A sopranista is a male singer who uses special vocal techniques to perform music written in the soprano range. These techniques apparently require the use of only of a part of the vocal chords, and do not use the falsetto voice.
There is a quite large body of music written for male soprano, though this was written when it was common to use the services of a castrato. Sopranistas are very rare, and do not have the power of voice which a castrato would have had.
Present day sopranistas include:
- Simone Bartolini
- Jorge Cano
- Ouatu Florin Cezar
- Aris Christofellis
- Philippe Jaroussky
- Radu Marian
- Javier Medina
- Angelo Menzotti
- Jörg Waschinski