The castrati and their impact on opera

in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Baroque opera, and, more particularly, the opera seria of Italy, was characterized by arti-

fice, fantasy, virtuosity, brilliance and spectacle. The castrati singers of the seventeenth and eigh-

teenth were peculiarly suited to this taste, being, as they were, artificially created voices with excep-

tional vocal ability, and a timbre which was often described as “other-worldly”. They were the

undisputed virtuosi of their era, and the most successful of them became the idols of opera seria,

earning enormous fees and the adulation of the most prominent members of European society.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the lost castrato voice is that we can never know to-

day how it might have sounded. If we are to be guided by accounts of the time, we can only under-

stand that the voices were extraordinary in a way that cannot be approximated by any naturally oc-

curring voice today. Alessandro Scarlatti claimed, when describing the castrato Francischello, that

he could not believe that “a mortal could sing so divinely”1. Rossini, who narrowly escaped the

knife himself as a young boy, admired the castrati and openly mourned the loss of their voices to

opera. Napolean, who despised the act of castration and did much to ensure the abolition of the

practice, was such an admirer of the castrato Crescentini that he offered him a position in Paris on

the “imperial” salary of 30,000 francs a year.2 Mozart reacted with delight to the singing of

Rauzzini, and composed the motet “Exultate Jubilate” for him.

Modern imaginings of these voices tend to be based on the male soprano voice, coun-

tertenors, or perhaps the only surviving recording of a castrato (Alessandro Moreschi) but it is un -

likely that any of these gives a real approximation of how the best of the castrato voices sounded.

Male sopranos and countertenors have quite different physiologies to the castrati, and Moreschi

was a modest talent without the benefit of the education enjoyed by Farinelli, Caffarelli or Nicol -

ini.

Contemporary accounts of the voices suggest that they were bewitchingly beautiful. It is

accounts such as the following by the Italian composer and writer Angelini Bontempi that convince

us that these were no ordinary voices. He claims that the castrato

“was a treasure of harmony and the delight of kings; that his music was in-comparable and angelic; [...] that his singing, because it was a gift from heaven, was totally perfect; [...]that his lips could calm the spirits; [...] that he held within his breast the harmony of heaven...”3

The German author, Friedrich Melchior, (Baron von Grimm) wrote of Caffarelli,

“It would be difficult to give any true idea of the degree of perfection to which this singer has brought his art...an angel’s voice...combined with the finest execution and surprising facility and precision, exert over the senses and the heart an enchantment which those least responsive to music would find hard to resist.”4

The castrati were a particular phenomenon of Italy, which was responsible for the creation

and training of the castrati. As many as four thousand boys a year are estimated to have been cas -

trated in Italy, the best of which were exported to the opera houses and royal courts of all Europe.

Others who did not attain the vocal mastery necessary to become a great operatic castrato filled

church choirs throughout Italy. But for those who, after the operation, failed altogether to exhibit

any sign of vocal talent, a miserable fate awaited. They were unsuited to manual labour, forbid -

den to marry or to take holy orders, and they were frequently the target of prejudice and derision.

Boys were castrated as young as seven or eight and were usually recruited from the poor-

est families, lured by the prospect of future fame and riches. The operation itself was illegal un -

less considered necessary to preserve life, and those found guilty of performing the act without

due medical cause could be excommunicated. Consequently, many operations were explained

away as the result of a horse riding accident, or being gored by a wild boar.

The operation caused a number of physical changes in the normal development of the boy.

The vocal chords did not lengthen as they normally would and the vocal musculature maintained

the small size, flexibility and range of a young boy. Meantime, the rest of the body showed a

greater development than in normal men. Castrati were likely to grow taller than their peers due

to the absence of testosterone which would normally close the epiphyses—the growing ends of

bones. Because the ends of the ribs didn’t fuse to the spine until much later than in an intact ado -

lescent, the castrati developed unusually large chests and lungs5. The result was a high, flexible,

child’s voice with a lung capacity and resonance equal to, or possibly greater than, that of a ma-

ture man. This physiology gave the castrati a number of physical advantages over both male and

female voices—greater volume and power, coupled with a phenomenal vocal range and great

agility. However, the physical advantages alone did not account for their extraordinary vocal

abilities.

The young castrati were also subjected to a rigorous musical education involving hours of

vocalises specifically designed to exploit the dexterity, range and breath capacity of these artifi -

cially created singers. Naples was famed for its conservatories, most notably the Conservatorio di

Santa Maria di Loreto, the Pietà dei Turchini, the Poveri di Gesù Cristo and the Sant’Onofrio in

Capuana. These were originally charitable institutions aimed at housing and educating orphans

and children of impoverished families. While living conditions in these institutions were harsh,

and discipline extremely strict, the schools were successful in attracting some of the finest music

teachers of the era, if not of any era since. The reputation of the Neapolitan schools quickly be -

came international, and they became the preferred destination of not just singers, but composers

including Pergolesi, Hasse, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Gluck and Meyerbeer.

Nicola Porpora was perhaps the most renowned of an illustrious list of voice teachers that

included Domenico Gizzi, Alessandro Scarlatti and Francesco Durante. Porpora was a composer

and teacher, whose students included the most celebrated singers of the time—Caffarelli, Farinelli

and Salimbeni. He wrote over thirty-six operas and famously set up the “Opera of the

Nobility”—the rival opera company to Handel’s at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London. Though he

never wrote down his vocal method, many of his vocalise survive today and give evidence to the

many skills a singer was required to acquire.

Caffarelli, who studied under Porporo, is reported to have followed the regime below 6:

In the morning1 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 afternoon½ hour theoretical work,½ hour of counterpoint on a canto fermo (in other words, practice in improvisation)1 hour studying counterpoint with the cartella1 hour studying letters

The studying of “letters” referred to the importance of singing words so as to bring out

their meaning. Porpora was strict about the proper execution of recitative and believed that the

heart must be engaged as a priority over vocal fireworks. His method was grounded in that of

Tosi and Pistocchi, and placed emphasis on the fioriture ornamentation, including eight kinds of

trills, apoggiaturi, florid passagi (divisions), portamenti and the ability to improvise one’s

own “graces” on the spot. This last was particularly necessary to a performer in an age when

many of the nobility attended the same opera night after night and expected the singers to provide

fresh improvisations at each performance.

Other skills that were necessary to a well-rounded education included the breathing tech-

nique necessary to execute demanding melismatic passages, diction, acting, and social decorum.

It was this broad and disciplined education, coupled with the extraordinary potential of their phys -

iology, which ensured their supremacy in operatic circles for nearly two centuries.

The dramatis personnae of many operas of the era gives evidence to the extent of

their dominance. Almost invariably, the leading male roles were given to castrati voices, and

very frequently the female roles were given to some young, adrogenous castrato. With the excep-

tion of some notable female sopranos, no other voice type was afforded anything like the same

platform time or could command the same fees. For example, in 1864, in a performance of

Alessandro Scarlatti’s Pompeo, out of eleven characters in the opera, four were played by cas-

trati, including the title role. However, of the four ladies who sang other parts in the opera on this

occasion, three of them sang trouser roles, which might, in another production, have been played

by castrati.7 A random sampling of other operas shows similar dominance by the castrati. In

Scarlatti’s last opera, Griselda, five of the seven roles are written for castrati, one is for tenor,

and the last is mute. In Handel’s Giulio Cesare, the first performance featured three castrati in-

cluding the lead role, and Mozart also used three castrati in the first performance of Mitridate,

Re di Ponto. In the operatic pecking order, the castrati reigned supreme, although they some-

times shared the starring roles with women’s voices. Tenors, according to Barbier, came a long

way behind, and basses hardly counted.8

The supremacy of the castrati was not always due to the preference of the composer, as

many castrati were notoriously difficult to deal with, and made ridiculous demands of those who

hired them. They gave rise to some of the worst abuses of opera seria, including ornamenta-

tion that was so excessive as to drown out all semblance of the composer’s original intentions.

They also made demands as to what they wished to wear and how they preferred to make their en -

trance on stage, and some even demanded to perform their favourite “suitcase aria”—some show-

case of virtuosity most flattering to their particular abilities—regardless of how appropriate or

otherwise such an aria might be for the drama in question. But their audiences adored them, and

composers and impresarios knew that they had to hire the top singers to maintain any degree of

credibility.

Italian audiences in particular were little concerned with the integrity of the dramatic story

behind the opera, and were more than willing to indulge the castrati in their various whims.

Opera houses of the period were more like social clubs, where the glitterati of society would

meet, dine and play cards, stopping only to watch the opera when their preferred singer arrived on

stage. But this does not imply that they had little respect for the performance. In a time when the

operatic entertainment could go on for hours or even over consecutive evenings, it was more a

matter of being selective. This made it essential that whatever the castrato was to sing was im-

1 Patrick Barbier, The World of the Castrati, trans. Margaret Crosland (London: Souvenir Press, 1988), 902 Ibid., 2303 Barbier, 204 Stephanie Pain, “Superstar Sopranos”, New Scientist, 189 no. 2544 (2006): 15 J.S. Jenkins, “The voice of the Castrato”, Lancet, 351 no. 9119 (1998)6 Angus Heriot, The Castrati in Opera, 2nd ed. (London: Calder and Boyars, 1956), 487 Ibid., 338 Barbier, 91

pressive. He might, therefore, have recourse to an aria di bravura chosen for its attention-

grabbing, florid character, or perhaps an aria affettuosa, that might be depended on to capti-

vate audiences by showing off the heart-rending quality of his voice.

An anecdote regarding Pacchiarotti demonstrates the power that the peculiar pathos of the

castrato voice had to move its audience. Barbier relates that

“He interpreted admirably the role of a son who was going to his death, sacrificing himself on behalf of his father. The entire theatre was in tears and the orchestra was so moved that it gradually stopped playing in the middle of an aria by the singer. Pacchiarotti came forward to the front of the stage to ask what was happening. The maestro could only manage to say: ‘I am weeping, signor’.”9

This, and similar stories, suggest something more than a voice of pleasing ability. It is likely that

the castrato voice possessed some other quality, ethereal and pathetic, that had the power to move

women to swoon and inspired adulation throughout almost all the countries of Europe.

Regardless of their private opinions of the personalities of the castrati, the major com-

posers of the period recognised their considerable abilities, and rose to the occasion when it came

to making use of their talents in their operas. The castrati commanded considerable influence in

setting the style of vocal artistry of the day, and many of the techniques used in Baroque arias

came first from the Neapolitan schools that trained the castrati. The wide intervallic leaps and

trills at which they excelled are scattered liberally throughout the operatic music of the period .

The messa di voce—an extended crescendo and diminuendo sustained on a single note over

orchestral accompaniment—displayed their powers of control and beauty of sound. But it is in

the melismatic virtuosity of the arie di bravura and the pathos of the arie affettuosa that

their influence is most keenly felt. While other voices were certainly capable of excuting melis -

matic phrases, quite simply, no other voice type excelled at them in the way the castrati could.

Naturally-occurring voices even today tend to be limited to classifications that describe them as

either light and flexible, or heavy and dramatic, but the castrato voices had the flexibility and

9 Ibid, 91

range of a coloratura soprano, the dramatic power of an extremely large voice and phenomenal

breath control.

One of the most famous anecdotes regarding Farinelli concerns a duet with a trumpet that

Porpora stage-managed to show-case his protegé’s legendary abilities:

“During the run of an opera there was a struggle every night between Farinelli and a famous player on the trumpet [...] After severally swelling a note in which each manifested the power of his lungs and tried to rival the other in brilliancy and force, they had both a swell and shake to-gether, by thirds, which was continued so long [...] that both seemed ex-hausted; and, in fact, the trumpeter, wholly spent, gave it up, thinking, however, his antagonist as much tired as himself [...]; when Farinelli, with a smile on his countenance, showing that he had only been sporting with him all that time, broke out all at once in the same breath, with fresh vigor, and not only swelled and shook the note, but ran the most rapid and difficult divisions and was at last silenced only by the acclamations of the audience. From this period may be dated the superiority which he ever maintained over all his contemporaries.”10

Farinelli’s preferred suitcase aria was “Son qual nave”, written by his brother, Riccardo

Broschi. This aria began with a very beautiful messa di voce, which Farinelli followed with

several measures of trills and detached notes, all calculated to show off his three-octave range,

vocal agility and powers of ornamentation.

Farinelli, who was known for his gentle, intelligent and humble personality, was a diligent

student of the art and never considered himself above correction. In 1731, he met with Emperor

Charles VI in Vienna, a man of discriminating taste, who advised Farinelli to give up trying to as -

tonish his hearers:

“You sing more slowly than the slowest, more rapidly than the most rapid... In future, it would be fitting for you to walk like a man and not a giant. Adopt a more simple style and gradually you will win hearts.” 11

In this, the emperor was a harbinger of the reforms of Gluck and Calzbigi, although such reforms

would not begin in earnest for another thirty years.

10 Charles Burney, The present state of music in France and Italy (London: T. Becket & Co., 1773), 213-411 Barbier, 99

As the popularity of opera seria began to decline in the eighteenth century, so too did

the golden age of the castrati, and they became viewed more and more as an oddity. From 1800,

the castrati and their art were attacked for reasons both musical and ideological. The French, in

particular, had always seen the act of castration as an offence against nature and the writers of the

Enlightenment such as Voltaire and Rousseau led the charge against them. In 1798, Pope Pius VI

revoked the long-standing ban against women on the stage, before he was deposed later that year

during the Napoleanic invasion. Napolean’s brother Joseph, who became King of Naples, forbade

castrated boys to enter the schools and conservatories, and Francis I of Lombardy-Venetia went

one further by forbidding their presence on stage. The conservatories fell into disarray, the result

of political upheaval and mismanagement, and the teaching of singing was increasingly incom-

petant. Under Napolean’s rule the four major conservatories were dissolved and a new conserva-

tory founded in its place: the Conservatoire of San Sebastiano12.

Opera itself moving towards reform, and while the reforms were not originally targetted at

the castrati (in fact, the role of Orfeo in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice was first performed by an

alto castrato, Guardagni), they did represent a shift away from the vocal ornamentation and ca -

denzas at which the castrati so excelled. The final nail in the coffin was dealt by the rise in popu -

larity in the tenor voice. In the 1820s, a singer named Domenico Donzelli introduced a new style

of tenor singing and became known as a “tenore di forza”, or “forceful tenor”. He was followed

shortly after by Gilbert Louis Duprez, who was the first heroic tenor of the romantic era 13.

Duprez became famous as the first practitioner of the high C produced from the chest—in the

1831 Italian premiere of Rossini’s Giugliemo Tell. From this point on, the tenor voice was

promoted from the minor roles of opera to the prima uomo, and the fate of the castrati was

sealed.

12 Barbier, 221-22813 Gregory W. Bloch, “The pathological voice of Gilbert-Louis Duprez”, Cambridge Opera Journal, 19 (2007)

The castrati retained a role in church choirs and were not finally excluded from the Sistine

Chapel until 1902, but their glory days ended with the career of Velluti, attributed with being the

last of the great castrati, in the early 1830s. It was their presence in the Sistine chapel that pro -

vides us today with the only known recordings of an actual castrato, that of Alessandro Moreschi.

Moreschi made a number of recordings in the Sistine Chapel in 1902 and 1904 14. While these

recordings provide a fascinating glimpse of a castrato voice, they should also be approached with

caution, as for a number of reasons they are not representative of the voices that dominated opera

for so long.

The recordings were made on wax cylinders, which cannot capture certain frequencies. The

missing frequencies relate directly to the singers’ formant, which gives the “ring” of an operatic

voice. So, what we hear from the recording does not represent Moreschi’s true voice as it would

have been heard in a concert hall. Secondly, there may be some inaccuracies as to timbre and pitch,

as early recordings did not conform to standardized playing speeds. This can make the voice sound

out of tune. Moreschi also makes use of certain performing styles which are now quite out of fash-

ion - for example, using an acciaccatura on an attack, which is sometimes as much as an octave

below the true starting note. This practice seems to have been used in the Sistine chapel for cen-

turies, and was considered a graceful way of attacking a note, but would be considered quite dis-

tasteful and unstylistic now. Although Moreschi was nicknamed the “angel of Rome” in his prime,

in fact, his voice was of moderate ability and he was past his prime at the time the recordings were

made. Finally, he received nothing like the training the operatic castrati received, and his reper-

toire, on the recordings at least, is limited to church music 15.

The legacy of the castrati remains, and their absence is felt more acutely during the current

revival of interest in opera seria. The drama of a modern performance is always somewhat

compromised by having a female take the lead male role, but transposing keys to suit coun-

tertenors or tenor voices disrupts the overall harmonic plan of the opera. The void has resulted in

14 Moreschi - The Last Castrato: Complete Vatican recordings, Pearl “Opal” 9823. Audio CD, 199315 Joe K. Law, “Alessandro Moreschi Reconsidered: A Castrato on Records”, Opera Quarterly 2, no.2 (1984): 1-12

a revival of interest in the countertenor voice, and male “sopranists” who largely sing through the

use of falsetto vocal production. More rare, and perhaps therefore more valued, are occasional

male sopranos who sing in the soprano range using their modal voices, usually as a result of an

endocrinological anomaly or a larynx which failed to mature normally. Radu Marian, Philippe

Jaroussky and Michael Maniaci are natural sopranos enjoying healthy operatic careers playing

roles originally intended for the castrati. However, one suspects that even with their more appro -

priate voices and physiologies, they still fall short of the beauty and virtuosity for which the cas -

trati were celebrated.

A contemporary critic described the castrato voice as being “as clear and penetrating as

that of choirboys but a great deal louder with something dry and sour about it yet brilliant, light,

full of impact.”16 Radu Marian’s voice perhaps best approximates this timbre, but without the full

sound and very loud volume that characterized the castrati voices. And it is obvious that the male

sopranos do not share similar physiologies - the large chests, the high larynx, the absence of the

Adam’s apple.

In an attempt to recreate the sound of the castrato, a number of recent projects have re -

sorted to technology to artificially create the original “artificial” voice. For the 1994 film

Farinelli17, which shows little regard for historical accuracy generally, sound engineers mixed

together the voice of a lyric coloratura soprano and a countertenor. In the more recent BBC Four

documentary Castrato18, a similar project digitally merged a boy soprano’s voice with that of a

tenor attempting to sing in the same range while using modal voice. The result of both these ex -

periments is somewhat questionable. Nicholas Clapton, who curated a 2006 exhibition on the

castrati at the Handel Museum in London, suggests rather facetiously that the castrati may have

sounded like “Pavorotti on helium”19 and we cannot know whether this humorous description is

any more accurate than the more diligent work done by the sound engineers. Technology may

16 Jenkins, 217 Farinelli, Sony Pictures International, March 199418 Castrato, BBC Four Music, June 200619 Sean Coughlan, “Singing in the Pain”, BBC News Magazine, 29 March 2006

still have some contribution to make as new re-mastering techniques investigate the possibility of

re-creating the missing frequencies on old recordings. But, without recordings of the legendary

voice of a Farinelli or a Senesino, the real sound of the castrati must necessarily remain a mys-

tery.

Áine Mulvey

26th November 2010

Notes