[ANON POST] Transgender Opera Singer

[orange_fell]

My character is a transgender man (which means he was born with a female body, and thus a female singing voice). A lot of the focus of the story is on classical music, and I want to know how an ordinary female contralto voice could be used as a tenor. I know the ranges are very similar, but would he be able to sing a certain way and simply sound

Comments

[silentg_canada]

Someone who had been a contralto as a female would probably not have a tenor range after the transition. The FtM hormones lower one's voice, and the contralto range is already as much as a fifth lower than a tenor, and the timbre is completely different as well

[bopeepsheep]

I've gone from sop to contralto (and back, for complicated reasons!) and the sound of that high C-sharp was different when I was singing as a contralto than it is when I'm singing as a sop. With training I was getting lower and lower (there was quite a bit of debate about where my range should naturally lie, so we were testing either end of it for a long time!) and I believe one can change the quality of the notes to end up sounding like a natural tenor. But I agree with you about the baritone range being more likely.

OP, bear in mind that some women have tenor voices naturally; a contralto may actually be a 'misplaced' tenor anyway! A lot of amateur music ensembles won't have encountered the idea or will only place low-voiced women in the altos, out of embarrassment or confusion or who knows what.

[dinogrrl]

Pretty much what silentg_canada said. A true contralto sound is very distinct from tenor, it's actually more similar to baritone or bass. Most musicians and music aficionados would be able to tell pretty quickly if a contralto is singing a tenor role. I'd recommend spending some time on youtube listening to the various vocal ranges if you haven't already.

[archangelbeth]

Oh, gracious, I do not know if this is with or without hormone therapy, but you might want to look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_James_Adams -- you can probably find YouTube performances under both names, though I don't know if it will help you with opera.

Another thing you may want to look at is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takarazuka_Revue -- again, you can probably find some YouTube selections.

[carmarthen]

The male-role singers in Takarazuka don't sound at all similar to cis male singers imo--there might be something useful about their training, but it's a pretty unique sound (I could maybe see, hmm, some confusion between a teenage boy and the way they *speak* in their roles, but I'm not sure a Japanese person would feel there was similarity).

I suspect in general there's going to be a huge difference between what the average person would notice and what a pro or serious fan would notice. I like to play countertenors for people, and non-opera fans almost invariably think they're women; serious fans and people with training can usually if not always hear distinct differences between countertenors and mezzos.

[lilacsigil]

Yeah, the first time I heard a countertenor I thought the singer was a woman with an unusual voice, but now I can almost always hear a countertenor. I have classical music training but no voice-specific education at all.

[archangelbeth]

I suspect in general there's going to be a huge difference between what the average person would notice and what a pro or serious fan would notice.

Important distinction, that!

[cuddyclothes]

FWIW, I met a speech therapist who works with transgender clients to help change their speech range. I was asking her if she could teach me to speak in a high voice (I have a very deep voice) for more "feminine" characters. There might be speech therapists who also work with singers.

I have a contralto/tenor/sometimes baritone singing voice, depending on how much singing training I get. You should definitely Youtube "countertenors," those are men able to sing like women. They use to create them in ancient times by castrating them.

[carmarthen]

Countertenors sing in a similar range to mezzos, but they do *not* sing like women, and there are pretty major differences in vocal timbre etc. While modern countertenors often sing parts originally written for castrasti, a castrato's voice was *very* different in range and vocal quality. They're not the same thing at all.

(That said, there are at least a few MTF opera singers who I got the impression from the articles were not taking hormones, who sing mezzo parts, presumably using the same techniques as countertenors. Whether the people they work with hear their voices as different in timbre from the average mezzo, I don't know. Can an FTM guy without hormones sing male roles? Sure, if his voice is in the right range. Can he do so without the opera pros around him picking up on his trans status? Trickier question.)

[ladybretagne]

There would absolutely be an audible difference to anyone with a fair amount of knowledge about or exposure to classical vocal music. Women on average are going to have comparatively smaller vocal chords than men, even frequently irrespective of their apparent physical size (physically smaller people do not necessarily have higher voices, for example). The biggest difference is going to be a lack of typical falsetto and a generally "smoother" sound throughout women's vocal range. There's some disagreement about this amongst vocal coaches, but if you listen to a man sing through his range top to bottom, including falsetto, there's going to be a distinct jump most likely at the point where he goes from his "normal" voice to his falsetto. A woman, by contrast, is going to have a much more gradual transition and not have as sharp a delineation between portions of her voice.

The best example I can offer is to listen to the difference a countertenor and a contralto. To start you off, here is Andreas Scholl, a countertenor, singing "Ombra