The Castrato Reflections on Natures and Kinds [Hardcover]

The Castratois 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 castratos comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchyinvolving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relativeswhereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composersfrom Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossiniwere 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.

Martha Feldmanis Mabel Greene Myers Professor of Music, Romance Languages, and Literatures and the Humanities at the University of Chicago. She is the author ofCity Culture and the Madrigal at VeniceandOpera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italyand coeditor ofThe Courtesan’s Arts.

Preface
Note on Textual Transcription, Translations, Lexicon, and Musical Nomenclature

PART ONE. Reproduction
1. Of Strange Births and Comic Kin
Appendix to Chapter 1
2. The Man Who Pretended to Be Who He Was

PART TWO. Voice
3. Red Hot Voice
4. Castrato De Luxe

PART THREE. Half-light
5. Cold Man, Money Man, Big Man Too
6. Shadow Voices, Castrato and Non

AcknowledglCs