CASTRATI
SOURCE: Peter Giles: The Counter Tenor, Chapter 3 (London, UK: Frederick Muller Limited 1982 - Copyright © 1982 Peter Giles)
Having talked at some length of natural high voices, let us now consider voices which can hardly be described as natural, those of the castrati. Yet, natural voice or not, they were some of the greatest vocal artists in human history.
The castrati, male sopranos, mezzos and (castrati) contraltos, who enjoyed a great vogue in Italian opera in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries, still give rise to knowing smiles today. It is often assumed that the counter tenor is the same in origin.
Castrati existed for thousands of years. The practice of castrating young boys to preserve one or more of their boyish attributes (voice, looks, etc.) or to provide sexually-safe guardians of the harems of the East was, if not widespread, at least not uncommon. However, although the study of the practice in antiquity is not without interest, it is not relevant to the more modern habit.
The attribute of the castrati which is relevant is the retention of the boys' singing voice. Castrati were also variously known as "musici" or "evirati", which read like euphemisms. Eunuchs were used in antiquity as singers, and records exist in early medieval times of eunuchs singing. One facto which accelerated the rise of the castrati was the introduction of complicated "a cappella" singing in the middle of the fifteenth century. This demanded exptremely competent and proficient treble singers, and using boys for this exposed several drawbacks, not least of which was the fact that by the time they had learnt their job their voices were about to break. In Spain, where the art of falsetto was highly developed, falsettist began to be used to supply the power and maturity needed for the new contrapuntal requirements. The Spanish had developed a method for greatly increasing the upward range of the voice in men - much higher than the counter tenor - without involving the singular disadvantage of castration. However, castrati did exist in Spain, and it has been argued that perhaps the Spanish falsettists were castrati masquerading under another name. Be that as it may, the tone of the castrati was considered pleasanter than that of the falsettists. Furthermore, it was found that the vocal cords of the falsettists did not last well - the strain of such singing wore them out. With the approval of Pope Clement VIII, the numbers and popularity of the castrati increased by leaps and bounds.
How were castrati produced? This question (all too easily answered by modern Philistines as "They had their balls cut off!") must be answered remembering the standards of the day, which to us seem brutish and callous. Civil punishment for crimes was often barbaric: maiming and branding were common, and the death penalty for many crimes not now regarded as serious. Surgery was performed without anaesthetic and with scant regard for hygiene. Strangely enough, the Church refused to countenance maiming as a punishment, and yet still was one of the first institutions to use castati (and the last to give up the practice), although it would not publicly agree with the means by which they were produced. Considering the above, there were three possible methods of attaining the desired result. They were: (a) disease; (b) accident; (c) deliberate surgery.
Some diseases, such as mumps at the correct age, cause the hormones necessary for normal sexual development to be suppressed. Apart from the obvious drawbacks of such an occurrence, the secondary sexual development is also arrested - growth of body hair, and thickening of the vocal cords. Nowadays, the problem is easily remedied by the injection of the necessary hormones. Indeed, quite recenlty, before such hormone treatment was widely known, a director of an ensemble specialising in early music considered searching for such "natural castrati" to take part in early music. He was, not unsurprisingly, unsuccessful.
Accidental castration no doubt does happen, but must be rare. Nonetheless, accident or surgery following accident was the accepted (and acceptable) reason for the church to condone castrati as singers in church. the Church was naturally averse to publicly encouraging what was, after all, the deliberate maiming of children.
Deliberate surgical castration was the most widely used method of producing castrati. Disease and accidents simply could not have coped with the increasing demand. For the standards of the day, the operation must have been comparatively minor. Following the administration of some drug such as opium, the child was placed in a hot bath. This rendered him virtually insensible, at which point the ducts leading to the testicles were severed, so that the testicles eventually shrivelled and disappeared. The removal of the organs does not seem to have taken place in the case of the castrati.
In order to preserve the boy's voice, the operation would have to be carried out before the vocal cords began to thicken. It would be no use castrating a tenor or bass nd expecting im to sing treble immediately, as many people still seem to think. Nor would it have been much use castrating children at random. The boy would have had to show some aptitude first.
Despite many claims to noble birth, most of the castrati came from fairly lowly families who hoped, no doubt, that eminence in their future profession would enable their sons to provide for them. Such was seldom the case.... Only two well-known castrati came from well-to-do families - Farinelli and Caffarelli - and these two my well have been operated on as the result of accident or disease. Apart from any consideration on the part of the prents, it was the law that before the operation could be carried out, the child himself had to desire it. In one known case, apparently, the child did request it, in order to preserve his voice, of which he was very proud.
Following or just before his operation, the young castrato would have been apprenticed to a singing master or sent to one of the "conservatorios" or singing schools which graced many Italian cities. Although originally set up as charitable institutions for the education and upbringing of children, by the middle of the seventeenth century they were music schools pure and simple. To boost the insufficient foundations, the pupils were often hired out for public or private musical events (as in the major English choirs in Tudor England).
The life of the castrati in the conservatorios was a little less spartan than that of the other students. They were accustomed to better food, warmer living accommodation, and better practice facilities. On the other side of the coin, they do not seem to have had a very happy time. Their physical condition would have set them apart from the other students, and would have encouraged spiteful ragging, while their preferential treatment would have caused them to be resented. Although the normal students may have been thrown out for idleness or misbehaviour, they seldom ran away as the castrati were prone to do. The inference is obvious.
Provided his voice came up to expectation, the young castrato would make his debut at some opera house in his late teens. From then on, if his acting ability and voice appealed to the cognoscenti, and provided he did not become too gawky or obese (as castrati often did) he would run the full gamut of "stardom" - very much in the modern idiom. If he failed to make the grade as an actor, he could always find himself employment as a church singer.
Italian opera was (and still is) regarded as the highest form of operatic art. In the seventeenth and eigtheenth centuries, other countries may have had teir own native traditions of musical drama, but it as still Italy that led the field, not least because the chances of employment were much higher. In countries other than Italy which enjoyed opera, it tended to be the diversion of th court and the nobility, and was largely confined to the capital city. Openings for singers would, therefore, be rather limited. Hence the castrati did not enjoy a world-wide reputation even though, as is true today of soloists, they might well tour other countries, and give opera-lovers in other nations an appeciation of their style and mode of singing. National pride was also involved - Charles II sent the English counter tenor, John Abell, to Italy to be trained, and also "to show the Italians the other nations had good voices too!" Abell would have been what is now called a "high counter tenor", with the ability to push his voice to the tope of, and beyond, the treble stave. It has been suggested that Abell may have been a castrato, but there seems little evidence to support the theory. England only subscribed late to the use of castrati, relying on the home-grown counter tenor for high parts in opera and stage music, women or boys for feminine roles, and boys for he treble in church music.
despite popular misconceptions, the results of castration did not seem to affect the future life, either emotional or physical, of the castrati. It did not lesen or alter their sexual urges - the stories of their amorous intrigues with their well-born female fans are legion, and differ little from the behaviour of "stars" through the centuries. Nor did castration shorten or lengthen their lives or singing careers. They seem to have led perfectly normal lives, barring the fact that they were sterile.
The decline in the use of the castrati in opera began towards the end of the eighteenth century. The Italian musical climate of the 1790s had degenerated to frivolity, and the Napoleonic invasion with its political upheavals caused fashions to change. With the weakening of the conservatories, a new type of composer, notably Rossini, had little trouble in setting new trends, in which the castrati played small part. By the first few decades of the nineteenth century, the castrati were mostly finished, although a few, Velluti and Pergetti for example, lingered on a little longer.
Yet understandably the castrati continued in employment in some Italian churches (notably the Sistine Chapel) for much longer. Domenico Mustafa (1829-1912) directed the Papal Music until 1895, when another castrato, Perosi, succeeded him. The last of the Papal castrati was Alessandro Moreschi (1858-1924), whose voice may still be heard on gramophone records made in 1903-4. These recordings, poor in quality though they may be, of a voice not of the best, provide us with the only audible link with those strange artists of another age.
We have verbal descriptions, however, and this does not only provide us with musical and physical evidence. Consider the sexual ambiguity noticed by Casanova in a café:
An abbé with an attractive face walked in. At the appearance of his hips, I took him for a girl in disguise, and I said so to the abbé Gama; but the ltter told me that it was Beppino della Mamana, a famous castrato. The abbé called him over, and told him, laughing, that I had taken him for a girl. The impudent creature, looking fixedly at me, told me that if I liked he would provide that I was right, or that I was wrong.
As a sexual expert, Casanova was clearly fascinated by these feminine men. He commented on one when visiting Rome in 1762:
We went to the Aliberti theatre, where the castrato who took the prima donna's role attracted all the town. He was the complaisant favourite, the mignon, of Cardinal Borghese, and supped every evening tête-à-tête with His Eminence.
In a well-made corset, he had the waist of a nymph, and what was almost incredible, his breast was in no way inferior, either in form or in beauty, to any woman's; and it was above all by this means that the monster made such ravages. Though one knew the negative nature of this unfortunate, curiosity made one glance at his chest, and an inexpressible charm acted upon one, so tht you were madly in love before you realised it. To resist the temptation, or not to feel it, one would have to be cold and earthbound as a German. When he walked about he stage during the ritornello of the aria he was to sing, his step was majestic and at the same time voluptuous; and when he favoured the boxes with his glances, the tender and modest rolling of his black eyes brought a ravishment to the heart. 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.
To finish this brief account of the incredible castrati, here are some individual descriptions of witnesses to probably the greatest of them, Farinelli (1705-1782), whose real name was Carlo Broschi. The castrati must have been among the very finest singers of all time, and Farinelli was the best of even this exalted band. Mancini, the eighteenth-century singing teacher, wrote of him that:
His voice was thought a marvel, because it was so perfect, so powerful, so sonorous and so rich in its extent, both in the high and low parts of the register, that its equal has never been heard in our times. He was, moreover, endowed with a creative genius which inspired him with embellishments so new and so astonishing that no one was able to imitate them. The art of taking and keeping the breath so softly and easily that no one could perceive it began and died with him. The qualities in which he excelled were the evenness of his voice, the art of swelling its sound, the portamento, the union of registers, a surprising agility, a graceful and pathetic style, and a shake as admirable as it was rare. There was no branch of the art which he did not carry to the highest pitch of perfection....
Our own ever-present music critic, Dr Burney, heard him when the singer was only seventeen years of age, in 1722:
During the run of an opea, there was struggle every night between him and a famous player on the turmpet, in a song accompnied by that instrument; this, at first, seemed amicable nd merely sportive, till the audience began to interest themselves in the contest, and to take different sides; after severally swelling a note, in which each manifested the power of his lungs, and tried to rival the other in brilliancy and force, they had both a swell and shake together, by thirds, which was continued so long, while the audience eagerly awaited the event, that both seemed to be exhausted, and, in fact, the trumpeter, wholly spent, gave it up, thinking, howver, his antagonist as much tired as himself, and that it would be a drawn battle; while Farinelli, with a smile on his countenance, shewing he had only been sporting with him all the time, broke out all at once in the same breath, with fresh vigour, and not only swelled and shook the note, but ran the most rapid and difficult divisions, and was at last silenced only by the acclamation of the audience. From this period may be dated that superiority which he ever maintained over all his contemporaries.
Burney heard him again in England in 1734:
Every one knows who heard, or has heard of him, what an effect his surprising talents had upon the audience: it was ecstasy! rapture! enchantment!
In the famous air "Son qual Nave", which was composed by his brother, the first note he sung was taken with such delicacy, swelled by minute degrees to such amazing volume, and afterwards diminshed in the same manner, that it was applauded for full five minutes. He afterwards set off with such brilliancy and rapidity of execution, that it was difficult for the violins of those days to keep pace with him. In short, he was to all other singers as superior as the famous horse Childers was to all other running-horses; but it was not only in speed, he had now every excellence of every great singer united. In his voice, strength, sweetness, and compass; in his style, the tender, the grateful, and the rapid. He possessed such powers as never met before, or since, in any one human being; powers tht were irresistible, and which must subdue every hearer; the learned and the ignorant, the friend and the foe.
It is hoped that this brief section on the castrati will have cleared up definitively any lingering misunderstanding of the difference between the counter tenor and the eunuchoid voice.
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