by Daniel Hathaway
Countertenors lead interesting and varied professional lives that are reflected in the wide range of roles they sing.
Take the example of Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, who will make his Apollo’s Fire debut this weekend in a pair of Johann Sebastian Bach’s rarely performed Easter works.
Cohen, who graduated from Princeton in 2015, will come to Cleveland immediately after returning to his alma mater to sing the role of the Angel in Edward Elgar’s mystical Roman Catholic oratorio The Dream of Gerontius.
And with Apollo’s Fire, the countertenor, who grew up in a Jewish household, sang in synagogue, and studied cantorial music, will sing the allegorical role of Fear (Furcht) in Bach’s Cantata 66, then take on the persona of Mary Magdalene in the composer’s Easter Oratorio — two Pietist Lutheran works.
“My two alter egos,” Cohen quipped in a recent telephone interview. [Read more…]