The Castrato and the Art of singing in His Day

III. Particular Aspects of Baroque Opera

THE CASTRATO AND THE ART OF SINGING IN HIS DAY

SOURCE: Rodolfo Celletti, A History of Bel Canto (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press - Copyright © 1991 Oxford University Press)
The reason why the castrato voice began to be used is well known. Since women were forbidden to "exhibit themselves" in sacred vocal music, parts in polyphonic sacred compositions written for "white" voices were entrusted to boy singers or to men artificially imitating the sound of the female voice (artificial falsetto singers, today known as counter-tenors). But boys were very unreliable, and furthermore, they could no longer be used after the beginning of adolescence when the "break" in the voice occurred. Artificial falsettists, on the other hand, frequently made unpleasant sounds. The castrato voice offered a solution to this difficulty facing the papal and court chapels. the practice of castration (orchiectomy) was imported from the East via Spain, which was then a Mozarabic country. The earliest castrati to arrive in Italy were in fact Spaniards: Francisco Soto, who joined the papal chapel in 1562, and Hernando Bustamante, who about twenty years later was in the service of the court of Ferrara.

The castrato has to be seen as a "singing machine" constructed simply and solely by making use of the laws of biology. The underlying principle was that of exploiting and strengthening in adult human beings certain features characteristic of the boy's voice. Among "white" voices, the boy's voice is that which in the natural range known in vocal jargon as "chest voice" has the largest number of notes: from b flat to d'' or e''. Fairly often, therefore, the range is a to f'', which means that from ten to thirteen notes can be sung with full voice in the chest register, as against approximately half that number in the female soprano voice. The advantage is obvious if we consider the strength, the fullness, the "bite" of the chest or "natural" voice as compared with the more penetrating but less vibrant and rounded sounds of the female "head voice".

Thus orchiectomy inhibited the growth of the larynx before the voice broke, in other words before the boy, because of the lowering of the sounds by an octave which takes place in the adult, took on the characteristics of a man's voice. An operation was therefore carried out on the testes (by binding the testicular cord and possibly even by removing the testes in certain cases), the result being - the effect was known at the time but not the cause - a stoppage of the secretion of testosterone, the hormone that causes the growth of the larynx.

Orchiectomy took away the ability to procreate, since the testicles were atrophied and no longer secreted spermatozoa, but it left the possibility of coitus, since the germinal fluid arises in the prostate. Hence the amorous exploits of certain famous castrati. However, the absence of testosterone could cause premature aging, early weakening of the erection capacity of the male member, and forms of senile melancholia in still relatively youthful individuals.

Through the effect of orchiectomy, the castrato voice retained the ring, the frenshness, and the carrying power of the boy's voice. Among the secondary manifestations was the appeareance of pseudo-feminine characteristics (inhibited growth of the beard, for example) and the so-called keel chest (pectus carenatum), with expansion of the rib-cage, leaving more space for development of the lungs. Subjected as he was to assiduous and extremely strenuous vocal exercises [in the Roman schools during the 17th c., 3-4 hours daily, plus as many again devoted to the study of theory of music, counterpoint, composition, and harpsichord], the boy castrato acquired an abnormal lung capacity, which had a direct impact on his ability to hold his breath for a long time, and on the power of his tone. This exceptional mastery of breath control and breathing power, combined with his assiduous training, was responsible for the flexibility, the soft edge, the agility, the wide range, the ease of legato, and other qualities which, although common to all the great singers of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century, were nevertheless persent in a more spontaneous and marked way in some castrati.

In particular, the castrati took great pains with the so-called "singing on the breath" method, adumbrated by writers on singing like Tosi and Mancini, both of them castrati, with empirical jargon terms like "chest resistance", "supporting the voice with the natural strength of the chest without tightening the throat", and thus presenting the sound from becoming "wrongly placed and heavy"....

The castrati were in all probability also in the front rank in research on the so-called passaggio or change of register. The question is somewhat complex and anyhow bound up with physiological principles. The voice which Tosi and Mancini called "natural" or "chest" voice included, in the case of sopranos (this is stated by Tosi) the part of the range between c' and c''-d''. Beyond d'', with few exceptions, if the voice continued to climb, the sound became forced, muffled, veiled, or even strident....

With regard to the emasculated male altos, it seems not unlikely that until the beginning of the eighteenth century they used only the natural or chest voice (hence their limited range on top), about which Tosi has the following to say: "Many teachers make their pupils sing 'contralto' because they do not know how to make them sing a falsetto, or else in order to save themselves the trouble of looking for it." Tosi also complained that in his day - again because of the inability of teachers to show their pupils how to manage the register change from chest voice to falsetto - there was a great shortage of male soprano singers; or else there were male sopranos who were obliged to change over to male alto, while continuing "out of foolish vanity to call themselves sopranos". But in actual practice, these had to request composers not to write arias for them in which the voice had to sing above c''.

Neither Tosi nor Mancini is concerned with any type of voice other than he castrato. But it is obvious that no type of voice, from bass to soprano, is able to sing up to the high notes correctly without changing register. This was true both for the seventeenth century and for the eighteenth century, and probably following the principles which only the theorists of the early nineteenth century, in particular Manuel Garcia the Younger, took the trouble to expound.

The term "falsetto register" used by Tosi and Mancini can give rise to error. Obviously it was not a question of thin sounds, since both writers make it clear that hte purpose of the register change was to fuse the characteristics of the chest voice (bigger, broader, and more sharp edged) with the falsetto voice, which is more nuanced, more carring, more suited to flexibility and agility singing. The trouble is that in the type of singing about hwich Tosi was writing we have the impression that the teaching was designed first and foremost to give the student the "falsetto" voice and then, bringing it downwards, to blend it in with the chest voice, adding to this the flexibility and agility of the high register. Hence it could be presumed that until the beginning of the eighteenth century, the castrati had used for their high notes a sort of reinforced falsetto, or falsettone, sufficiently round and bright (at any rate as round and bright as the falsetto tone of the tenors of the first few decades of the nineteenth century were); furthermore, that they adjusted the intensity and strength of the chest notes to bring them to some extent into the line with the falsettone. But with the Bolognese school , and perhaps also the Neapolitan school of Porpora from which Farinelli came, people began to speak of chest voice production even in relation to the higher-register and agility passages. Here, however, the old teaching theories (in particular that of Mancini) went wrong, excatly in the same way as the theorists of the nineteenth century likewise went wrong apropos of the tenor's "top c in chest voice" (do di petto). The fact is that the Bolognese school blended into the falsetto register certain characteristics of the chest voice, obtaining full, ringing sounds on high notes. But to achieve this, it had always to use the change of register and always to make use of "mixed voice" (voce mista), since high notes "in chest voice" do not exist....

From what has been said here it is possible to deduce:

That in the final phase of the polyphonic period, the "ars suaviter et eleganter cantandi" which embodied Finck's theories was not backed up by a really sound voice production technique but was founded mostly on fine natural gifts (the disposizione of which some of the writers of the period speak), characterized above all by the capacity to sing sweetly and to execute agility passages in mainly middle tessituras. These qualities are also bound up with a high level of musical education, since in almost all instances the singers were also composers.

That no theoretician of the period speaks of the register change. A few (Zacconi, Caccini) contrast the roundness and the strength of the natural or chest voice with the strident sound of the falsetto emitted by male voices. Exceptionally (this is stated by Zacconi and above all in Domenico Cerone's Melopeo, 1603), singers could be found who had a mezzana (medium) voice: these were probably the ones in whom the register change had come about spontaneously and unconsciously.

That in the earliest operas, all the voices took off from the vocalism of the final phase of polyphony, including the castrati, who were, however, because of their orchiectomy, endowed with a greater measure of disposizione.

That between 1630 and 1650 the castrati, particularly those of the Roman school, which at that time was in the forefront, began to preactise singing on the breath and changing register, and that gradually other singers adopted their methods, apart from the doubts already raised about male altos and female contraltos. Symbolic of this leap forward in technical skill is the male soprano Baldassare Ferri. The range of two octaves he is said to have had, the length of time he could hold a breath, and his habit of executing the most complex agility passages withou the slightest movement of his face muscles and wihtout varying the opening of his mouth, are indications of extremely elaborate phonation. Nevertheless, none of the theoreticians of the time (not even the Frenchmen Bacilly and Mersenne) mention the register mechanism. The first person to speak of it was Tosi (who presumably began his studies about 1660), in his book Opinioni (1723).

That up to the end of the seventeenth century and the first few years of the eighteenth century, as Tosi maintains, the elegiac-pathetic style prevailed, and that this particularly favoured the castrati, with their ease of production and reinforced falsetto (falsettone) in agility passages.

That the years 1715-20 or so saw the beginning of the sonorous chest-tone production, particularly in the passaggio region, in Bernacchi, Farinelli, Carestini, and others, but without this affecting agility, flexibility, and soft tones. It marks the triumph of vigorous vocalism, of the "sensitive" style, and also of so-called bravura singing, which consists specifically in the execution of full-voice coloratura, as opposed to plaintive, flute-like execution known as graceful or "mannered" agility.

That in the second half of the eighteenth century, the vogue for high and extremely high notes and for agility passages executed with lightning speed led male sopranos - and in their wake male altos and (women) sopranos and contraltos - to lighten and clarify the sounds, turning to the falsetto (or falsettone) production lamented by Metastasio and leading to overdone virtuosity, to the detriment of expressiveness.

But leaving aside the technical advances which the castrati helped to popularize, they must be given the credit for having introduced and developed the taste which governed the best singing of the Golden Age, and the inventor of which, according to Tosi, was Pistocchi. The best concise and accurate definition of this taste is probably that given by Tartini in his Trattato di musica (1754): "It consists first and foremost in the voice of the singer being produced and used with sweetness, control, power, sostenuto when required, etc. Secondly, it consists of appoggiaturas, trills, rubato and protracted sounds, and mothods of singing, natural and artificial, adapted as required to cantilena, etc."

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