Sing
High, Sing Low
James L. Franklin, M.D[1]
Introduction:
The impetus to write this paper occurred a
few years ago during a lecture given at
The phenomenon of the castrati enters the history of Western music in the latter half of the 16th century, becoming a dominant factor in Italian music through most of the 17th and 18th centuries, and then gradually fading during the 19th century. To understand who the castrati were and to locate their place in Western culture we should explore the anthropology of human castration and when it was first employed in the service of vocal art. This will include a look at the attitude of the Church toward the castrati as well as their contribution to the history of opera. We will seek to understand the conditions that persuaded parents to submit their children to these procedures and the sociology of the castrati as a profession. Then there are those subjects germane to the field of medicine – how and by whom were these operations performed and what were the biologic and pyschologic consequences? What was the nature of their vocal art and what made their singing so appealing to the audiences of their day?
In 1977, Meyer M. Melicow, the Given Professor of Uropathology at Columbian-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York could write that castration was one of the most common operations performed in the United States.[2] At that time the operation was performed for prostate cancer and had entered 20th century practice of medicine as the result of the Nobel Prize winning discovery by the University of Chicago urologist Charles Brenton Higgins, who discovered that the growth of prostate cancer was dependent on the stimulation of testosterone and that a significant remission could be induced by orchiectomy or removal of the testes. Writing on the history of castration, Dr. Melicow noted that through the ages the operation had been performed to retain supremacy of male elders, as revenge against enemies on the battlefield, on slaves serving as eunuchs in harems or seraglios, as punishment for rape, seduction and adultery, as part of self-inflicted religious rites, and to preserve a boy’s treble voice into adulthood.[3] Ancient as well is the history of castration in the domestication of animals serving to produce capons, geldings and oxen and taming our favorite pets.
History does not record when it was first recognized
that the treble voice of a boy could be preserved and cultivated for singing by
prepubescent castration. Vocally-gifted eunuchs were present in the early
dynasties of the Imperial Chinese court and gelded choristers appeared in the
“The Sacred” (Church History)
To account for the appearance of castrati
in
There is reference to the presence of castrati
in the Sistine Choir during the years 1565 – 1598 but the first castrato officially
named in the Sistine Chapel choir was Jacomo Vásquez, admitted on May 27, 1588.[5] In
1589 the Papal Bull, Cum pro nostro
pastorali munere, of Pope Sixtus V organized the Cappella
Giulia of St. Peter’s Basilica in
The Church was deeply conflicted in its
position on castrati. The admission of castrati to the Sistine Chapel late in
the 16th century as part of the priesthood had been forbidden earlier
by the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. Castration was against Canon
Law that stated: “amputation of any part of the human body is never lawful
except when the whole body cannot be saved from destruction in any other way.” Yet
mutilation in the form of amputation including castration as punishment was
sanctioned by secular rulers throughout Europe as well as in the
Theologians addressed the issue of the castrati throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and the leading voices starting with the German, Paul Laymann (1574 -1635) condemned the practice. A contrary opinion was held by some. The Sicilian Jesuit Thomas Tamburini (1591-1675) affirmed: “…it is lawful, provided that there is no mortal danger to life, and that it is not done without the boy’s consent…” He reasoned that “they served the common good by singing the divine praises more sweetly in churches…” Rober Sayer (Sayus in Latin), an English Benidictine moralist of the late 16th century who spent his last years in Venice, reasoned that the voice was a faculty more precious than virility as it distinguished man from animals and justified doing without impiety what was necessary to suppress virility to enhance the voice. The new sopranos were considered necessary in the praise of God.
During
the 18th century anyone who performed castration or was associated
with the practice was excommunicated by the Church. Clement XIV (1769 – 1775) forbade castration
and in an effort to suppress the passion for the castrato voice, allowed women
to sing in both the churches and the theaters of the
“The Profane” (Opera)
Not only did the
year 1600 mark the appearance of castrati in the Sistine Chapel, it also
coincides with the advent of a new art form, that of opera. Performed that year
in
Sources often state that during the 18th
century as many as 4000 boys a year were castrated in
This estimate may have been an
exaggeration. In an article, The Castrati
as a Professional Group and Social Phenomenon, 1550-1850, the English
historian and musicologist John Rosselli surveys existing church records
throughout
Rosselli goes on to ask:
… what led ordinary
people and adults in authority to condone such a drastic step?
Getting a child into the clergy became a source of security for middling and poor people and Rosselli observes: “celibacy was on the increase in the period 1600-1750 through the workings of economic hardship and the efforts of families to safeguard property…” Quoting Joseph Jérome LaLande’s Voyage en Italie (1766), the practice of castration “attracts no notice in a country where the population is huge in relation to the amount of work available” and concludes: “To become a castrato – still more, to make your son become one – need not in these conditions seem a total misfortune.” Richard Somerset-Ward in Angels & Monsters: Male and Female Sopranos in the Story of Opera, 1600-1900 observes:
“The
Castrati could become fabulously rich, perhaps one out of a hundred, but those who did not, would be able to support themselves through employment in the Church and in either case send money home to their families. Somerset-Ward speculates that only 10 or 15 percent were able to do this, “but in largely impoverished communities those were attractive odds nonetheless.”
In
explaining the vocal art of the castrati, two factors need to be considered. The
anatomical changes resulting from the operation are widely recognized and will be
discussed shortly, but also the intensive training that promising young singers
received, though less well recognized, played an important part in the their success.
Boys who were castrated before the onset of puberty did not experience a break
in their voice and therefore from a very young age were able to receive
intensive and uninterrupted music training. This advantage gave them a head
start over intact male and female singers of their day. In
Silvestro Prittoni, servant of Your Serene Highness, finds himself in the state of rejoicing in a voice sufficiently good to practice music and wishing to retain it, begs Your Serene Highness on his goodness to make it such that he is without those instruments, which would allow the change in voice to take place with advancing years; that he might receive all this as charity, it being the case that he cannot find the means of being able to do this because of his poverty.
The petition was granted, May 11, 1687 and the Duke authorized the payment of four doble to Silvestro “for the aforementioned purpose” with the precaution that the treasurer was to state it was issued “for reasons known to us.” Contracts also assigned penalties to the parents, if the boys attempted to run away.
The training of young castrati was intensive and thorough. Not only did they receive extensive training in the art of singing, but instrumental training including keyboard instruments, theory and composition. They also were educated in literature and drama. A famous castrato Geatano Majorano Caffarelli (1710 – 1783), gives us this account of the daily routine in the conservatory:
Morning, 1 hr. of singing passages of difficult execution; 1 hr. of letters (values of words etc.); and 1 hr. of singing passages in front of a mirror, to practice deportment, gesture and guard against ugly grimaces while singing; afternoon ½ hr. theoretical work; ½ hr. of counterpoint on a canto fermo (practice in improvisation); 1 hr. studying counterpoint with the cartella (a board on which musical notes were written); and 1 hr. studying letters. The rest of the day spent in exercise at the harpsichord and the composition of motets and psalms.
Within the conservatories, the castrati dressed in separate and finer uniforms than those of their intact contemporaries and received preferential treatment in their accommodations and diet. At Sant’Onofrio, one of the four conservatories in Naples, we read these pithy observations: “the refectory was in common; but, especially in the winter, they took care to guard the little nightingales-in-training from the rigors and changes in temperature, and so they were fed in their own rooms; moreover the food prepared for them differed from the food for the other boys. Eggs, broth, boiled chicken, a generous wine habitually filled these delicate stomachs: even the clothes these preferred boys wore were such to protect them much better from the seasons’ inclemencies.”
By the age of 16, Castrati were often ready to make their operatic debut and frequently assumed female roles playing their parts with great success. The memoirs of Giacomo Casanova are replete with libidinous anecdotes about castrati that also speak to this point:
In the middle of the confusion, I saw a priest with a very attractive countenance come in. The size of his hips made me take him for a woman dressed in men’s clothes, and I said so to Gama, who told me that he was the celebrated castrato, Beppino della mamana. The abbe called him to us, and told him with a laugh that I had taken him for a girl. The impudent fellow looked me in the face, and said that, if I liked, he would shew me whether I had been right or wrong.
Honoré De Balzac in his novella, Sarrasine, of 1830 capitalizes on this sexual ambiguity in a gothic tale depicting a corrupt European culture during this era.
Medical Aspects:
We
turn to the medical aspects of our subject and the question of by whom and how
these operations were performed? One often reads that they were done by “barber
surgeons”, but in fact these procedures were performed by surgeons favored by
the aristocracy who represented the highest echelons of the medical profession.
Evidence for this and the toleration afforded the practice by officialdom can
be found in an article by Ralph R Landes, “Tommaso Alghisi: Florentine
Lithotomist (1669-1713).[12] The paper lists the surgeons at the Ospedale
Sant’ Maria Nuova in the year 1700. Included along with their yearly stipend we
read; “Antonio Santarelli, Master dei
Castrati, 14 scudi and Girolamo Coramboni, Second Master dei Castrati, 18 scudi. A commentary on
the history of the hospital written in 1853 notes: “Eight beds were earmarked
[at the
Charles
Burney, English musician, composer, music historian and author of, The present State of
I
inquired throughout
Although
the procedure was done clandestinely,
We know little about the operation itself though it may have been relatively mild and safe. The testicles may have been removed or caused to wither through pressure, maceration or the cutting of the spermatic cords. The single and most often quoted description of the surgery comes from a work published first in French in 1707 and translated into English in 1717 under the pseudonym of Charles d’Ancillon titled, Eunuchism Displayed, by the author who describes himself as a man of character.
The boy was placed in a warm bath to make him more tractable. Some small time after they pressed the Jugular Veins which made the Party so stupid and insensible that he fell into a kind of Apoplexy and then the action was performed with scarce any Pain at all to the patient. Sometimes they used to give a certain quantity of opium to persons designed for Castration whom they cut while they were in their dead Sleep and took from them those Parts which Nature took so great a care to form; but it was observed that most who had been cut after this manner died by this Narcotick.[13]
The use of opium and bilateral jugular compression would no doubt have been hazardous. A BBC documentary on the Castrati produced by Nicholas Clapton illustrates one method of castration employing a cuplike tongs that were heated to incandescence to achieve cauterization and thereby remove the entire scrotum.[14] Such a procedure would surely have incurred both morbidity and mortality.
Both Franz Joseph Haydn and Gioachino Rossini were talented singers as children and have left us first hand recollections of their narrow escape from being made castrati.
From Haydn recalling events in the 1740s:
At the time many castrati were employed at
the Court and the Viennese churches, and the director of the choir School no
doubt considered that he was about to make young Haydn’s fortune when he
brought forth a plan to make him a permanent soprano, and actually asked his
father for permission. The father totally disapproved of this proposal, set
forth at once for
Rossini recalling similar events writes:
I came within a hair’s breath of belonging to that famous corporation – or rather let us say de-corporation. As a child, I had a lovely voice and my parents used it to have me earn a few paoli by singing in churches. One uncle of mine, a barber by trade, had convinced my father of the opportunity that he had seen, the breaking of my voice should not be allowed to compromise an organ which – poor as we were, and as I had shown some predisposition towards music – could have become an assured future source of income for us all. Most of the castrati in fact, and in particular those dedicated to a theatrical career, lived in opulence.[16]
The Physiological Consequences of Castration:
Germaine
to our subject is an understanding of the history of the human voice. The ancients
recognized the trachea and larynx as the source of voice production and
Aristotle is credited with the first mention of the larynx. It would be left to
the great anatomists, Leonardo Da Vinci in 1519, Vesalius in 1555, and Giovanni
Morgagni in 1719 to describe in detail the anatomy of the organ and recognize
its relationship to speech. The term, vocal
cordes (vocal cords), was coined by Antonin Ferrin, a French anatomist, who
in 1741 described them as comparable to the strings of a violin and activated
by a stream of air. While the term ‘vocal cords’ persists in common parlance,
these structures are in reality vocal folds. It was not until 1854 that Manuel
Garcia, a Spanish-born voice teacher first visualized these vibrating structures
in a living human being.[17] Garcia had been preoccupied with the
possibility of observing the movements of the vocal cords when he suddenly
noticed while walking on a street in
At
birth the vocal folds consist of two parts, a firm cartilaginous portion and a
thin pliable membranous portion crucial in speaking and singing. The pitch of
the voice is determined by the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds and
inversely related to their length. From birth until the onset of puberty the
male and female vocal folds remain at the same size. With the onset of puberty boys
experience a progressive decrease in the fundamental pitch of the voice that is
accompanied by a progressive increase in the length of the vocal folds. Under the influence of testosterone, the male
vocal folds grow from a mean total length of 17.3 mm in prepuberty to 28.9 mm
in adulthood, an increase of 67%. In contrast, female vocal folds grow from
17.3 to 21.4 mm, an increase of 24%.[18]
The castrato’s vocal folds would remain at their prepubescent length explaining
their ability to sing in a pitch range similar to that of an adult soprano. It
has been observed that testosterone produces swelling and vascular congestion
of the vocal folds accompanied by the accumulation of collagenous and elastic
tissue resulting in a thickening of the folds. The lack of these changes in adult
female vocal folds and presumably those of the castrati accounts for the
greater flexibility of their voices. This allowed the castrati to execute florid
coloratoura, the elaborate
ornamentation and embellishment, for which they were so famous and would also become
the hallmark of bel canto singing. With the onset of puberty the thyroid
cartilage increases to an anteroposterior length that is three times greater in
men than in women giving rise to the male “Adam’s apple,” which was absent in the castrati. Only one
post-mortem examination of a castrato has been recorded. It was published in
1909 describing a 28 year-old castrato from
The biologic and pyschologic impact of the operation, as correctly noted by Enid and Richard Peschel, has been underestimated even into the 20th century.[19] In support of this claim they cite the following passage from Angus Heriot’s The Castrati in Opera published in 1974: “castration 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.”[20]
Viewed from a 21st century perspective, an endocrinologist recognizes that these men suffered from primary hypogonadism and the physiologic changes that accompany this syndrome. Descriptions of the castrati from the 18th century mention the salient clinical features associated with hypogonadism. Tallness of stature, unusual at the time, and an increase in size of the chest were features frequently mentioned and satirized in drawings.[21] Both these phenomena resulted from the delayed closure of the epiphyseal growth centers located at the ends of the long bones of the extremities and ribs. The growth centers are cartilaginous plates that normally ossify as they close resulting in the cessation of growth. Testosterone in tissue surrounding the growth plates is converted by the enzyme aromatase to estrogenic steroids that actually bring about the closure of the epiphyseal plate. In the castrati, the absence of testosterone available for conversion to estrogenic steroids allowed for continued formation of bone at the epiphyseal plate and lengthening of the ribs and the extremities. Normal male secondary sex characteristics failed to appear and there was an absence of hair on the extremities, a lack of facial hair growth and an absence of a receding hair line and baldness. Their skin was smooth and pale; the pallor might have resulted from a lower hemoglobin level than would have been present in a normal male secondary to decreased levels of testosterone. There was a tendency toward obesity, rounding of the hips and narrowness of the shoulders, curvature of the spine and gynecomastia. The curvature of the spine was indicative of osteoporosis. As a group the castrati, because they were deficient in testosterone, would have been at increased risk for this condition. Gynecomastia or abnormal breast development in a male occurs in the syndrome of hypogonadism as a result of a relative deficiency of androgen secretion and reflex rises in pituitary hormones, lutenizing hormone (LH) and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH). The excess of these pituitary hormones in a castrated male or hypogonadism leads to an excess in estradiol and an alteration of the estrodiol/testosterone ratio resulting in gynecomastia. This abnormal breast development and lack of male secondary sex characteristics contributed to instances of sexual ambivalence that was mentioned when young castrati took female roles on the opera stage.
It
may come as a surprise to learn that it was still possible in the 20th
century to study the medical consequences of castration. Information comes from
studies conducted on a religious sect that practiced castration in
The biographies of famous castrati from the “Golden Age” of Opera (1700 -1760) include frequent references to their heterosexual exploits. Endocrinologists agree that castration before the onset of puberty would result in permanent sterility and impotence. Urologists also agree on this point as documented in a survey conducted by Meyer M. Melicow.[23] The variable age and uncertain techniques employed at the time of castration would certainly have led to variability in the suppression of their secondary sex characteristics and must be considered in evaluating 18th century accounts of their sexual exploits. Illustrative of this point is an anecdote about Pope Innocent XI (1676-1689). He was one of the least understanding popes and known as Minga, a Milanese dialect word meaning ‘no.’ Since castrati were not capable of reproduction, the Church would not sanctify their entry into matrimony. A castrato by the name of Cortona petitioned to be allowed to marry since his castration had been badly carried out and he was fit for marriage. Pope Innocent XI read the letter and wrote in the margin, “let him be castrated better.”
Returning
to the question that initially had captured my interest in this subject; an
increase in the life expectancy of the castrati would be of scientific interest
as it relates to the observation that women live longer than men and the hypothesis
that testosterone by some mechanism, might contribute to a shorter life span. In
1993, Eberhard and Susan Neishlag published in the journal Nature the results
of a survey on the longevity of 50 castrati mentioned in encyclopedias and
biographies with birth dates between the year 1581 and 1858.[24] Their
control group was a series of 200 intact male singers from similar sources born
during the same period. The two groups were indistinguishable; the castrati had
a lifespan of 65.5 + 18.8 years and the intact singers 64.3 +
14.1 years (mean + S.D.). It would be of interest to know the life span
of the normal male population at that time. Did professional singers as a group
enjoy a longer life-expectancy as a sheltered population as noted in accounts
describing the cosseted treatment of young castrati in the conservatories of
Pyschologic Impact
We have said
little of the pyschologic impact this operation would have had on young boys in
a society that highly prized virility. The 1994 film “Farinelli,” based on the
life of the one of the most famous castrati, Carlo Broschi, begins with a scene
depicting the suicide of a young castrato at a conservatory in
The Voice of the Castrato
We are now in a
position to understand how the physiologic changes associated with hypogonadism
created the timbre of the castrato voice. The prepubescent length of the vocal
folds in the castrato account for his ability to sing in a pitch range starting
at E below middle C on a piano to C or D two octaves above middle C (E3 to D6).[28] The
voice of the castrato possessed the resonance of an adult and was the product of
the enlarged thoracic cavity as well as the vocal track above the vocal folds
including the oral cavity and nasal sinuses. The increased thoracic cavity contributed
to their ability to sustain individual notes or sing many notes without taking
a breath. The extensive vocal training
they received, allowed the castrati to cultivate a vocal technique known as messa di voce to a degree that became
legendary. Messa di voce was the ability to start very softly on a given pitch
and develop a gradual crescendo and subsequent diminuendo without varying the
pitch. Testifying to the flexibility of their vocal folds, an aria sung by the
famous castrato Farinelli included an extended passage lasting almost a minute
with notes sung at the astounding rate of 1000 / minute. Castrati did not resort to the use of the
falsetto, the technique employed by modern countertenors. This technique, referred
to as second-mode phonation, employs closure of the arytenoids cartilages and thinning
of the vocal folds so as to allow them to vibrate at a higher frequency.
Paradoxically this vocal technique was labeled ‘false’ while voice of the
castrato was deemed “naturale.”[29]
Considerable interest is being directed toward understanding the voice of the castrato, the voce bianca or voce naturale as it was called in the 18th century. The subject has been approached from several directions. There are the first hand descriptions of their singing and performance by musical connoisseurs. These accounts refer to the “heavenly or otherworldly sound” they heard as well as the profound effect the voice of the castrati had on their listeners. They also convey the impressive vocal techniques the castrati employed. This point can also be appreciated through the study of musical scores written specifically for castrati. Gramophone recordings made early in the 20th century of Alessandro Moreschi, the last surviving castrato of the Sistine Chapel choir, have been studied to understand the acoustical characteristics of his voice.[30] The information gained from this unique opportunity is limited by the primitive state of the recording techniques in the years 1902 and 1904. These recordings have caught the attention of acoustical engineers who now strive to electronically recreate the voice of the castrato. The music for the sound track in the 1994 film Farinelli combined the voice of a countertenor with that of a soprano to create a single voice.[31] Acoustical engineer David M. Howard in the recent BBC documentary Castrato, describes a similar project that attempts to recreate the voice of a castrato by fusing solely male voices singing Handel’s famous aria Ombra mai fu from the opera Xerxes. He recorded separately in an acoustically anechoic room the singing of this aria by an unaccompanied York Minster boy chorister and a high tenor. Through electronic manipulation referred to as “morphing” he produced a single “voice” that was then played and accompanied by a live chamber ensemble to produce a complete musical number (the reverse of a ‘music-minus-one’ recording). Our understanding of the castrato voice is further enhanced by rare instances of “natural” castrati; individuals born with the syndrome of hypogonadism who have become professional vocalists. Finally, there are studies of the opera culture in the 18th century attempting to understand what has been called, the “period ear.”[32] Nicholas Clapton, the author of Moreschi and the Voice of the Castrato, commenting on the recordings of Alessandro Moreschi’s voice notes that to our ears the repertory and style of singing in these recordings is foreign to modern tastes and not necessarily appealing. He points out that there is no way of knowing if we could hear the actual voice of the castrato as it sounded in the 17th and 18th century opera, that we would necessarily like it.
Twilight of the Castrati:
The
twilight of the castrati begins with the writings of French authors including
Voltaire and Rousseau. The later observed: “In
Mozart included roles for castrati in his operas Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito both examples of Opera seria. But Opera seria was being eclipsed by the public taste for Opera buffa with its emphasis on real people in ordinary situations and not suited to the voice of the castrato. This trend is reflected in Mozart’s three great Da Ponte operas and his singspiel Die Zauberflöte. Also important was the rise of the prima donna during the 17th and 18th centuries a result of easing the prohibition and the stigmatization against women appearing on the stage. With the ascendancy of what Henry Pleasants labeled “A New Kind of Tenor”, there was little room left for the castrati.[33] Gilbert-Louis Duprez (1806-1896) became the first “king of the high Cs.” He is said to have learned his art from Domenico Donazelli (1790 – 1873), who had discovered a technique of lowering the larynx to produce a darker and more powerful tenor voice that also allowed production of the “notorious top C.”
By the beginning of the 19th century the demand for castrati on the opera stage was in steep decline. Rossini’s only opera for a castrato, Aureliano in Palmira, was produced in 1813 and Giacomo Meyerbeer is generally considered the last composer to write an operatic role for a castrato, that of Armando in Il Crociato in Egitto of 1824. Richard Wagner, who heard some of the last castrati and was very impressed with their singing, is credited with giving them a final passing glance. Wagner is said to have contemplated casting a castrato for the role of Klingsor, the evil sorcerer in his final opera, Parsifal, who emasculated himself to control his sexual desires and thereby gain admission to the Knights of the Holy Grail (Klingsor if castrated after puberty, would not have had the voice of a castrato).
Conclusions:
There is still an active interest in the castrati. No account of 18th century opera history is complete if it fails to mention the castrati. Nor is the history of the voice complete without recognition of their contribution to the art and pedagogy of bel canto singing. Scholarly books and articles still continue to appear in print. January this year saw the release of two CDs devoted to the art of the castrati. The first, titled Sacrificiium, by Italian soprano Cecilia Bartoli features a collection of arias composed for famous castrati of the 18th century. The second release, Mozart: Arias for Male Soprano, is by Michael Maniaci, an American born countertenor, whose larynx failed to develop allowing him to sing in a soprano range without sounding like a countertenor.
The phenomenon of the castrati as described in this paper raises ethical issues that leave us shuddering. Today, ‘child abuse’, would seem to be the term we would affix to these practices. The daily newspapers tells us that child abuse is still with us and the promise of financial gain still leads parents to exploit their children: witness the spectacle of childhood beauty contests. Today it seems incomprehensible that children 8 to 10 years of age would be deemed capable of giving written consent for castration while we struggle to find the appropriate age a minor might sign a consent form for a legitimate medical intervention. Lest we feel too smug, we should remind ourselves that castration and sterilization were authorized for eugenic purposes well into the 20th century, that the United States was the first country to legalize this practice, a fact cited by Nazi propaganda in defending Germany’s forced sterilization program in 1936 and would be raised yet again in their defense during the Nuremberg trials. Even today, there is complicity by members of the medical profession in ethically questionable procedures, witness those who would exploit the poor by the harvesting of organs from living donors for kidney transplantation.
Acknowledgments:
I would like to acknowledge the friends with whom I have discussed this paper and benefited form their input:
David J. Buch, Ph.D., Visiting Professor in the Committee on
Theater and Performance Studies at the
Donald Zimmerman, M.D., Chairman of Pediatric Endocrinology,
Children’s
Fellow
Special thanks to Jonna Peterson, MLIS, Reference Librarian, Library of Rush University Medical Center.
[1] Read on March 1, 2010 at a meeting of the Chicago
Literary Club. The One Hundred and Thirty-Sixth Season of the
[2] Meyer M. Melicow, Castration Down the Ages, New York State Journal of Medicine, 77, 804-806, Aril 1977.
[3] Castration has not been limited to men, oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries) has also been successful in the treatment of estrogen dependent breast cancer in women.
[4] Richard
Sherr, Gugliemo Gonzaga and the Castrati,
Renaissance Quarterly, 33 (1), Spring 1980, pp. 33-56.
[5] Cappella dei Cantori Pontifici was the official designation of the Sistine Chapel Choir. The original papal schola cantorum (school of singers) dated from the 4th century, while the Sistine Chapel derived its name from Pope Sixtus IV (reigned from 1471-1484), who had the chapel built.
[6] Anthony Milner, The Sacred Capons, Musical Times, 114:250-252, 1973 (an excellent reference on Castrati and the Church)
[7] Patrick Barbier, The World of the Castrati, tr Margaret Crosland, Souvenir Press, London 1996, p.239.
[8] An earlier opera, Daphne of 1597, by Peri and Rinuccini has not survived, but is often credited as the first opera.
[9] Orfeo produced in
[10] Voltaire is referring to the castrato Farinelli
(1705-82) who came to exercise considerable influence over the Kings of
[11] John Roselli, The Castrati as a Professional Group and as a Social Phenomenon, 1550-1850, Acta Musicologica, 60,143-179, 1988.
[12] Ralph R. Landes, Tommaso Alghisi: Florentine Lithotomist (1669-1713), Journal of the history of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 325-349, 1952
[13] John S. Jenkins, The voice of the Castrato, Lancet, 351, 1877-80, 1998.
[14] BBC Documentary, Castrato, (59 minutes): http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7126893963606622368
[15] H.C.
Robbins Landon, Haydn: A Documentary Study,
[16] Gaia
Sevadio, Rossini, Carroll & Graf publishers,
[17] Manuel
Garcia, Observations on the Human Voice, Proceedings of the Royal Society of
[18] John S. Jenkins, The Lost Voice: A History of the Castrato, Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology & Metabolism, 13, 1503-1508, 2000.
[19] Enid Rhodes Peschel & Richard E. Peschel, Medical Insights into the Castrati, American Scientist, 75, 578-583, 1987.
[20] Angus
Heriot, The Castrati in Opera, Da Capo Press,
[21] Illustrative of this point is a famous engraving by William Hogarth satirizing Handel’s opera Flavio (1723).
[22] Jean D. Wilson and Claus Roethrborn, Long-term consequences of Castration in Men: Lessons from the Skoptzy and Eunuchs of the Chinese and Ottoman Courts, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 84, 4324-4331, 1999.
[23] Meyer M. Melicow, Castrati Singers and the Lost “Cords”, Bull. N.Y. Acad. Med. 59(8), Oct. 1983, pp. 744-764.
[24] Eberhard Nieschlag, Susan Nieschlag, & Herman Behre, Life span and testosterone, Nature, 366, 215, 1993
[25] James B. Hamilton & Gordon E. Mestler, Mortality and Survival: Comparison of Eunuchs with Intact Men and Women in a Mentally Retarded Population, Journal of Gerentology, 24, 395-411, 1969
[26]
Elizabeth Anderson, ed. Letters of Mozart, Vol. I, Mozart to his Sister (88a)
[27] Evirati, literally emasculated men, musico, pleural, musici, musician
or musicians were alternate terms used in referring to castrati.
[28] By way of comparison, a female soprano’s range is from middle C to A in the second octave above middle C, (C4 to A5), a boy treble’s voice is from A below middle C to C two octaves above middle C, (A3 to C6) and a countertenor’s range is from C one octave below middle C to F in the second octave above middle C (C3 to C5). From, The Harvard Dictionary of Music, Don Michael Randel, editor, Fourth Edition, Harvard University Press, 2003 and Nicholas Clapton, Moeschi: The Voice of the Ccastrato, Haus Books, London, 2008, p. 233.
[29] Falsetto is a vocal technique found in many cultures
and dates back to antiquity. In Manuel Garcia’s 1858 paper describing his
observations of the vocal folds, he attempted to distinguish their function
when singing with the chest-register as compared to singing falsetto.
Currently, highly sophisticated techniques employing fibre-optic stroboscopic
observations and xeroradiographic – electrolarngographic analysis are possible.
The so-called chest voice is equated with first-mode phonation while
falsettists and countertenors employ second-mode phonation that depends largely
on the contraction of the thyro-arytenoid and posterior crico-arytenoid
muscles.
[30] A CD produced by
[31] The movie, Farinelli was released in 1994 by director Gérard Corbiau, the musical tracks were prepared by workers at IRCAM in Paris (L'Ircam - Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique).
[32] Naomi
André, Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, and the Second Woman in
Early-Nineteenth Century Italian Opera,
[33] Henry Pleasants, Great Singers: From the Dawn of Opera to Caruso, Callas and Pavarotti, Chapter X, Simon & Schuster, Inc. NY, 1981