The Castrato

The Castrato PDF Author: Martha Feldman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520292448
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato’s comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchy—involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives—whereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers—from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini—were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive, their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their literal demise.

The Castrato

The Castrato PDF Author: Martha Feldman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520292448
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato’s comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchy—involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives—whereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers—from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini—were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive, their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their literal demise.

The Castrato and His Wife

The Castrato and His Wife PDF Author: Helen Berry
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191620181
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 327

Get Book Here

Book Description
The opera singer Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci was one of the most famous celebrities of the eighteenth century. In collaboration with the English composer Thomas Arne, he popularized Italian opera, translating it for English audiences and making it accessible with his own compositions which he performed in London's pleasure gardens. Mozart and J. C. Bach both composed for him. He was a rock star of his day, with a massive female following. He was also a castrato. Women flocked to his concerts and found him irresistible. His singing pupil, Dorothea Maunsell, a teenage girl from a genteel Irish family, eloped with him. There was a huge scandal; her father persecuted them mercilessly. Tenducci's wife joined him at his concerts, achieving a status as a performer she could never have dreamed of as a respectable girl. She also wrote a sensational account of their love affair, an early example of a teenage novel. Embroiled in debt, the Tenduccis fled to Italy, and the marriage collapsed when she fell in love with another man. There followed a highly publicized and unique marriage annulment case in the London courts. Everything hinged on the status of the marriage; whether the husband was capable of consummation, and what exactly had happened to him as a small boy in a remote Italian hill village decades before. Ranging from the salons of princes and the grand opera houses of Europe to the remote hill towns of Tuscany, the unconventional love story of the castrato and his wife affords a fascinating insight into the world of opera and the history of sex and marriage in Georgian Britain, while also exploring questions about the meaning of marriage that continue to resonate in our own time.

The Castrato

The Castrato PDF Author: Joyce Pool
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935954415
Category : JUVENILE FICTION
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This young adult novel shines a light on the life of the boys whose pure voices would never change. The politics, the intrigue, and the all-encompassing music rises from the pages of this enthralling, disturbing novel.

The Castrato

The Castrato PDF Author: Lawrence Goldman
Publisher: John Day Company, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
Biographical fiction on the great soprano Farinelli, 1705-1782.

The Modern Castrato

The Modern Castrato PDF Author: Patricia Howard
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199365202
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Modern Castrato: Gaetano Guadagni and the Coming of a New Operatic Age chronicles the career of the most significant castrato of the second half of the eighteenth-century. Guadagni may have been the only singer of the time fully able to understand the demands and opportunities of this reform, as well to possess the intelligence and self-knowledge to realize that it suited his skills, limitations and temperament perfectly--making him the first castrato to embrace the concepts of modern singing.

Moreschi and the Voice of the Castrato

Moreschi and the Voice of the Castrato PDF Author: Nicholas Clapton
Publisher: Haus Pub.
ISBN: 9781905791422
Category : Castrati
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Known as the 'Angel of Rome,' Alessandro Moreschi was the last surviving castrato singer of the Vatican choir, and the only castrati whose voice was recorded. Its ethereal, haunting quality was highly prized for centuries in the papal basilicas and opera houses of Europe (readers can request a copy on CD using details in the book). The castrati tradition was established in Italy in the sixteenth century by Pope Clement VIII, and by the seventeenth century had moved onto the secular operatic stage, where castrato singers were feted as the 'pop stars' of their day. No other singers came close to matching their fame and notoriety. By the nineteenth century, however, their very existence had become an embarrassment, and when Moreschi himself joined the Sistine Chapel in 1883, there were only six castrati left inthe choir, and by 1903 they were officially no more. The strange and lonely life of Alessandro Moreschi was lived in the shadows of great events and great institutions, his personality glimpsed only by inference and allusion. Written by the acclaimed musicologist and countertenor Nicholas Clapton, this is a perceptive and informed study of the last survivor of a perennially intriguing part of Western cultural history. Clapton addresses the complexities inherent in such a complicated and historically neglected subject, establishing that castratisingers were an integral part of the lineage of Western music that should not be judged or condemned from the perspective of the twenty-first century. A professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music,Nicholas Clapton's career as a counter-tenor has seen him particularly involved in performing the repertoire of the great castrati. In 2006, he produced and presented a television documentary on the castrato voice for the BBC.

Portrait of a Castrato

Portrait of a Castrato PDF Author: Roger Freitas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521885213
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Get Book Here

Book Description
A fascinating insight into the life and music-making of the most documented musician of the seventeenth century, castrato Atto Melani.

Surgery and Selfhood in Early Modern England

Surgery and Selfhood in Early Modern England PDF Author: Alanna Skuse
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108843611
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Get Book Here

Book Description
Implements stories of surgical alteration to consider how early modern individuals conceived the relationship between body, mind, and self.

Moreschi

Moreschi PDF Author: Nicholas Clapton
Publisher: Haus Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
Behind the extraordinary sound of the voice of ‘the last castrato’ lies a strange and lonely life lived in the shadow of great events and institutions, a personality glimpsed by inference and allusion.

The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness

The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness PDF Author: Fred Everett Maus
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199793631
Category : Gender identity in music
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In the 1990s, academic study of LGBTQ issues in relation to music centered on classical music, and the research topics and researchers were mostly white. The scope of the field has expanded greatly since then, with ongoing research on classical music, extensive work on white popular music, a growing literature on Black music, and recent initiatives in ethnomusicology. The term "queer" has risen as a welcome intention of inclusiveness, along with some complexity in its meanings. In The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness, contributors choose their relationship to the term as it relates to their work within and without the academic community. Offering a decisive departure from a Western- and Eurocentric approach to music, this Handbook reflects different rhetorics of queer musicology. Chapters look at music and queer experience across a range of venues and approaches, from gospel to electronic dance music; from Hong Kong public music to Ukrainian pop. Together, contributors illustrate the potential of queer methodologies in the musical realm, and where we go from here. Keywords: queer musicology, ethnomusicology, queer performance, popular music, queer theory, music and sexuality, LGBTQ studies"--