Jacek Laszczkowski’s remarkable voice

It’s commonly assumed that counter-tenor is the highest male register, but as those who have seen Lukas Hemleb’s production of Agostino Steffani’s ‘Niobe’ at Covent Garden will attest, there’s a voice still higher – the male soprano. And this wacky show points up the differences between these registers – and between varieties of counter-tenor – in a fascinating way.

Tim Mead’s counter-tenor tone is graceful in the now-conventional manner; Iestyn Davies – whom I recently profiled in the Independent on Sunday – has a more unusual timbre, very clean and firm: this pair play off each other nicely.

But when Jacek Laszczkowski opens his mouth, we enter a radically different vocal world. My initial reaction was negative: there was a breathy ‘boil’ in his sound, and when his voice reached the bottom of his register it was flecked with his chest voice, with tenor. But as the evening progressed and his arias soared higher, I was forced to reconsider. And at the point when his character reached its apotheosis – raising protective walls round Thebes through the power of his singing – I had to admit that his stratospheric sound had a curious kind of splendour.

His story, told between rehearsals, springs other surprises. He always sang very high, he says, and when he was nine could leave the piccolo way behind: no recording was made to prove this, but he claims to have been able to sing the Queen of the Night a whole octave higher than as Mozart wrote it. He lost an octave and a half when his voice broke at fourteen, but he got a good tenor voice in compensation: while studying at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy in Warsaw, he sang the role of Ernesto in Donizetti’s ‘Don Pasquale’ – and tenor doesn’t come more kosher than that. ‘My soprano may now technically be artificial,’ he says, ‘as I don’t talk in that register. But it’s still entirely natural to me. I never stopped singing it – and I never studied it, not even one lesson.’ His range goes up to high D, and he reaches C# in ‘Niobe’.

‘I feel very comfortable up there. On the whole, my role in “Niobe” is a bit too low for me.’ Hence his flecks of tenor at the bottom.   But here’s the main surprise: after singing tenor professionally for twenty years – and winning competitions with that voice – he’s now going to capitalise on it. ‘I am now 44, and this is the last possible moment for me to start singing the heavy Verdian roles.’ He’s sung Otello more than once, and his forthcoming diary has more tenor engagements than soprano ones. If his tenor career goes well, ‘Niobe’ could be his swansong as a soprano. He loves singing at Covent Garden, and wants to come back – but as a tenor. When Radio 3 broadcasts its recording of ‘Niobe’ on October 23, that may be the last we will hear of this strange vocal phenomenon. Thereafter it will be on YouTube or whatever Polish Cds can be found.

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