Allowing itself a new fragility, Blonde Redhead put the piping soprano of Kazu Makino and the high tenor of Amedeo Pace more clearly in the foreground.
The new songs, like the title track, "Thank You Too," "I'm Amazed" and "Aluminum Park," give Jim James plenty of opportunities to show off that haunting high tenor of his, and taut riffs drawn from classic R&B.
It wasn't the kind of kid sound that Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers would popularize a couple of years later, but it was different even from the familiar high tenors of singers like Maithe Marshall and Joe Van Loan of the Ravens.
Sam Moore, of Sam and Dave, unleashed his high tenor for "Hold On, I'm Comin' " and "Soul Man".
In the later version Gluck extended his score to full-evening length, adding extra ballet music, and most significantly of all rewrote the role of Orpheus for a high tenor instead of the castrato of the original, providing him with a florid aria to end the first act that is very different from the much simpler, more expressively direct numbers of the original around it.
Andrey Popov, singing the high tenor role of the Police Inspector, was also strong.
Orphée, however, is for haute-contre, the rare, high tenor voice of the kind the Peruvian superstar Juan Diego Flórez possesses.
Andrei Popov, in his Met debut, had fun with the high tenor role of the sneering Police Inspector, singing with piercing, nasal comic intensity.
The soulful, high tenor voice of the singer and guitarist Dr G Yunupingu, who has died aged 46, brought him international celebrity, even though he mostly sang in the Australian Aboriginal languages of Gumatj, Galpu and Djambarrpuynu.
His sermon was on how to influence people, and in explaining how not to do it he gave a funny imitation, in his high tenor voice, of a guy on a soapbox telling everyone they were going to Hell.
Ricky Skaggs's fingers fly over just about anything with frets, especially the mandolin; he's no slouch on the fiddle, either, and he has the high tenor voice of a singer steeped in bluegrass.
