Author: Martha Feldman

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2015-02-20

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 0520279492

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 castratoÕs comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchyÑinvolving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relativesÑwhereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composersÑfrom Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and RossiniÑwere 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.