Chapter 20: Castrato Singers—Masters of the Western Music Stage for Three Centuries

When it came time for the third round of selections, Xi Yin Shen personally handed the microphone to Fang Xing and asked, “Captain Fang Xing, what kind of team member are you looking for this time?”

Fang Xing glanced at the people beside him—each excelled in different areas.

Guo Keda played the guitar and could dance; he’d have no problem being the dance lead in the team.

Shao Yu had solid vocals and excelled at harmonies.

The team structure was taking shape, but something was still missing.

In fact, boy group selections often lacked high-pitched harmony parts. Without female voices, boy groups essentially couldn’t touch the fifth octave high notes when making music. Especially when arranging harmonies, the absence of female parts meant the performance could never reach its full potential.

After considering for a moment, Fang Xing decided, “I need a childlike voice—a male falsetto tenor who can sing up to G5 or even A5.”

If this were Earth, Fang Xing could have just called out the name he wanted—a voice like Zhou Shen’s.

Yes, when Zhou Shen first appeared on the show “Super Vocal,” he introduced himself as a type of male falsetto tenor, but in essence, his was a childlike voice.

What is a childlike voice?

When humans are young, boys and girls have similar vocal cord thickness and length, so their voices are bright, sharp, and clear.

Around twelve or thirteen, boys enter puberty and begin to produce male hormones, developing Adam’s apples and entering a voice change period.

During this time, the male larynx enlarges, and the vocal cords widen and thicken.

In terms of vocal mechanism, children mainly use head voice; after the voice change, it gradually shifts to chest voice.

Thus, after reaching adulthood, a man’s voice is usually deeper and richer than in childhood.

So what is a childlike voice?

To explain, let’s look at the 16th-century European church choirs—also called sacred choirs.

In devout nations, the church is a sacred place. The sacred texts dictated that “women should remain silent in church,” so all female vocal parts in church choirs were sung by boys.

But boys grow up, and after their voices changed, they could no longer sing those parts.

So the church needed to find new boys and start training them from scratch.

There was, however, a more brutal method: castration before puberty.

Without male hormones, these boys never went through voice change and retained their childlike voices, singing in the choir indefinitely.

By the end of the Renaissance, castrato singers emerged and dominated Western music for three centuries.

There’s a joint Italian-Belgian-French film called “Farinelli Castrato,” which won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 1994. It tells the legendary story of a French castrato singer, whose heavenly voice could not be replicated. The singing in the film was created by mixing male, female, and child voices with modern technology.

Of course, all that is history, and such cruelty no longer exists.

Nowadays, some men naturally retain a childlike voice even after puberty—a rare case. Their range is higher than ordinary men’s and can cover female vocal parts.

Zhou Shen is one such example—a voice gifted by the heavens, known professionally as a male falsetto tenor.

In the beginning, when Zhou Shen covered “The Whale Incarnate,” his voice sounded almost feminine, lacking texture. But instead of idling away in show business, he studied at a prestigious conservatory in a northern country. With professional training, his voice gained richness and versatility. By the time he competed on “Singer,” he had so refined his vocal transitions that the average listener couldn’t even detect a switch between registers.

Fang Xing wanted to find a similar childlike voice, to perfect the group’s harmonies.

…

When Xi Yin Shen heard Fang Xing say he wanted someone who could sing up to G5 or even A5, her eyes widened. She flipped her hair playfully and joked, “Captain Fang Xing, are you after me? After all, here, I’m probably the only one who can hit A5.”

A5 is an absurdly high note for a male singer. Aside from outliers like Vitas or Zhou Shen, no ordinary man could reach it.

Remember, Luciano Pavarotti, one of the world’s three great tenors, sang High C—C5.

(The fifth octave notes are C5, D5, E5, F5, G5, A5, B5—so A5 is five notes above C5.)

The fifth octave isn’t a battlefield for male voices, but for female ones. Even for women, A5 is challenging—let alone for men.

That’s why Xi Yin Shen made her joke.

Fang Xing played along, “As long as the director doesn’t object, I’d love to have you.”

Xi Yin Shen put on a look of regret. “Honestly, I’d like to work with you too, Captain Fang Xing. The prelude of ‘Nocturne’ already floored me. But the rules won’t allow it.”

Fang Xing turned to the trainees below, searching for the voice he’d heard in the previous days. “It was either the day before yesterday or the day before that. Early in the morning, I heard someone warming up in the corridor—they went all the way up to A5. I even greeted him. Now, I’d like to ask if he’d be willing to join my team?”

Fang Xing looked around, but couldn’t spot the person. He looked more carefully, then finally pointed to someone buried at the very back of the crowd. “That’s Lu Ming.”

This trainee was rather small, hidden behind the others, easy to miss at first glance.

Lu Ming slowly stood up, pointed to his nose, and asked, “You mean me?”

“You can sing up to A5, right?” Fang Xing asked directly.

Lu Ming waved his hands quickly, “No, that’s too high, too sharp. That day I was just warming up, not really singing.”

“That doesn’t matter. I just want to know if you’re willing to join my group.” Fang Xing had heard him run the A5 scale while warming up, and the vocal quality was decent.

“Of… of course.”

Lu Ming was a bit dazed—he was from Class D, generally considered likely to be eliminated in the second round. Right now, all the team captains were fighting over Class B trainees; no one expected Class D to be picked.

But Fang Xing didn’t follow the usual script. He hadn’t even finished picking from Class B and went straight for someone in Class D.

Yet that wasn’t even Fang Xing’s most unconventional move. What he did next was even more unexpected.

After selecting Lu Ming, Fang Xing announced, “Alright, my team is complete.”

“Wha… what?”

Everyone on site was stunned. Even the production team was bewildered this time.