A female ‘male alto’ The program’s second vocal item introduced a major addition to Tempesta’s musical resources. The soloist, Jennifer Lane, is an alto with a voice that can best be described as a “female male alto. As we all know, the alto parts in Baroque works were sung by castrati. Nowadays, they’re usually sung by mezzo-sopranos. The small number of men who possess natural male altos always steal the show when they show up on a Baroque program. Their voices combine the color of the female alto with the extra power and resonance created by the male chest. Lane possesses the extra range and the distinctive timbre of the male alto. She isn’t quite as powerful, but that’s an irrelevant consideration in a chamber concert presented in a small space. Her text was a passage from St. Augustine — “O Thou Who Givest All Good Gifts” — set by a composer, Johann Rosenmuller, who was born in 1619, the year after the Thirty Years War began. Lane’s voice colored it with one of the rarest and most distinctive sounds of Baroque music.

“O Thou Who Givest All Good Gifts”

Tom Purdom
The Broad Street Review
December 11, 2012