SINGING WONDERS
SOURCE: Terri Hamilton: Skin Flutes and Velvet Gloves: A Collection
of Facts and Fancies, Legends and Oddities About the Body's Private Parts
(New York: St. Martin's Press - Copyright © 2002 by Terri Hamilton)
In Italy, during the seventeenth and especially the eighteenth century, it was common practice to castrate gifted prepubescent (i.e., pre-voice-deepening) boy singers, thus preventing the onset of the dreaded boys-to-men phenomenon (the procedure effectively preserved a singer's precious soprano voice throughout his entire career). In the mid-1700s as many as two thousand young Italian boys were castrated every year. Refered to as "castrato" (from the lating castrare, "to castrate") these singing woders retained their penis, and still managed to grow to manly proportions - indeed, often exhibiting a greater development than found in ordinary men. Due to physiological changes resulting from the operation, a castrato's lung capacity would expand, his diaphragm muscles strengthened, and the result was a unique, unnatural voice - clear and piercing like a choirboy's, booming and powerful like a man's.
The practice of castrating young boys for the sake of the musical arts may have arisen unintentionally from the emphatic writings of St. Paul, who expressly forbade women from singing in church ("Let your women keep silent in the churches." 1 Corinthians 14:35). Singing itself, however, was not only encouraged, it ws a musical artform in great demand within the hallowed cathedrals; thus, when innovative composers scored a piece requiring pure and angelic voices, allowing males to be castrated seemed to be a much lesser evil than allowing women themselves to appear onstage. (Undaunted, some women nevertheless prevailed. In his memoirs, Giacomo Casanova recounted the story of a talented woman singer, frustrated by the ban forbidding females to perform on stage. Disguising herself as a castrato, the woman was able to pass the required male exam by taping a sausage to her thigh, successfully fooling the inspecting priest.)
Legend has it that castrati skirted the biblical injunction that clearly forbids a man "wounded in his stones or hath his privy member cut off" (Deuteronomy) from "entering the congregation of the Lord". In order to continue singing in church after having his parts severed from his body, he was admonished to "ever after carry it in his pocket".
Italian castrati are widely regarded by historians to be not only the music industry's first bona fide superstars, but the performing world's first sex symbols as well. Wildly adored by audiences, they were greeted by frenzied fans at city gates, cheered and engulfed when out in public, and much sought after by enthusiastic women as safe sex partners. The vast majority of singing castrati were heterosexual men who, despite the loss of sperm-producing testicles, were more than capable of getting and maintaining erections. In fact, rumored to possess extraordinary sexual gifts, it was said that once a woman had known a eunuch, no "complete" man could satisfy her.
Back to Castrati