The five numbers are normally sung by a mezzo-soprano, so by a voice of roughly countertenor range.
Critics have praised Mr. Kennedy's powerful, rapid shifts of register and his effortless flights into the countertenor range; fans joke that he should head up a new vocal triad, "The Irish Countertenors".
Hai-Ting Chinn as Fa Mu Lan, Allison Easter as Nana Yaa Asantewa, Miki Yamashita as Sieh King King and Jacqueline Patricia Howell as Ms. Shakur projected determination; Walt Frasier, as the all-purpose colonial villain, reached up to countertenor range with appropriate craven boorishness.
While the musical history lessons are delivered in Spanish (there are supertitles in English), the show's castrato (ably acted and sung in a countertenor range by Javier Medina) fumes at its keyboardist (Edwin Calderón, who riffs a mean harpsichord) while the Paré brothers' slave (delightfully played by Kaveh Parmas) taunts the centaur.
Tenor, highest male vocal range, normally extending approximately from the second B below middle C to the G above; an extremely high voice, extending into the alto range, is usually termed a countertenor.
Countertenors--male singers capable of pushing their voices into the alto range--were sometimes employed to tackle the high range of polyphonic music, but their voices were generally derided as flimsy.
In the violent "Domerò la tua fierezza" ("I will dominate your fury"), he adopted the suggestion of a director at the Rome Opera who asked him to move between his countertenor and baritone ranges as a way of depicting the unhinged psyche of his character, Tolomeo.
His arias demonstrated the expressive range of the countertenor voice, from the bellicose high drama of "Fammi Combattere," from "Orlando," which Mr. Daniels sang with a steely resolve, to the desolation of "Scherza Infida," from "Ariodante," which he animated with a ravishing, silken tone.
Parthenia opened the evening with a "Renaissance Songbook," instrumental and vocal works, mostly English, with Ryland Angel delivering the texts either as countertenor or in his natural voice range.
In addition to an unusually strong and clear countertenor voice, remarkably even throughout its range, Mr. Daniels has a dramatic flair especially well suited to Handel's bursts of vengeance or frenzy.
His grandmother — he calls her Big Mama — encouraged Holiday and his siblings to sing, but, one by one, as they grew up, they stopped, except for Holiday, who went on to become a professional countertenor — a male singer whose vocal range reaches the same high-flying notes typically occupied by female singers — with a thriving operatic career.
