The pitch of his voice, coupled with his refined performance skills, has made Anthony Roth Costanzo a rising star in opera. Watch video
ANTHONY ROTH COSTANZO is an opera singer with quite an unusual voice. He is a countertenor -- a male singing voice with a range equivalent to a female contralto or mezzo-soprano. The pitch of his voice, coupled with his refined performance skills, has made him a rising star in opera. Since graduating from Princeton, the 34-year-old's packed performance schedule has included stops at the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Opera and the English National Opera.
1 | How did your relationship with singing begin?
As a kid, I was taking piano lessons and I was not terribly good at reading the music. My teacher suggested that I sing the notes, instead of play them, as a way of connecting more directly with them. That led to me really enjoying singing when I was about 8 years old. I started musical theater and doing shows wherever I could in North Carolina, which is where I was born. By the time I was 11, I gave it a shot in New York and wound up doing shows on Broadway until I was 13. At that point, someone offered me a chance to be in an opera. I wound up loving it. That was the beginning of my career as an opera singer.
2 | Can you describe what a countertenor is for those of us with a less-refined ear?
Technically, all we're doing is singing falsetto. At some level, we are doing something everyone can do. It does feel and sound extremely rarified. For people who have never heard it before -- and I love this -- it has a sort of novelty about it that is very exciting. I think that quickly turns into an engagement with the material itself. That's what I love about being a countertenor; I can sing for people who don't know anything about opera and there is something shocking about it for them, but it allows them to pay attention in a way they might not if it were, say, an operatic sound they've heard before. Essentially, I have learned to sing in a more resonant and reinforced way in that falsetto range. Falsetto translated from the Italian means "false little voice." That's a bit of a misnomer because there is nothing false about it. All you're doing is using a different set of muscles and techniques to bring your vocal chords together in a particular way that allows them to go higher. People across history have revised this singing in different ways, but most recently, people from Michael Jackson to Prince to the Bee Gees were all singing often in falsetto and it has become part of popular culture. When Justin Timberlake does it, people find it very exciting.
3 | Is there something different physiologically that happens to your vocal chords?
Men, singing in a head voice, which is falsetto, we have to stretch our vocal chords a little more. It doesn't actually have to happen by lengthening them, but it happens by stretching a smaller piece of them to make the pitch higher. There is a way of phonating physiologically, which is slightly different than you do as a countertenor. It's done in its healthiest way the same way every other singer works, which is with the control of breath and with the imagination. By that, I mean you would, say -- when you sing a particular high note -- imagine that a flower is blooming. You train your muscles to react to that image in a particular way and it becomes a kind of shorthand when you're onstage.
4 | Are you amused by the way people react when they hear you sing?
It reinforces the power of the art form, both of music and classical music, and also its potential for relevance in today's world. I often go meet with school kids in the Bronx and speak to them about opera and sing for them. I don't explain what the words mean, the story is, the historical context. I really just give one key, which is the emotional key. What are we doing with this music? We are trying to express an emotion.
5 | Opera is tradition-steeped. Is it in need of updating?
We have to preserve that tradition, which has been honed over 400 years. At the same time, the discussion right now is how to infuse that with a new energy. A lot of people get scared, (believing) that by adding things from technology to even just a creative take -- a 1940s take on a 1740s tale -- that we might somehow disrupt that tradition. In my experience, the solution is to absolutely be able to honor those traditions both in terms of the technique and the history, and the musicology of the opera, but we have to think even more creatively and bring in other elements that augment that and bring it out. Being interdisciplinary -- and bringing different art forms in -- allows us to engage new audiences and gives us the most tools possible to be creative with an art form that is, at its core, born of tradition.
NEXT MONTH: Johannes Haushofer, assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University
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