LIFE AND TIMES OF THE CASTRATI
SOURCE: Angus Heriot, The Castrati in Opera (London: Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd., 1956 - Copyright © 1956, Angus Heriot)
The castrati were born, as a general rule, of humble parents; for only those in fairly pressing need of money would have consented to the mutilation of their children. among these unfortunates, however, it was the accepted thing to sell any male child who showed the slightest aptitude for music, or signs of a potentially fine voice, into such musical slavery, much as the poor of industrial England sold their children to be sent down the mines, or to become chimney-sweeps.
The practice did, however, vary in individual cases; the parents sometimes sold their children outright to some teacher or musical institution, but sometimes, too, themselves scraped together enough money to start their son off on a course of training with some reputable singing-master. They looked on this as a fairly safe investment, being convinced that their child was bound to become the most famous and affluent singer of his age - though why they should have expected him to be so full of gratitude it is difficult to imagine.
It is to the singing-masters of that age - Pistocchi, Bernacchi, Porpora, and others - that the perfection of the art must unquestionably be attributed. The list of those who, at some time, studied with any one of them is a string of one illustrious name after another; and no one has since rivalled them in perseverance and thoroughness, and in their perfect knowledge of the capabilities and shortcomings of the human vocal organs. They sometimes had their own singing-schools - and those of Bologna were famous - but more often they worked in one of the remarkable institutions known as the conservatorios, although they might take private pupils "on the side" as well (as Porpora, for instance, did).
There were conservatorios in various Italian cities - those of Venice were renowned for the training of female singers - but for castrati the main centre was Naples. Naples had four conservatorios - Sant' Onofrio, Pietà del Turchini, Santa Maria di Loreto, and Poveri di Gesù Cristo - which had originally been founded at various dates in the sixteenth century as purely charitable institutions for the upbringing and general education of poor children. But by the middle of the seventeenth century they had dropped all courses of instruction save that of music [though to the musical curriculum was added a certain amount of instruction in the usual "three R's"]; though this subject was itself subdivided into a number of separate courses, for composition, for the various instruments, and for the soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass voice. Meanwhile, with the constantly rising cost of living, the original foundations were proving insufficient, and the conservatorios took to hiring out their students for various musical purposes, both private and public (receiving for the latter a yearly fee from the municipality of Naples and other nearby towns). According to Florimo, "The work of these pupils was turned to profit. The smallest were sent to serve the Masses in various churches...others acted as "angioletti" attending the dead bodies of children...." The larger pupils acted as pall-bearers in funerals, carried images through the streets in religious processions, etc., etc. Later, says Florimo, "to increase the profits still further, they had the idea of reinforcing the musical executants, by admitting to the conservatorios young men who were already well versed in music, who were promised an annual payment, with the obligation to remain for a number of years." At the same time the institutions ceased to be purely charitable, and began to take in paying pupils, who lived the same life as those other boys, though they were exempt from some of their duties. It is not clear what proportion of the students were taught wholly or partly at their parents' expense, as against those supported entirely out of the conservatorios' funds, and in some cases a pupil might change from one to the other. We find, for instance, Porpora himself as a youth enteredin the books of the Poeveri di Gesù Cristo conservatorio paying "18 ducats a year, commencing September 29th, 1696", whilst a later entry (in 1699) mentions that "he no longer pays", though he apparently remained there some time longer. Evidently, he was an unusually promising pupil, and, when his father either died or found himself unable to keep up the payments, the conservatorio decided to keep him on for nothing. [He was, of course, principally learning composition. Not himself a castrato, he no doubt also learnt to sing in the tenor or bass voice.]
There are extant various interesting records of transactions concerning young castrati, among the documents of these institutions. Among the accounts of the Sant' Onofrio conservatorio for 1673, for instance, there is an item: "a suit of clothes for one Sebastiano, eunuch of Andria [a town in Apulia], together with shoes, hat and stockings, costing in all 16 ducats and 2 carlini: the clothes are of black material, since the eunuchs are always dressed in black". Two years later, there is the following: "On the 26th January 1675, I sent to Rome 12 scudi in Roman currency...for the boat-fare, and food during the journey, for two soprano children [figlioli, the term always used to describe the students], who are coming to Naples from Rome to serve our Conservatorio. On the 14th February, one of the aforementioned sopranos arrived: his name is Niccolò Fortuna, eunuch, and he is a sound singer. As our Conservatorio needs him for the music, he has been promised 15 ducats in Roman currency...with the obligation to serve our Conservatorio for seven years." This person, evidently, came "already well versed" as a performer for the chapel, rather than as a student. In 1676, two eunuchs were sent for from Foggia; and there are numerous similar entries. Conversely, in 1739, Nicola Reginella entered the Pietà dei Turchini, "paying 24 ducats yearly", apparently at the expense of a certain Duke of Monteleone.
Since anyone known to have been concerned with castration was punishable with excommunication, as well as liable to civil penalties imposed by the various governments, the business had to be carried out more or less clandestinely; and there has been a good deal of discussion as to where it actually took place. Burney's remarks may be quoted in full: "I enquired throughout Italy at what place boys were chiefly qualified for singing by castration, but could get no certain intelligence. I was told at Milan that it was at Venice; at Venice that it was at Bologna; but at Bologna the fact was denied, and I was referred to Florence; from Florence to Rome, and from Rome I was sent to Naples. The operation most certainly is against the law in all these places, as well as against nature; and all the Italians are so much ashamed of it, that in ievery province they transfer it to some other. However, with respect to the Conservatorios at Naples, Mr. Jemineau, the British consul, who has so long resided there, and who has made very particular enquiries, assured me, and this account was confirmed by Dr. Cirillo, an eminent and learned Neapolitan physician, that this practice is absolutely forbidden in the Conservatorios, and that the young Castrati come from Leccia in Puglia; but, before the operation is performed, they are brought to a Conservatorio to be tried as to the probability of voice, and then are taken home by their parents for this barbarous purpose. It is said, however, to be death by the laws to all those who perform the operation, and excommunication to every one concerned in it, unless it is done, as is often presented, upon account of some disorders which may be supposed to require it, and with the consent of the boy. And there are instances of its being done even at the request of the boy himself, as was the case of the Grassetto at Rome." Later the Englishman adds: "M. de la Lalande was more fortunate [than myself], having ascertained that there are shops in Naples with this inscription: 'Qui si castrono ragazzi'; but I was utterly unable to see or hear of any such shops during my residence in that city."
It is certainly not true that all, or even most, of the castrati came from Apulia; a glance at the biographies of the most famous ones will show them to have been natives of every part of Italy. But, for the rest, the story seems likely enough. Another place that was notorious for the practice, however, was Norcia, a small town in the Papal States, about twenty miles east of Spoleto on the borders of Umbria and the Marches; and it seems probable, in fact, that operations were performed anywhere that was sufficiently remote, and as immune as possible from governmental interference - which was dilatory enough in any case. According to La Lande, again, the soprano Angelo Monanni, called Manzoletto, was operated on in Florence, and this in turn caused a scandal; but he implies that this was an exceptional case.
The doctors most esteemed for the operation (as, indeed, for all forms of surgery in Italy at the time) were those of Bologna: they were in demand not only in Italy, and were exported abroad for the express purpose of castrating boys, rather like the expert horse-gelders of today. In 1752, for instance, the Duke of Sürtemberg - a prince so fanatically addicted to opera that he almost ruined his subjects to pay for it - had two Bolognese surgeons called to his court; and these gentlemen, or their successors, were still in office in 1772, when Burney wisited Ludwigsburg, the local Versailles. the castrati at the time in the duke's service numbered fifteen, and its is probable that a large proportion of them were of German nationality. Other German courts formed similar offshoots of the Italian tradition; yet only one German castrato ever seems to have attained any degree of fame - Bernstadt, described as "virtuoso of the Elector of Saxony", who sang in some of Handel's operas in London, and in various leading theatres abroad. Dreyer and Porporino were also of German parentage, but were born and brought up in Italy; and the only other non-Italian on record who may have been a castrato is the well-known English singer John Abell (c. 1660-1736), who was sent to Italy by charles II to be trained, and also, allegedly, "to show the Italians that other nations had good voices, too". He is often said to have been a falsettist, yet Evelyn, who must have been familiar with the ordinary English altos of the day, noticed Abell's voice as something quite different, and "as high as any woman's". Abell may, of course, have rediscovered the secret of the Spanish soprano falsettists; but it seems more probably that he was really a castrato, but chose to conceal the fact.
Discipline in the conservatorios was strict, and the cirriculum strenuous, and the students were even liable to be put in prison if they proved too disobedient. The castrati enjoyed certain advantages as compared with the rest of the figlioli, who for instance had to practise together in one room, in the midst of the most infernal racket; they were considered delicate, given better food than the others (though this was not saying very much), and their health was carefully attended to. "There are in this college", says Burney of Sant' Onofrio, "sixteen young castrati, and these lye up stairs, by themselves, in warmer apartments than the other boys, for fear of colds, which might not only render their dleicate voices unfit for exercise at present, but hazard the entire loss of them forever."
Despite such coddling, the castrati do not seem to have enjoyed their years of training very much, and not only because they had to work hard. The rough-and-ready methods of those days took little account of the psychological difficulties that must have beset such beings marked out from the ordinary of society, and they no doubt underwent merciless "ragging" at the hands of the other students whenever the masters' backs were turned. Over and over again, in reading the lists of pupils of the Neapolitan conservatorios, one comes across an entry: "So and so, eunuco, entered...se n'è fuggito" - "he ran away". The other students were quite often dismissed for idleness or want of capacity, but they seldom ran away; and the fact speaks for itself.
There were many, too, whose voices failed, or did not prove up to expectations. Burney, for instance, remarks: "...as to the previous trials of the voice, it is my opinion that the cruel operation is but too frequently performed without trial, or at least without sufficient proofs of an improvable voice; otherwise such numbers could never be found in every great town throughout Italy, without any voice at all, or at least without one sufficient to compensate such a loss. Indeed, all of the musici...in the churches at present are made up of the refuse of the opera houses, and it is very rare to meed with a tolerable voice upon the establishment in any church throughout Italy. The virtuosi who sing ther eoccasionally, upon great festivals only, are usually strangers, and paid by the time." [But, on his own account, this was not the case at Padua, where the great Gaetano Guadagni was on the establishment of the church of San Antonio.] As a confirmation of this opinion may be cited an anecdote related by that curious figure the Marchioness Solari: "Paisello having completed a new oratorio, at the first representation at which the king and queen and all the court were present, the composer came to conduct Lady Hamilton and myself to the church, which was very much crowded. As dilettanti, were were placed by the composer in a situation the best calculated for us to appreciate its merits. It was a really good composition...on this occasion, there happened to be no fewer than a hundred of those 'noun adjectives of the neutral gender'...employed in the choruses; and so abominably did they sing out of tune, that poor Paisello, forgetting where he was, jumped from his seat in a passion, and explaimed, 'Ah! managgio dei morti, siete stati tutti castrati in cattivo tempo!' alluding to the fact that these degraded beings never sing in tune, when the maiming operation has taken place in bad weather: the church resounded with laughter of the whole congregation; and thus ended the 'enraged musician's' oratorio!"
Archenholz has the following summing-up of the matter: "Here in Naples alone these horrible mutilations are performed, which have been thought so necessary to our operas. They are generally people of the meanest description who give their children for such operations, in hope, that they may be able one day to support their parents. But this hope is frequently disappointed in many different respects; sometimes the voice does not display itself, or the child has no natural parts for music. Such a boy [i.e., presumably, those that do not fall by the wayside] is very soon put out as an apprentice, and an agreement made with the master to whose care he is committed, that as soon as his pupil can appear in public, he is to receive his pay for a certain number of years. This is the reward for his instructions, which are never graften in but which the whip. It may be said that the poor child is inoculated by dint of lashes for the acquisition of this fine art, the delight of the courts of Europe.
"The number of these victims is so great, that they surpass the want of singers of all kings and princes; for which reason, they have been allowed to take orders; but they can only be secular priests, and are permitted to say mass. but as the ecclesiastic laws of the church of Rome reuire, for this purpose, a person that has not been mutilated, the sophists of that persuasion have thought it sufficient for such a priest to have his amputated genitals in his pocket, when he approaches the altar." One suspects that the last strange particular was a tale pour les touristes, swallowed wholesale by the gullible German; and, as has been seen, he is incorrect as to the place of castration. But he shows very well from what suffering this great art sprang.
À propos of Archenholz may be quoted here another strange anecdote he has to tell about a castrato: "A very particular accident happened a few years ago to a singer of the name of Balani. This man was born without any visible signs of those parts which are taken out in castration, he was, therefore, looked upon as a true-born castrato; an opinion, which was even confirmed by his voice. He learned music, and sung for several years upon the theatre with great applause. One day, he exerted himself so uncommonly in singing an arietta, that all of a sudden those parts, which had so long been concealed by nature, dropped into their proper place. The singer from this very instant lost his voice, which became even perceptible in the same performance, and with it he lost every prospect of a future subsistence." This strange occurrence was apparently observed in the San Carlo opera house, Naples, in about 1765; where, not long before, another unfortunate accident had taken place. The young castrato Luca Fabbris, straining after a top note of exceptionally dizzy altitude, collapsed and died on the stage, to the consternation of the composer Guglielmi, who had induced him to attempt it.
A typical daily curriculum of study for a singer was remarkable, not only for the amount of hard work it entailed, but also for its thorughness and comprehensiveness. That followed in youth by Caffarelli, for instance, was as follows:
In the morning
1 hour singing passages of difficult execution.
1 hour study of letters,
1 hour singing exercises in front of a mirror, to practise deportment and gesture,
and to guard against ugly grimaces while singing, etc.
In the afternoon
1/2 hour theoretical work,
1/2 hour of counterpoint on a canto fermo [in other words, practice in improvisation],
1 hour studing counterpoint with the cartella,
1 hour studying letters.
The rest of the day was spent in exercise at the harpsichord, and in the composition of psalms, motets, etc. It is noticeable that the voice was not overburdened with too much use, and that as much attention was given to the theory of singing, and all its ramifications, as to its actual practice. Under the heading of "letters" one of the main points stressed was the value of words, and how they should be sung so as to bring out their meaning rather than obscuring it.
The anecdote of Porpora, who is said to have confined Caffarelli for five or six years to exercises witten on a single sheet of paper, and then to have dismissed him with the words, "Go, my son: I have nothing more to teach you. You are the greatest singer in Europe", has been quoted and requoted in numerous works of reference; yet it seems singularly improbable. Many more of Porpora's solfeggi have survived to this day - and they must be but a small percentage of the total - than could possibly be written on any sheet of paper of a likely size; could it, perhaps, be that someone misunderstood the meaning of the word cartella?
While on the subject of Porpora, there is another interesting question that has been raised in connection with his work. To quote Frank Walker [in A Chronology of the Life and Times of Nicola Porpora]: "The very moderate range employed by Porpora even when composing for the greatest singers who ever lived is remarkable. We have it on Quantz's authority that Farinelli had a compass of nearly three octaves, and yet Porpora rarely asks for more than aone octave and a fifth, and generally for less. "Lusingato dalla speme", sung by Farinelli n Polifemo (1735) falls wholly within a single octave. The singer's ornaments, judging from authentic examples given by Haböck, would not add more than a tone to this."
One reason for this may be the fact, not always realised, that the castrati were able to extend their range by means of the falsetto, in the same way as natural male singers. Tosi lays it down that "A diligent Master, knowing that a male Soprano, without the Falsetto, is constrained to sing within the narrow Compass of a few Notes, ought not only to endeavour to help him to it, but also to leave no Means untried, so to unite the feigned and the natural Voice, that they may not be distinguished; for if they do not perfectly unite, the Voice will be of divers Registers...the extent of the full natural Voice terminates generally upon the fourth space, C...or D. Among the Women, one hears sometimes a Soprano entirely di Petto, but among the Male Sex it would be a great rarity should they preseve it having passed the Age of Puberty." He also remarks: "Many Masters put their Scholars to sing the Contr'alto, not knowing how to help them to the Falsetto, or to avoid the trouble of finding it."
It seems, therefore, as if Porpora may have been anxious to keep Farinelli within his "natural" register - in so far as his voice was natural at all - which was no doubt stronger and richer in tone. On the other hand, it is possible that singers transposed some notes up by an octave from the written score, like tenors who attempt the famous high C in "Di quella pira" from Trovatore - a hurdle never envisaged by Verdi. However, the eighteenth century as a whole does not seem to have been particularly itnerested in voice of enormous range, or in top notes of dizzy altitude, and it is rare, even, to find a singer's exact range mentioned. Lurcrezia Agujari, called La Bastardina, was a woman singer celebrated for her high notes, yet according to Kelly, Mozart's sister-in-law Aloysia Lange had an even wider range, and the music written for her - in particular the role of Konstanze in the Seraglio, while still considered difficult, does not now appear phenomenal. But all this is something of a digression.
One function of the conservatorios that must have provided the young singers with a welcome break from routine, apart from their duties as singes in church and at funerals, was that of providing the choir for the Teatro San Carlo, whenever an opera was given that required it: the governors of the institutions were not at all enthusiastic about the idea, and in 1759 those of the Pietà dei Turchini petitioned the King to put a stop to the practice. They complained that the figlioli got into bad company and habits, ekpt assignations with ladies of the ballet, learnt to play cards, and racketed about the town until all hours. The King had other things to think about (for it was in this year that he inherited the throne of Spain from his half-brother, and left Naples for ever), and took no notice. The governors later repeated their plea to the ministers of the young King Ferdinand, but to no greater effect. Discipline became more and more unpopular and difficult to impose as time went on, until in 1782 the students staged a full-dress revolt, which it took government intervention to appease. Evidently, the castrati were among the participants in this outbreak, for the Rector gave orders that they should share in the general punishment, and that in future "they should be liable to the same duties [such as in the army would be called 'fatigues'] as the other figlioli". The French invasion completely undermined whatever authority was left to the conservatorios, and they never really recovered their prosperity or reputation.
Eventually, at some age between fifteen and twenty, a castrato who had retained and embellished his voice, and passed the various tests with more or less distinction, was considered ready for his début, and contracted to some opera house. He would, often, be seen first in a female part, for which his youth and fresh complexion would render him particularly apt. His looks and unfamiliarty would, perhaps gain him a greater success than his as yet immature art would in itself have deserved, to the rage and envy of his senior colleagues, both male and female: but, braving their black looks, he would take his bows, and with elaborately simulated condescension pick up the flowers and billets doux that fell at his feet. His name would henceforth be made; a band of supporters - "fans" - would gather round him, going en masse to the theatre every time he sang and hanging on his every note as if it were pure gold, barracking the other singers and refusing to admit that, beside their idol, these miserable braing donkeys could be said to sing at all. There would be an exchange of sonnets, satires and pasquinades between the new star's devotees and the rival cliques; aristocratic ladies and gentlemen would imagine themselves in love with him and engineer a piquant interview, and nothing else would be talked about for the next few weeks. Back-stage, the same warfare might rage with even greater virulence; yet sometimes, too, the singers were sensible enough to recognise one another's merits and become friends. But, if the new hero were too insolent and puffed up with his success, he might end, one dark night, with a knife in his ribs; the envious prima donna, perhaps, had persuaded her protector to have him killed, that worthy Duke or Cardinal had called in some assassins - members of a respected and business-like profession - and, at a charge fixed according to the circumstances, had had the deed despatched.
Perhaps, however, the young castrato would not please. He might be wooden in his acting, tasteless in his embellishments; or, like so many ofhis tribe, he might have grown unconscionably tall and gawky, or conversely, enormously fat - and the men's costumes then in vogue on the stage were anything but becoming to an unfortunate figure. The poor wretch might then decline to the touring of small provincial opera-houses - the "sticks" of eighteenth-century Italy - or hide his head in some church choir; where, to keep his spiritus up, he would choose all the latest and flashiest operatic arias, have them reset to sacred words, and with them startle the angels on the reredos and the martyred saints on the frescoed ceiling. The congregation did not mind - they liked a good tune, whatever its associations - the priest probably did not notice; and it was left to some conscientious visiting prelate or musical pundit to recall to the errant singer some conception of the intended dignity of his calling. For all that, the poor castrato could not but sigh for the applause and excitement of the stage; and no doubt, sooner or later, he would leave his present employment and go to Bologna, "which", says Archenholz, "is the mart of all Italian musicians, castratos, and comedians, out of employ. Application is made hither from all countries, for people of that description." The town was infested with agents and other habitual appurtenances of theatrical life, and there was always some post or another going free.
Success had its pitfalls, and the castrati came in for a good deal of scrurrilous and unkind abuse, of an all too predictable sort. already in 1640, we find Della Valle, in his Discourse, defending them in the following terms: "I cannot subscribe to the common assertion that Evirati are all cowards, devoid of genius for literature, or any solid study; and that even the voice, for the melioration of which they are so inhumanly treated, is inferior to that of a woman or boy"; and, as their fame increased, so did the hatred of them. Salvator Rosa, a fanatical patriot in an age when such sentiments were almost freakish, seems to have seen in the castrati a sort of symbol of his country's degradation, and in his Satire on music vented the bitterest venom of his spleen upon them; while Foscolo attacks Milan (why Milan in particular is not clear) as a "città d'evirati cantora allettratice". They were often castigated as evil creatures who lured men into homosexuality - and there were admiteddly homosexual castrati, as Casanova's account bears witness. In 1745 he writes: "...an abbé with an attractive face walked in [to a café]. At the appearance of his hips, I took him for a girl in disguise, and I said so to the abbé Gama; but the latter told me that it was Bepino 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 prove that I was right, or that I was wrong."
In 1762, Casanova was again in Rome, and writes: "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 that you were madly in love before you realised it. To resist the temptation, or not to feel it, one would have had to be cold and earthbound as a German. When he walked about the 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.
"Rome the holy city, which in this way forces every man to become a pederast, will not admit it, nor believe in the effects of an illusion which it does its best to arouse."
Goethe, however, shows that one did not have to be a castrato to indulge in this sort of thing. In his account of the famous roman carnival he writes: "The masks now begin to multiply. Young men, dressed in the holiday attire of the women of the lowest classes, exposing an open breast and displaying an impudent self-complacency, are mostly the first to be seen. They caress the men, allow themselves all familiarities with the women they encounter, as being persons the same as themselves, and for the rest do whatever humour, wit or wantonness suggest. Among other things, we remember a young man, who played excellently the part of a passionate, brawling untameable shrew, who went scolding the whole way down the Corso, railing at everyone she came near, while those accompanying her took all manner of pains to reduce her to quietness." But this taste was enormously prevalent in Italy at that time, and there is no indication that castration of the kind practised had any effect whatever on the sexual urge. Many of the castrati were famous lady-killers; and they were of course much in demand by the opposite sex, for their embraces could not lead to awkward consequences. We read, for instance, that Matteuccio "could not bear to stay for long away from this city [Naples], where he was loved by all, and particularly by the ladies, as much because he was handsome and a eunuch, as for his sweet and sonorous voice."
But the most common accusation against them - and one of the reasons often cited for their ultimate downfall - was the insufferable conceit and unreasonableness with which their name has become coupled in many people's imagination. There were certainly some among them - Caffarelli and Marchesi, to name a couple - whose tantrums and absurdities were classics of their kind; but it is surely unjust to attribute to them an exclusivity, or even a superiority, in this particular line of country. No castrato could have equalled the famous Caterina Gabrielli, for instance, whose caprices turned all europe upside-down; and there were many who were remakralbe for their good sense and freedom from affectation. But they formed an obvious Aunt Sally, like the Jews under Hitler, and everything was thrown at them.
They were subject to further measures of discrimination. the Catholic Church, for instance, does not permit eunuchs, or those known to be impostent, to marry, and this rule was applied to the castrati. One of them, Cortona, was determined to marry an attractive female singer, Barbaruccia, who was also in the service of his master, the Duke of Modena., and made special application to the Pope. This was, however, refused, even though the Duke himself lent his authority to the request, and Cortona perforce remained a bachelor. Evidently, His Holiness was frightened of creating a precedent. One castrato, Bartolomeo de Sorlisi, endured much hardship in his trul heroic determination to remain with the woman he had surreptitiously married, a German girl called Dorothea Lichtwer. All their eundurance was in vain, and in the end Sorlisi died broken-hearted (1672): another castrato, Filippo Finazzi (1710-76), successfully married Gertrude Steinmertz, a Protestant girl from Hamburg, while the marital adventures of tenducci are both famous and noteworthy.
In this connection may be quoted a strange flight of whimsy against the castrati, indulged in by Marcello, author of the Teatro alla moda, in the form of two burlesque madrigals with accompanying comments, and entitled "Il flagello dei Musici". He begins: "The first madrigal is sung by tenors and basses, who inform the castrati of a most terrible disgrace. The latter, hearing the fatal decree, and without waiting for its reason, interrupt on the highest possible note to show their peculiar quality. This is, that they constantly seek to reach the extremest altitudes with their voice, flattering themselves that, the higher a musico ascends, the greater his price and reputation. On hearing the evangelical reason, for which they must burn in eternal fire, they can do nothing but shriek ahi! ahi! as if they were already among the flames." The first madrigal goes as follows:
(per due tenori e bassi)
So, che lassù ne' cori almi e beati
Non entrano castrati,
Perchè è scritto in qual loco
(i soprani interrompono)
Dite, che e scritto mai?
(tenori e bassi rispondono)
Arbor che non fa frutto arda nel fuoco!
(i soprani gridano)
Ahi! Ahi!
Then Marcello continues: "The second madrigal is sung by
the soprani and contralti, to the confusion of the tenors and basses and their own justification, and tries to prove that they too are blessed ("delle sacre parole"). They begin, therefore, on a cheerful note and in a lively tempo, though the words are grave and sserious, to show that they sing everyting in a joking manner.... In the adagio, they sing with passages which they claim to be in good taste and in the best manner, so clashing with the regular notes of the counter-point and productng unbearable discords..." The second madrigal follows:
(per due soprani e due contralti)
So che laggiù nell'erebo profondo
Ove alle fiamme vassi
Cadran tenori e bassi,
Perchè scritto fu già da' sacri vati:
Quei che castrati son, saran beati.
So much for the sufferings and slights which the castrati had to endure. But there was much to recompense them, and they could look for rewards more tangile and lasting than the acclaim of an idle and capricious society, whose passion was novelty, and which would scarcely maintain its enthusiasm for new singer even through one fo the short "seasons" then given by Italian opera-houses. A castrato, or any other singer, who had enjoyed a passing vogue in rome or Venice and coud for a while make captial of that success, would, if he were wise, seek a more reliable position and a more assured income, by attaching himself to some music-loving court, and becoming virtuoso da camera to some crowned Maecenas.
Among notable seventeenth-century patrons of singers both male and female was Queen Christina, particularly after her abdication and exile to Rome. There, unburdened with the cares of state, she could devote herself wholeheartedly to the enjoyment and cultivation of her pleasures, of which oen of the chief was music. She was notorious for her feuds with other employers - particularly the Duchess of Savoy, whom she accused of enticing her best singers away, while at the same time herself trying to tempt them back, with others who had never been in her employ. Two castrati, Bianchi and Ciccolino, formed a special bone of contention between the two ladies, whose mutual vituperation fell far below the level of dignity to be expected from such illustrious persons. Among others of Christina's pet castrati were Siface and Cortona, the foremost singers of their time; and she provided a refuge and rallying-point for all the artists thrown out of work by Papa Minga's high-minded offensive against the theatres. She was a woman of unpredictable temper, and when one of her musici, Alessandro Cecconi, died suddenly, she was accused - with much probability - of having had him murdered for some real or imagined misconduct. Not that there was anything unusual in having people murdered in Italy at that time; it was an accepted custom, furnishing honourable employment to large numbers of persons.
In Italy, too, such princes as the Dukes of Parma and Modena were lavish supporters of the opera: but hte firled where the richest prizes were to be won was Germany, with its multitude of courts each trying to outdo the others in splendour and extravagance, its freedom from the nationalistic obsessions that kept foreign musicians out of france, and its relative lack of home-grown talent (for there were few German singers of note in the eighteenth century).
The Italian governments of the day may have been arbitrary, unenlightened, and reactionary; but they seem almost benevolent beside those of Germany with their ponderous and feudal tyranny and the rapacity of their exotrtions, made all the easier by the supine acquiescence of the population. Foreign visitors to the capital cities of the numerous Electors and Margraves - cities reached by roads execrable even by eighteenth-century standards, through an almost desert countryside - noted that, on an average, half of their population consisted of the prince's servants, retainers and dependants, collectively battening on the other half, who could be told at a glance by their dejected and downtrodden appearance. the princes squandered incredible sums on the construction, upkeep, and embellishment of their Ludwigslusts and Montplaisirs and Residenzen - to the benefit of posterity, which can admire their beauty without having had to pay for them - and one of the principal items in their expendture was very often the opera; for many of them were genuine and knowledgeable music-lovers, and themselves first-rate musicians.
The Dukes of Württemberg, the Electors Palatine and those of Bavaria, and Frederick the Great were all fanatical lovers and protectors of music, whose court operas employed the leading singers and composers of europe, and were famous for the meticulousness and high artistic level of their productions and the excellence of their orchestras - a quality most rare at the time. The martinet mind of Frederick and his virtually exclusive admiration for the operatic compositions of Graun, as for the instrumental music of Quantz, made the Berlin theatre somewhat hidebound in its procedures; yet it enjoyed great fame in his day. Mannheim had the best orchestra, under the direction of the celebrated Stamitz, while Stuttgart under Jommelli was the scene of that composer's interesting reform of Metastasian opera. [When Burney was thee in 1772 - at a time when the Duke was attempting to economise (!) - he still had fifteen castrati in his service.]
But perhaps the most important among these dynasties of melomaniac sovereigns were the electors of Saxony, who for long years held also the resounding but largeley meaningless title of King of Poland. Dresden in the mid-eighteenth century was fast usurping the place of Paris as the intellectual centre of Europe, and as the city where luxury and refinement were carried to their most elegant extreme. The opera, under Hasse's direction, fully kept pace with this fastuous life, and in 1755 it had among its contracted artists half the famous singers of Europe [According to Burney: 10 sopranos, 4 contraltos (in each case both male and female), 3 tenors, and 4 basses - among them Faustina, Pilaia, Mingotti, Monticelli, Pozzi, Annibali, Amorevoli, and Campagnati], as well as an enormous number of other first-class musicians. Such glory, however, was too good to last, and in 1756 came the Seven Years' War, in which Saxony suffered ignominious defeat and devastation at the hands of the Prussian monarch, and after years of occupation, was left humiliated, enfeebled, and in abject poverty. Dresdent was little more than a heap of ruins, and there was no money left to support the opera.
At Mannheim, Berlin, Dresden, and avrious other places, no money was ever taken at the opera-houses, and any decently-dressed person was admitted free; so that, in effect, the exchequer subsidised the pleasures of the well-to-do - a curious state of affairs that seems to have been peculiar to Germany. The public there, who did not have to pay for their entertainment, could scarcely venture to express their opinion but in private; and the opera was entirely dependent on the caprice of the monarch; so that, should an economy-minded prince come to the throne, or one inssensible to the charms of music, the theatre would rapidly be shut or turned over to other uses, and the singers and musicians, often arbitrarily deprived of their salaries and appointments, would be dispersed in all directions in search of another place. The Imperial Free Cities - commercially-minded and more or less democratically governed - were not as a rule much given to expenditure on the arts; the richest of them, Hamburg, supported an opera for some seventy years, but eventually even this succumbed to financial difficulties and was forced to close down. The intellectual, not to say highbrow, bourgeoisie which were later to contribute so much to German artistic life had scarcely yet emerged, and the good merchants of those days were more interested in solid comfort, and the pleasures of bed and board - particularly, perhaps, the latter.
In other countries too - England, Spain, Russia, and Sweden - where opera was mainly an exostic importation dependent on the court and aristocracy, it was almost confined to the capital cities: and since these nations, unlike Germany, had only one capital each, the openings for singers were limited in number. The salaries paid in London and Madrid were as good as anywhere, but the total number of singers employed at a given moment was necessarily small.
A virtuoso engaged by one of the court operas, perhaps thorugh the medium of one of the talent scouts who used to be sent to Italy from time to time to look for promising singers, or to sign up some established name that was temporarily without a situation, would often be contracted for a number of years at a fixed salary: but he would generally demand a clause limiting his obligation towards his principal employer to a certain proportion of each year. for the rest of the time, he was free to do as he pleased, and to supplement his income by appearances at "commercial" opera houses in other towns and countries: and, while foreign countries provided a safe and easy livelihood to a lrge number of Italian singers, their own country was still the mainstay of the majority. In Italy, opera was the amusement of all classes of society save the very poorest, and every town that was much above the size of a village would have its own opera house. In the Papal States alone, in about 1780, there were more than forty towns that did so, and the figure for the whole of Italy must have been something like one hundred and fifty at least.
So the years would pass, and the virtuoso would move from town to town and country ot country, remaining, perhaps, for some years at some royal or electoral court or preferring absolute freedom of movement; attaining gradually the highest plateau of his mastery, remaining there for some glorious years, and then gradually declining again, as age robbed his voice of its brilliance, and himself of his looks and the stamina to sustain the ardours of an aria di bravura. If he had been a sprano, he might make a new career, in his later years, by confining himself to those lower notes that remained unimpaired nd singing as a contralto; if he were already a contralto, of course, this resource would be denied him. In any case, however, it is as a rule the highest notes that show the first signs of decay, and the contralto, not possessing them, could not suffer from their loss.
Some enemies of castration have claimed that the practice brought uon its victims an early loss of voice and an untimely death; while others have affirmed, on the contrary, that castration prolonged the life of the vocal chords, and even of their owner. There seems, however, no evidence at all for either contention: the castrati as a rule lived neither a shorter nor longer time than their contemporaries, and retired, on the average, at about the same age as other singers. The operation appears, for all its cruelty, to have had surprisingly little effect on the general health and well-being of the subject, any more than on his sexual impulses and intellectual capacities. the hurt was very largely a psychological one, in an age when virility was accounted a sovereign virtue.
Eventually, if he had sense, the eminent castrato like every other singer would decide that the time had come for him to quit the stage for good, before the memory of his earlier triumphs should be tarnished by later and inferior performances. He would retire to some luxurious villa to enjoy a well-earned repose, entertaining himself with his memories, with the reception of music-loving visitors from far and near, and with the deploring of the execrable taste of the younger generation - save, perhaps, for one or two budding singers who had taken his fancy, and whom he would consent to teach. Then he would die, much mourned or already forgotten; he could found no dynasty to keep his memory alive, nor were there gramophone records to record his voice for posterity, and only the inadequacy of the printed word remained, to give some faint idea of his vanished art.
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