1.Operas by Monteverdi and other Baroque composers often feature roles written for castrati -- male opera singers who were castrated at a young age to preserve their boy voices. 2.I started to explore further, and began to piece together an enormous list of operas and oratorios that featured...
Read about the castrato singers and their popularity. Learn the definition of "castrato", understand the history of the castrati, and find notable...
So when men once sing, it is necessary to show a deep and rich bass, but also exhibit a bright crisp treble, and the overall music style has strong coherence requirements, with music section immediately turning treble to bass, so technically male singers are required to show the free and ...
Following the birth of modern opera in Italy in 1600, the demand for soprano voices grew up and the prepuberal castration was carried out to preserve the young male voice into adult life. Among the castrati, Gaspare Pacchierotti was probably one of the m
Finally, a survey of castrato roles in opera, from Montenegrin to Handel, shows how these singers were deployed and suggests that their popularity could not have depended entirely on vocal skills. Instead, I argue that castrati were prized at least in part for their unique physicality, their ...
The plausibility of such an erotic image is strengthened by investigation into the actual sexual function of these singers, which seems to have fallen somewhere between historical legend and modern skepticism. Finally, a survey of castrato roles in opera, from Montenegrin to Handel, shows how these...
In emphasizing exchange as the basis of musical oratory, castrato singers and teachers were drawing on the more generalized paradigm that underlay the aria, which was rhetorical through and through. All writers about music throughout the eighteenth century—from Heinichen, Mattheson, Scheibe, and ...