Bejun Mehta

treble boy soprano

Bejun Mehta is the nephew of the conductor Zubin Mehta and became well a known boy soprano in the early eighties. I think his album was recorded in 1982. He has a powerful voice and is described by a fan site as 'singing like a woman with balls'. It has to be said that if I did not know it was a boy singing I would think it was a woman.

Bejun's solo career began at the age of nine. "I never liked countertenors very much," says Bejun Mehta, whose brilliant eight-year career as a boy soprano ended in 1983. "I never wanted to be one." But on November 4, 1997, when he read a profile of the much-admired countertenor David Daniels, the story felt oddly familiar. Like Mehta, Daniels had sung as long as he could remember. Like Mehta, he had struggled to remake himself in an accepted "grownup" vocal category. Only when he took flight as a countertenor did his primal connection to music suddenly return. 

"I put down the magazine," Mehta says, "got up out of my chair, took a breath, and made sound." Months later he was singing Handel in downtown Manhattan, a newborn countertenor blowing listeners away with his fluency, power, and emotional abandon. Performances of Handel's Partenope at the New York City Opera in the fall of 1999 brought the news uptown. A European tour has taken him to London and Vienna, where he celebrated his first anniversary as a countertenor. — The Altlantic, Feb 1999 

Bejun's biography at LA Opera

Bejun Mehta says he has had a difficult transition after his voice broke. He writes a chapter in the book 'Musical Prodigies: Perilous Journeys, Remarkable Lives' shown above.

The author explores early family life, first teachers, the importance of peers, and the inevitable struggles for independence and acceptance as an adult musician. For some, the promise of childhood was borne out, the difficult passage through adolescence successfully weathered. For others, fate dealt a different hand. In a fascinating conclusion to the volume, Bejun Mehta offers an insider's view. His is the remarkable story of a celebrated boy soprano who struggled to find his muse again after his voice changed. His insights illuminate many wondrous elements of the prodigy's experience. Parents and families of gifted children in all the arts will welcome these insights into the many wondrous elements of the prodigy's experience more info

Discography

Bejun (1983)
Delos DCD 3019 

1. If God be for us (Handel) 
2. Where e'er you walk (Handel) 
3. So shall the lute and harp awake (Handel) 
4. What though I trace (Handel) 
5. How Beautiful are the feet (Handel) 
6. With thee, the unsheltered Moor I'd tread (Handel) 
7. The Shepherd on the Rock (Schubert) 
8. Ladybug (Brahms) 
9. My sweetheart has rosy lips (Brahms) 
10. Down deep in the valley (Brahms) 
11. A tree is standing (Brahms) 
12. The last rose of summer (Britten)

Available at Delos Music and Abermusic