Wednesday, July 30, 2008

"A rather fruity maiden aunt"...

Wow. Not at all sure what to make of this! Unrepentantly stolen from Neatorama...



According to Robert Dawson Scott in "The man with the 300-year-old voice":

[Maniaci] does not sing falsetto, nor does he have a baritone register, as counter-tenors do. On the other hand, he is whole and male (he obviously shaves; he assures me he is fertile). It is just that some quirk in his development led to all the appurtenances of puberty appearing except one – his larynx did not grow along with the rest of him. As a consequence, his voice never broke.
. . .
He may be the only man on the planet who can sing [the role of Atis in Reinhart Keiser's 1711 opera The Fortunes of King Croesus] at pitch, which goes up to a B natural, two octaves above middle C.

Maniaci’s speaking voice is light and high, but, because he is an adult with a stocky frame, it is oddly resonant, like a rather fruity maiden aunt. His singing voice probably comes close to those castrati voices of long ago – although with only one antique recording available we can only really guess.

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