A very high type of tenor voice, ideally produced naturally rather than by means of falsetto. Such voices are used in much early music, and to replace castrati in modern revivals of seventeenth and eighteenth century opera. Ranges vary from individual to individual, as does the quality (in a technical sense) of the sound. In the church choral tradition, for example, countertenors are usually called male altos, and sing a contralto or alto line. Some argue that this is a completely different type of voice altogether.
Several contemporary composers have adopted the counter-tenor for his unearthly, magical, asexual sound - Benjamin Britten consolidated this fashion by assigning the character of Oberon, in his Midsummer NightΓÇÖs Dream, to counter tenor James Bowman.
