After the ball is over
[Castrati] “were notorious for their sexual adventures [and] presumably able to overcome liabilities like an underdeveloped penis and variable erectile function.” So, really, all things considered, maybe castration wasn’t so bad after all. [Failure Magazine]
Now we know what it takes to stop the conversation on parterre. A reference to “an underdeveloped penis and variable erectile function”, not to mention “womanly fatty deposits”.
Hahaha.
Isn’t it a shame that the one castrato we can hear is way past his prime?
I agree! It would have a fantastic experience to hear Handel or Rossini sung by a castrato!
They may not have been as brilliant as we are led to believe … tastes change afterall …
Castration is the worst kind of child abuse, and we should not even jock about it.
Absolutely fascinating, Benjamin Britten would have loved it. Poor Moreschi with no balls.
This was very interesting to read, especially with the number of correlations to today’s society including the anti-feminist, anti-effeminate attitudes held. “There was considerable discomfort with the notion of high sounds issuing from a man’s body.” – reminds me of the discomfort some of us convey regarding countertenors.
It was a decent article. My obsession with the Castrato voice goes way back to highschool and my discovery of the Anne Rice book “Cry To Heaven”.
From the vocal point of view, countertenors-falsetto head voice- are poor substitues for castrati; monochromatic, dedious voice. They possess the vocal cords of a grown man, with the exception of Michael Maniaci, if I remeber his name correctly. Castration delays the growth of vocal cords that remain thin and short, looking like the vocal cords of a mezzo or a boy soprano. Mezzo voice is the closest to castrato in color and timbre with one exception: size. Castration did not stop the developement of the rest of the body and the lungs. Castrati had bigger lung capacity than mezzos, thus able to produce a bigger sound.
I’m sure you mean this well CP, but I must confess it always fascinates me when people speak with such authority about something that they have never experienced in the flesh and it is all down to speculation …
While none of us know first hand whether the castrato voice was magnificent or creepy, I think it is a safe assumption that it did not sound like either a countertenor voice or a mature female voice. And the voice type was indeed the result of awful, systematic abuse of children for a couple of centuries or so…. a truly bizarre practice in the name of music.
“…presumably able to overcome liabilities like an underdeveloped penis and variable erectile function …”
Pretty much like Porsche drivers, then.
Well said Monty…
Hey! Pause that DVD. I had a Porsche and no one could ever fairly accuse me for having those problems.
I think Dr. Papas deserves the typo du jour prize for his admonition not to jock about castration.
Uncastrated singers have variable success with their art and career, and so we cannot know whether Moreschi made his way in ecclesiastical music because he was prevented from following the stage because of artistic insufficiency or because of personality and temperment. Are there any autobiographical materials from him, or are we to judge him only by the recordings? Can we know about the sound and method of those who did succeed on the stage from those qualities in the artist who did not pursue the stage career? If we had no recorded information from uncastrated singers who made great careers, could we extrapolate from the recorded sound of lesser artists?
Nicely put. It’s possible that the documents of Moreschi’s singing tell us as much about the sound of the great castrati as the singing of a provincial Brunnhilde can indicate about the sound of a Flagstad.
There’s a nice little article about Moreschi on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Moreschi
“Uncastrated Singers.” Gee, the possibilities are endless. I suggest either 1) “Uncastrated Singers who would have had a longer career if they had been castrated” OR 2) “Uncastrated Singers who were born female and didn’t need to be castrated but who thought about it” or maybe 3) “Uncastrated Singers who do not have prehensile thumbs.”