Allesandro Moreschi and the Castrati

A Most Merry and Illustrated Minority Report

In the late 1960's and early 70's, millions of Americans would tune in to the Tonight show with Johnny Carson. One of Johnny's frequent guests was actor and comedian Tony Randall. Tony was also quite the music and opera buff, and during one of his appearances he gave a quite learned (and entertaining) account of a type of singer that was popular during the baroque and classical eras. The singers, Tony said, were able to perform vocal gymnastics the likes of which had never been heard before. Although the singers were invariable male, their voices covered ranges equaling or exceeding those of today's operatic sopranos or mezzo-sopranos.

For the singers to achieve such range and flexibility, Tony added that the singers had undergone a medical procedure while still children. It was, in fact, the procedure that lent its name to the vocal classification. Such as a singer, Tony said, was called a castrato or in plural, castrati.

For reasons which demand no elaboration, castrated males, usually known as eunuchs, were common in antiquity. Everyone knows they guarded the harems of potentates from the Orient, but they were also traditionally employed in other administrative jobs in the governments. Some eunuchs even became influential advisors to royalty, and many - including one of "great authority" - are mentioned in the Bible.

However, as musical performers eunuchs had died out before the end of the High Middle Ages. Then, for reasons that are still not clear, they reappeared in Europe in the late sixteenth century but specifically as singers. Castrati were given official sanction in 1598 when the somewhat oddly named Pope Sixtus V decreed that castrati would sing the parts of the church choirs that had been sung by boys or falsettists. In 1599 the first two castrati joined the Sistine Chapel choir.

The popularity of the new singers quickly rose to what can legitimately be called a mania. Not only did church choirs which featured castrati attract huge crowds, but all the great baroque and classical composers - Handel, Gluck, and even Mozart - wrote songs specifically for their voices. Of course, in modern performances their roles - for instance that of La Musica in l'Orfeo - are sung by women, or alternatively like the part of Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo are transcribed for and sung by tenors. But by Mozart's time women were commonplace on the stage and women often assumed the "trouser" roles like that of Cherubino, the love struck adolescent in the Marriage of Figaro.

What seems particularly odd to the modern music fan is the heroes in baroque opera - such as Caesar in Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto - were not played by tenors, but by castrati. Even in their own time the contrast of these large, often oversized men singing in high pitched, yet powerful voices prompted critics to trash the composers for "giving heroes the voice of women". Today, as we said, the parts are sung by women, transcribed for tenors, or, as has been increasingly popular in the interest in the "authentic" performance, by countertenors.

Without doubt the most famous castrato was Carlo Bruschi (1705 - 1782), known professionally as Farinelli. Farinelli was the first truly international singing superstar, and accounts of his performances stagger the imagination. From the musical scores and reliable reports we know he was capable of singing individual notes at a rate of 1000 a minute or holding sustained notes for a minute or more. When Farinelli sang, we hear, men cheered and women swooned.

"Too much praise is no praise at all," the saying goes, and the enthusiastic bouquets thrown to the castrati is suspiciously reminiscent of the accolades given to the amazing, fantastic sound, of the Stradavarius, Amati, and Guarnerius violins. Of course in "blind" tests - no one - not even experts - can tell the difference from the sound of a $5,000,000 Strad from a modern high quality instrument. Nor is there is any correlation in the age of the instrument and the perceived beauty of the sound. We must wonder, then, how a seventeenth century castrato would fare in similar modern tests.

The suspicion that the castrati might have been a bit overhyped then and now is not ameliorated by listening to the recordings of Alessandro Moreschi. Alessandro performed in and was later the director of the Sistine Chapel choir and was the last known performing castrati. As far as anyone knows, he was also the only castrato to leave recordings. The records - made in 1902 and 1904 - make many a laymen scratch their heads and wonder what was the big deal.

It may be true that after careful and repeated listenings you might convince yourself there could be some uniqueness to the sound of Alessandro's low or mid range notes. But overall it's hard to distinguish his singing from that of a strong voiced female soprano. More to the point, whenever you read or hear commentary on Alessandro, there always seems to be a disclaimer as to why the singing doesn't sound as good as we think it should. He wasn't in his prime, we learn. The over-ornamented style of the era obscures his ability. The old recordings block the full frequency range. He was not trained in the operatic tradition. There's always some reason.

Attempts to use modern technology to recreate the "authentic" sound of the castrato's voice so far have fallen flat with a resounding splat. Computer generated "castrato" singing doesn't sound any better than computer generated singing in general. It certainly doesn't sound better than combined vocal tracks of countertenors and sopranos as was done in the (excellent) 1994 film about Farinelli titled (what else?) Farinelli.

On the other hand today there are what are known as "natural" castrati who have achieved considerable fame. These are men who for some endocrinological or other reasons have retained high voices. Still, expert opinion still tends to maintain that singing of men like blues singer Jimmy Scott and operatic soprano Michael Maniaci is not really the sound of the sixteenth century castrati. Certainly if you listen to them and keep your eyes closed, their songs of (as good as they are) sound like that of female blues singers and modern operatic sopranos.

Perhaps the repeated use of the word "modern" is the key to the mystery. We need to remember that in the seventeenth century European women were far more diminutive than they are now. Forensic measurements show that the average height of women in London in the 1700's was 5' 1/2". So sheer lung capacity was certainly an important factor for an audience in the days of the unamplified concert halls or church choirs. As any endocrinologist can vouch and studies on the bones of Farinelli demonstrate, castrati sometimes grew larger even than the average male singer. So their extra power plus their high vocal range would carry their voices to the far regions and rafters far more effectively than a tiny young slip of a seventeenth century soprano. But training and singing techniques change and ladies have gotten larger. So modern world class sopranos or mezzo-sopranos would certainly have impressed the audiences in Handel's or Mozart's day just as they do today.

Finally as always we must avoid confusing high ability of individual performers for a characteristic of the general phenomenon. Yes, Farinelli was no doubt an amazing singer who deservedly received thunderous ovations and performed vocal feats rare or unheard of today. But he could do so because he was Farinelli, not just because he was a castrato.

The operation itself was always illegal unless it was for a true medical necessity. A common excuse was the child had been injured in some farm accident - most of the children came from lower class families - and the frequency of reported hog attacks was truly astonishing. Scholarly estimates are that there were a total of 100,000 castrati produced over two hundred odd years of the rage. Only a relatively few number of the children even became singers and only a tiny faction of those moved up to professional musical - much less superstar - ranks.

Needless to say some of the castrati went on record of despising their parents. Once the normally calm and easy going castrato, Domenico Mustafa, Alessandro's predecessor as director of the Sistine Chapel Choir from 1878 to 1902, said in a rare fit of anger that he would kill his father if he ever learned the operation had been forced on him just to make him a singer. That said, many castrati developed normal friendships with both men and women. Some even married, but of course, had no natural children.

In a day where general anesthesia was usually ineffective or fatal, the quickest method was to use red hot (and so self-cauterizing) shears. More common was the relatively lengthy, painful, and dangerous procedure of drugging the child into a stupor but not complete unconsciousness and then having him physically restrained by several adults while the incision was made, the surgery performed, and the wounds cauterized and closed. How many children died isn't known but it must have been high. It wasn't until the late 1870's that the pope banned admission of new castrati to the choirs.

Around 1820 the tenor Domenico Donzelli found he could hit a modern high C without falsetto (based on the standard A of 440 hertz - the earlier tenor Gilbert Duprez could sing to a Mozartian C based on an A of 422 hertz). The technique involved lowering the larynx as if in a yawn pushing the frequency of the note up a few semi-tones. Soon it was the tenor, not the castrato that was soon cast as the operatic hero. Then after Pius X ascended the papal throne in 1903, he decreed that castrati of the church choirs were to be replaced by boy singers, so finally returning the Church to the wiser policy of two centuries previously. Alessandro Moreschi, the last true performing castrato, was permitted to continue to sing until 1913. He then retired, living in Rome on his pension, and died in 1922 at age 63.

References

Moreschi and the Voice of the Castrato / The Angel of Rome, Nicholas Clapton, Haus Publishing Ltd., (2008/2009). It appears these two titles are the same book. If anyone knows differently, please advise.

The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon, Patrick Barbier, Souvenir Press, Ltd., (1996). A general history of the castrati.

Castrato, Nicholas Clapton, BBC Documentary, 2006. Some scenes are not for the squeaminsh, but this, as Patrick's book, is a general history of the castrati. As always, care must be taken when listening even to expert opinion, particularly in the frequent short and edited soundbytes de riguer for today's educational television. Certainly the thesis that there was an extraordinary quality to the sound of the castrato that explains the audience reaction is not borne out by the work of the scholars and experts.

As with Alessandro's recordings the final reconstruction of a castrato's voice is quite a letdown given the buildup throughout the 2 hour program. In the discussion at the end of the show there is the sense the scholars, musicians, and singers were being polite but weren't really impressed. Probably the best way to describe the computer generated voice is it sounded exactly like a computer generated voice of someone hitting the occasional off-key note and straining beyond their vocal range. The singing of male soprano Michael Maniaci, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston, and treble Joey Howard was infinitely superior. Strength, firmness and smoothness, they say? Go to the live singers.

"The History of the Tenor Voice", http://www.med.rug.nl/pas/conf_contrib/reinders/Reinders_the_way_tenor.htm. From the First International Conference on Physiology and Acoustics of Singing at the University of Groningen (October 3-5, 2006). Excellent article on how the tenor voice has changed and examples of full voiced non-falsetto high C's (and of Caruso singing with faletto). Of course, they have samples of Pavarotti.

"Were They All Shorter Back Then?", Carolyn Freeman Travers, http://www.plimoth.org/discover/myth/4-ft-2.php. A discussion of heights and longevity of people in the middle ages to the seventeenth century. Americans, it turns out, were quite a bit larger than their European counterparts and lived longer. The differences may not seem like a lot - 5" 1/2" for ladies in Europe back then vs. 5' 4" today in America, but it is quite a jump. Also the heft of modern individuals - particularly in America - has grown dramatically (not to say alarmingly) in recent years.

"Alessandro Moreschi - 1902/1904 Recordings, Internet Archives, http://www.archive.org/details/AlessandroMoreschi19021904Recordings. The original CD of Alessandro's recordings is out of print, but used copies can be found. But shop around if you want them. Some copies go for under $20; other for over $300. Or you can listen to the recordings at this website and make your own judgment regarding the singing of the last performing true castrato.