Guns n' Rosenkavalier. (Coda).(Guns N' Roses)(Brief Article)

At the precise cultural moment when countertenor-crazed operagoers are revisiting the eighteenth century, rock-music fans are reliving a more recent, if no less gilded age, the 1980s. Today's fashionable countertenor and the hardrock frontman so omnipresent on "all-`80s" radio stations these days share a common ancestor: the castrato. With their preternaturally high ranges and blend of vocal and visceral androgyny, both countertenor and rock star excite the ear and arouse the senses. But while rock fans are quick to ride opera's coattails (think of The Who's rock opera, Tommy, or the goat-bleat falsetto of Queen's Freddie Mercury in "Bohemian Rhapsody"), operaphiles are generally loath to explore the province of pop. Still, the more adventurous among us have felt our pulses quicken at the Met and Madison Square Garden at the sight and sound of suggestively costumed manchildren emoting well above the staff. Men in tights, men in Spandex--we pay to hear both.

Pedagogues often apply the term cambiata to adolescent singers. The prototypical `80s "hair band" rocker possesses a voice best described as mature cambiata. Don L. Collins, founder-director of the Cambiata Vocal Institute of America, cites the young Wayne Newton as a famous example of this transitional voice type. Newton's seamless range and girlish yet clarion timbre in chestnuts such as "Danke Schon" highlight the cambiata's essential appeal: a child's stratospheric range with a young adult's burgeoning vocal power. In rare cases, the cambiata voice lingers into adulthood, yielding an ethereal range without traditional chest-passaggio--head breaks. It is a freakish, wondrous anomaly of a voice: bright and lean, pure yet provocative. Thanks in large part to this Peter Pan quality, the mature cambiata has become the voice of choice for youth-obsessed arena rock.

What can a rock singer possibly offer opera-lovers whose idea of heavy metal begins and ends with the Anvil Chorus? For starters, there's the sheer thrill of hearing a grown man hit and sustain in full voice notes that even the highest of high tenors rarely venture, and that countertenors achieve only in head voice. Consider Sebastian Bach, the luxuriantly-tressed lead singer of the band Skid Row. Bach belts out seventeen high Cs, eighteen Ds, three Es and one top F in the 1989 ballad "I Remember You." Suddenly the nine high Cs in La Fille du Regiment's "Pour mon ame" seem a notch less ...