For the sake of simplicity, I voted No. What we call a countertenor today- a strained, hooty male alto falsettist- is usually to be avoided. I don't know how long this type of singer has existed for, but a CD I have of historical counter tenors has several examples, presumably drawn from the English choral tradition. Hatherley Clarke is among the featured singers, and he sounds fairly similar to the moderns, and certainly no more appealing to my ear:
The once popular Will Oakland also there, and is better- less hooty, clearer diction- and his style is quite unlike what we hear today:
Still, we have to ask what we mean by countertenor: do we necessarily mean a falsettist, or might we include a very high tenor- perhaps corresponding to the historical 'tenore contraltino- who is physically normal and not reliant on falsetto? Gennady Pischaev is an example that springs to mind, and his is a voice I am always glad to listen to. What about very high voiced men who have not undergone a normal puberty and who may or may not use falsetto extensively, e.g. the aforementioned Yoshikazu Mera, and very probably Richard Jose too, who of course sang in a very different style? Mera is interesting- his high notes have an ethereal, Moreschi-like quality, but he probably doesn't sound that much like the great operatic castrati, whose distinctive sound was largely a result of a training regimen that aimed to build power, breath control and ability in florid music, including the composition of ornaments. Without that power (see those amazing barrel chests the castrati had!) Mera is left sounding rather like a woman. A woman's sound is of course aesthetically preferable to that of a falsettist, since the constant use of falsetto produces a displeasing and necessarily constricted tone and greatly limits volume and ability to colour the voice. I would see the countertenor, however we define the term, as a completely legitimate voice type, provided the person in question has a sufficiently high natural range to avoid over reliance on falsetto. Such voices must be incredibly rare, but can be worth the wait. Here's Richard Jose- a slightly ghoulish but fascinating sound:
