Every time I watch this movie, the opera scenes really stand out, mainly because I get the impression it's all lip-synced, and badly. There's even that one scene where it appears a man is singing with a woman's voice (and badly lip-synced). Considering how meticulously this movie was made, I have a hard time chalking this up to pure sloppiness on the filmmakers' part. Is there some reason for it? Has anyone else noticed this?
shareThe man singing with a female voice is supposed to be a castrato, they were very popular in the 17th and 18th centuries.
No idea about the operas, tho, didn't seem that fake to me (opera singers typically need to gesticulate a lot to achieve notes/pitches, it's not like they're talking normally).
I don't mean fake as in the acting -- I know that operas are often done melodramatically. I mean that with both scenes, it looks really really obvious that the person mouthing the words is not the person singing -- and it looks like the person mouthing the words barely knows what the words are and keeps messing up or missing their timing.
share
In the recital scene with the man singing "with the woman's voice", this is a countertenor singing in falsetto (male soprano) voice. They still have these singers today. Look up David Daniels. In fact he's on Youtube videos. The song in the recital is a Baroque opera aria "Ombra ma fui". In the Baroque period of the 1600's and 1700's, many young males were castrated (their genitalia was basically shrunk or removed) so that their high boyish singing voice, which classifies as being soprano, could be preserved well into adulthood. They were said to be the world's most incredible singers. They had a wide range of both high notes and deep lower notes. They could sing practically anything. These were called CASTRATI and they lived in European royal palaces in Italy, Austria, France, England and other parts of Europe. They sang for the nobility and aristocracy and for kings and queens. They lived quite well, extravagantly even, despite the fact that they sacrificed being men with working penises to do it.
David Daniels is not a castrati. He is a counter tenor who happens to sing in much the same way a castrato sang using a well developed falsetto voice. This is what we are hearing in Dangerous Liasons. At the time of the pre-French Revolution, castrati were still very much a part of aristocratic musical culture. But by this time many female singers (sopranos) were also singing and making a name for themselves in the theater.
Lip-synching is done in most movies containing opera because the actors portraying opera singers on stage are usually just actors and what we hear ia recording of an actual opera singer which is later added into the movie.
No, the singer in the film is not a male countertenor singing falsetto. The singer in the film is Paolo Abel do Nascimento, an endocrinological ("natural") castrato. It is not David Daniels, and it is not an imitation of a castrato voice. It *is* a castrato voice. It is not an actor lip-synching; it is Paolo Abel do Nascimento himself, and if he is lip-synching he's doing it to his own voice. (Also, he probably is lip-synching, because they usually are, because of how sound is recorded on film.)
http://evirated.tripod.com/nascimento/nsbiography.htm
Two seconds with Google brought up this information, btw (that's not directed at you, OP).
I'm new, please be kind!
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