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First of a New Kind. Jenny Johnson is Wolfson's star pupil, the first with a quality fit for critics. After showing documents to prove that she has no structural abnormality in her voice mechanism, she sings the high notes of a coloratura selection, then switches to her male tenor voice for Ridi, Pagliaccio without apparent strain. Says Wolfson: "The famous larynx of gold of great singers is just a legend. Everyone possesses one." In Wolfson's dream Jenny and her co-pupils will be the first with a new kind of voice; it may have to be called an omnitone.
Having spent an hour a day for the past five years at her voice training, Jenny is perfectly willing to move on slowly. Her biggest problem now is to find music to display her voice in public, for most composers have long helped to keep the corset strings tight by writing music to fit the man-imposed limitation on man's voice. Mozart composed killing coloratura arias for his high-singing sisters-in-law, Josepha and Aloysia Weber; Giuseppe Colla supplied music for his wife-to-be, Agujari; Moises Vivanco supplies it .for his wife Yma Sumac. Jennifer Johnson is now looking for someone to write music for Jennifer Johnson.
* It has been 300 years since Pope Benedict XIV7 forbade the practice of assuring by surgery a steady supply of soprano voices.
† Normal effective singing range is roughly two octaves, more with voice training. Manhattan-born Soprano Maria Meneghini Callas has three octaves, up to F sharp above the staff. The great Caruso had a C -only an octave and four notes lower than Callas' high note, a bottom C down in the bass range, three octaves lower.