Top 6 - Countertenors

I've missed out on a few events in London already this year.

It wasn't clear that Seamus Heaney would be reading at the T.S. Eliot Prize in January. I didn't realize how much I would have wanted to see David Harsent with Paterson and Shapcott at LRB in February and now I find Philippe Jaroussky (pictured) was at the Wigmore Hall yesterday. Not cheap but would have been worth the trip.

So, as consolation, I've ordered a couple of his CD's , including Opium, which includes this, that we've seen before here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNWKnXgrroA He is allegedly in big trouble with purists who think he should stay with the Baroque repertoire but I'm glad he didn't.

He is challenging James Bowman for the position of my favourite singer, who filled the acoustics of Portsmouth Cathedral a couple of years ago and owes his position to the recording, with Michael Chance, of Couperin's Lecons de Tenebres.

Dominique Visse, as part of Ensemble Clement Jannequin, was perhaps my first live experience of countertenor singing, over twenty years ago, and so must be answerable for this unhealthy obsession.

Andreas Scholl is another certainty for the list, whose album of Arias for Handel's castrato, Senesino, pays tribute to one of the original stars of the genre who made a sacrifice that few would want to consider nowadays,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cxk4GbVqgw

Sublime, obviously.

Never mind, I'll put in for a ticket for Handel's opera Rinaldo at the Proms. Perhaps that will be compensation.