who has performed many dazzling coloratura and virtuoso pieces for castrati from the Baroque period, some spanning three octaves.

“Of course, modern composers have also written many works for the countertenor. Therefore, a repertoire of countertenor is very wide and expressive,” he adds.

With his unique vocal range and technique, Liu can perform a diverse and a wide range of repertories such as Baroque, classical, impressionism and contemporary musical works, which are traditionally performed by female vocalists.

In 2017, a concert was held in Beijing Concert Hall to mark the 89th birthday of the famed Chinese coloratura soprano Sun Jiaxin. Liu performed a song titled California Shoreline for vocalist, harp and strings, specially written for him by Dong Kui, a female Chinese-American composer. The audience was astonished by his solid coloratura singing techniques.

In 2020, Liu returned to China with a hectic schedule. He performed during the closing concert of the Beijing Music Festival, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the China Philharmonic Orchestra.

As the only vocalist in the concert, Liu performed the song, Das Himmlische Leben (Heavenly Life), which is usually sung by a solo soprano in the fourth and last movement of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4.

As a child, Liu had his first experience with opera at the age of 4, when his mother took him to La Traviata, the three-act opera by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi.

His mother, worried that her son would be noisy during the performance, told him: “You can fall asleep, but be quiet.”

Sitting in the Century Theater in Beijing, Liu, to his mother’s surprise, was soon captivated by the opera, which featured soprano Zhang Liping in the leading role.

“I was totally drawn into the opera and I felt its power, even though I was just a child,” recalls Liu, who, after he went home, watched different versions of the opera. He would imitate the arias sung by the sopranos. Those were the first steps on his opera path.

As a child, he had no idea about falsetto or countertenor, though he started to perform onstage at age 5. He listened to a lot of opera arias and sang in a high voice naturally.

He is a phenomenon. Steeped in the language and culture of classical music, and clearly gifted, his youthfulness belies a surprising sophistication and an understanding of a wide range of vocal repertoire.”

Michael Chance, Grammy Award winner

At age 7, he made his stage debut at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, performing one of Mozart’s most famous arias for the Queen of the Night from the opera The Magic Flute.

At age 10, he gave his first solo recital in Beijing, performing 14 arias from classic operas, mostly for sopranos.

From 2007 to 2015, Liu sang as a soloist in a children’s choir founded by veteran music educator Yang Hongnian. At the age of 15, he went to study in the Juilliard School’s pre-college program in New York.

His research about opera and baroque music inspired him to expand his vision into directing. He planned to direct a version of the opera, Dido and Aeneas, by Henry Purcell, an English composer during the middle Baroque period, for children in Beijing. It was unfortunately postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.