Castrato
A castrato is a male singer who underwent castration before puberty in order to retain a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto. The voice can also occur in one who, due to an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.
Castration before puberty prevents the larynx from being transformed by the normal physiological events of puberty. As a result, the vocal range of prepubescence is largely retained, and the voice develops into adulthood in a unique way. Prepubescent castration for this purpose diminished greatly in the late 18th century.
Methods of castration used to terminate the onset of puberty varied. Methods involved using opium to medically induce a coma, then submerging the boy into an ice or milk bath where the procedure of either twisting the testicles until they atrophied, or complete removal via surgical cutting was performed. The procedure was usually done to boys around the age of 8–10; recovery time from the procedure took around two weeks. The means by which future singers were prepared could lead to premature death. To prevent the child from experiencing the intense pain of castration, many were inadvertently administered lethal doses of opium or some other narcotic, or were killed by overlong compression of the carotid artery in the neck.
The geographical locations of where these procedures took place is not known specifically. During the 18th century, the music historian Charles Burney was sent from pillar to post in search of places where the operation was carried out:
I enquired throughout Italy at what place boys were chiefly qualified for singing by castration, but could get no certain intelligence. I was told at Milan that it was at Venice; at Venice that it was at Bologna; but at Bologna the fact was denied, and I was referred to Florence; from Florence to Rome, and from Rome I was sent to Naples. The operation most certainly is against the law in all these places, as well as against nature; and all the Italians are so much ashamed of it, that in every province they transfer it some other.
As a castrato's body grew, his lack of testosterone meant that his epiphyses did not harden in the normal manner. Thus, the limbs of the castrati often grew unusually long, as did their ribs. This, combined with intensive training, gave them unrivaled lung power and breath capacity. Operating through small, child-sized vocal cords, their voices were also extraordinarily flexible, and quite different from the equivalent adult female voice. Their vocal range was higher than that of the uncastrated adult male. Listening to the only surviving recordings of a castrato, one can hear that the lower part of the voice sounds like a "super-high" tenor, with a more falsetto-like upper register above that.
Castrati were rarely referred to as such: in the 18th century, the euphemism musico was much more generally used, although it usually carried derogatory implications; another synonym was evirato, literally meaning "emasculated". Eunuch is a more general term since, historically, many eunuchs were castrated after puberty and thus the castration had no effect on their voices.
History
Castration as a means of subjugation, enslavement or other punishment has a very long history, dating back to ancient Sumer. In a Western context, eunuch singers are known to have existed from the early Byzantine Empire. In Constantinople around 400 AD, the empress Aelia Eudoxia had a eunuch choir-master, Brison, who may have established the use of castrati in Byzantine choirs, though whether Brison himself was a singer and whether he had colleagues who were eunuch singers is not certain. By the 9th century, eunuch singers were well-known and remained so until the sack of Constantinople by the Western forces of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Their fate from then until their reappearance in Italy more than three hundred years later is not clear. It seems likely that the Spanish tradition of soprano falsettists may have hidden castrati. Much of Spain was under Muslim rulers during the Middle Ages, and castration had a history going back to the ancient Near East. Stereotypically, eunuchs served as harem guards, but they were also valued as high-level political appointees since they could not start a dynasty which would threaten the ruler.European classical tradition
Castrati first appeared in Italy in the mid-16th century, though at first the terms describing them were not always clear. The phrase soprano maschio, which could also mean falsettist, occurs in the Due Dialoghi della Musica of Luigi Dentice, an Oratorian priest, published in Rome in 1553. On 9 November 1555 Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este, wrote to Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, that he has heard that the Duke was interested in his cantoretti and offered to send him two, so that he could choose one for his own service. This is a rare term but probably does equate to castrato. The Cardinal's nephew, Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, was another early enthusiast, inquiring about castrati in 1556. There were certainly castrati in the Sistine Chapel choir in 1558, although not described as such: on 27 April of that year, Hernando Bustamante, a Spaniard from Palencia, was admitted. Surprisingly, considering the later French distaste for castrati, they certainly existed in France at this time also, being known of in Paris, Orléans, Picardy and Normandy, though they were not abundant: the King of France himself had difficulty in obtaining them. By 1574, there were castrati in the Ducal court chapel at Munich, where the Kapellmeister was the famous Orlando di Lasso. In 1589, by the bull Cum pro nostro pastorali munere, Pope Sixtus V re-organised the choir of St Peter's, Rome specifically to include castrati.Thus the castrati came to supplant both boys and falsettists from the top line in such choirs. Women were banned by the Pauline dictum mulieres in ecclesiis taceant.
The Italian castrati were often rumored to have unusually long lives, but a 1993 study found that their lifespans were average.
Opera
Although the castrato predates opera, there is some evidence that castrati had parts in the earliest operas. In the first performance of Monteverdi's Orfeo, for example, they played subsidiary roles, including Speranza and that of Euridice. Although female roles were performed by castrati in some of the papal states, this was increasingly rare; by 1680, they had supplanted normal male voices in lead roles, and retained their position as primo uomo for about a hundred years; an Italian opera not featuring at least one renowned castrato in a lead part would be doomed to fail. Because of the popularity of Italian opera throughout 18th-century Europe, singers such as Ferri, Farinelli, Senesino and Pacchierotti became the first operatic superstars, earning enormous fees and hysterical public adulation. The strictly hierarchical organisation of opera seria favoured their high voices as symbols of heroic virtue, though they were frequently mocked for their strange appearance and bad acting. In his 1755 Reflections upon theatrical expression in tragedy, Roger Pickering wrote:Farinelli drew every Body to the Haymarket. What a Pipe! What Modulation! What Extasy to the Ear! But, Heavens! What Clumsiness! What Stupidity! What Offence to the Eye! Reader, if of the City, thou mayest probably have seen in the Fields of Islington or Mile-End or, If thou art in the environs of St James', thou must have observed in the Park with what Ease and Agility a cow, heavy with calf, has rose up at the command of the Milk-woman's foot: thus from the mossy bank sprang the DIVINE FARINELLI.The training of the boys was rigorous. The regimen of one singing school in Rome consisted of one hour of singing difficult and awkward pieces, one hour practising trills, one hour practising ornamented passaggi, one hour of singing exercises in their teacher's presence and in front of a mirror so as to avoid unnecessary movement of the body or facial grimaces, and one hour of literary study; all this, moreover, before lunch. After, half an hour would be devoted to musical theory, another to writing counterpoint, an hour copying down the same from dictation, and another hour of literary study. During the remainder of the day, the young castrati had to find time to practice their harpsichord playing, and to compose vocal music, either sacred or secular depending on their inclination. This demanding schedule meant that, if sufficiently talented, they were able to make a debut in their mid-teens with a perfect technique and a voice of a flexibility and power no woman or ordinary male singer could match.
Many castrati came from poor homes and were castrated by their parents in the hope that their child might be successful and lift them from poverty. There are, though, records of some young boys asking to be operated on to preserve their voices. Caffarelli was also typical of many castrati in being famous for tantrums on and off-stage, and for amorous adventures with noble ladies. Some, as described by Casanova, preferred gentlemen.
According to John Rosselli, the total number of castrati alive at any given time during the height of their existence cannot be ascertained. He estimates that "several hundred" of them existed at any given time between 1630 and 1750. Approximately 100 existed in Rome in 1694, but the possibility that was a decline from earlier in the century cannot be ruled out. Only a small percentage of boys castrated to preserve their voices had successful careers on the operatic stage; the better "also-rans" sang in cathedral or church choirs, but because of their marked appearance and the ban on their marrying, there was little room for them in society outside a musical context.
The castrati came in for a great amount of scurrilous and unkind abuse, and as their fame increased, so did the hatred of them. They were often castigated as malign creatures who lured men into homosexuality. There were homosexual castrati, as Casanova's accounts of 18th-century Italy bear witness. He mentions meeting an abbé whom he took for a girl in disguise, only later discovering that "she" was a famous castrato. In Rome in 1762 he attended a performance at which the prima donna was a castrato, "the favourite pathic" of Cardinal Borghese, who dined every evening with his protector. From his behaviour on stage "it was obvious that he hoped to inspire the love of those who liked him as a man, and probably would not have done so as a woman".