The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds (Ernest Bloch Lectures)

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The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds (Ernest Bloch Lectures)

Language: English

Pages: 496

ISBN: 0520292448

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato’s comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchy—involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives—whereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers—from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini—were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive, their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their literal demise.

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Twentieth century Donington was most open to considering the particularity of castrato voices, though his motivation was at least in good part to keep the sex of the singer when filling roles; see his The Interpretation of Early Music, rev. ed. (1963; New York: Norton, 1992), 523–24; and Donington, A Performer’s Guide to Baroque Music (London: Faber, 1973), 73–74. See also the rich Robert Anthony Buning, “Alessandro Moreschi and the Castrato Voice,” MA thesis, Boston University, School of Music.

Horn. Evidence about how often this was done is mixed. 17. I am very grateful to Ward Marston, producer, recording engineer, and owner of the Marston label, which produces modern transfers of early recordings, for corresponding with me about this issue (private communication, October 20, 2013). See also H. Courtney Bryson, The Gramophone Record (London: E. Benn, 1935), 46. The descriptions of the experience by Australian soprano Nellie Melba (1861–1931) are invaluable; see Nellie Melba, Melodies.

Mundi, HMC 901778, 2002), p. 25. Farinelli’s arias are available in modern edition in Carlo Broschi Farinelli: Gesangskunst der Kastraten. I. Notenband, edited by Franz Haböck (Vienna: Universal, 1723), with several also in Arie per Carlo Broschi Farinelli, edited by Luigi Verdi and Maria Pia Jacoboni with Carlo Vitali (Rome: Bardi, 2007). Several technically remarkable performances of Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva singing “Son qual nave” are available on YouTube. 3. Cf. Lorraine Daston and.

Knopf, 2002. Berni, Francesco. Poesie e prose. Edited by Ezio Chiòrboli. Geneva: Leo S. Olschki, 1934. Berry, Helen. The Castrato and His Wife. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Bertini, Argia, and J. Victor Crowther. “Erculeo [Ercoleo, Erculei], Marzio.” Grove Music Online. Edited by Deane Root. www.oxfordmusiconline.com. Bettagno, Antonio, ed. Caricature di Anton Maria Zanetti. Venice: Neri Pozza, 1996. Bianchi, Giovanni Antonio. De i vizi, e de i difetti del moderno teatro. Rome:.

Carried out by Vesalius in the early sixteenth century posed challenges to Galen’s pathological theories. They disproved, for instance, Galen’s claim that idiopathic epilepsy was caused by an accumulation of a cold and viscous humor in the ventricles of the brain, which no anatomical dissection could discover. The ripple effects of such deductions and the empirical urges that had underwritten them tested Galen’s belief that a psychic spirit was elaborated in the blood. To counter such a notion,.

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