Angels & Monsters

[JesusA (imported)]

Angels & Monsters: Male and Female Sopranos in the Story of Opera is a new book by Richard Somerset-Ward (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). The first third of the book concentrates on the castrati of the early opera, and the last two thirds on the female sopranos who replaced them. I have only had time to skim the book, which arrived this afternoon. The following are some quotations that indicate the scope and style of the text. I’m looking forward to a leisurely read over the next couple of days:

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No one knows quite why Carlo Broschi, known as Farinelli, was a castrato. His father was a minor aristocrat who became a provincial governor in the kingdom of Naples shortly after Carlo’s birth. He lost his job three years later, so it is possible he had his son castrated for the normal reason – money. “Farinello” means “rogue” or “rascal” in Italian, and “farinelli” was apparently a nickname applied collectively to the family – perhaps because that was Governor Broschi’s reputation in politics.” (page 47)

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So what was it that Porpora [one of history’s greatest voice teachers] taught his pupils that made them so outstanding? First and foremost, it was breathing – more precisely, breath control. It is of course, the most basic requirement for all singing, but for castrati its importance was magnified by the nature of the operation that had been performed on them (customarily between the ages of eight and ten). [Though Farinelli, apparently, was castrated before his fifth birthday according to an earlier section of the book.] Two of its principal effects were to enlarge the rib-cage and to maintain the position of the larynx. Normally, when a boy’s voice breaks at puberty, the larynx moves downward, causing the timbre and pitch of the voice similarly to move downward. In the case of the castrato, the larynx maintained its position and the vocal cords therefore remained close to the cavities of resonance. In this way, the range and quality of the treble voice was maintained, and they were augmented by the much more powerful lungs and diaphragm of a grown man.

But the operation on its own could not guarantee that the castrato voice would have either the power or the control that was necessary to develop its potential. That was done by expanding the muscular system of the vocal cords, and that, in turn, required several hours – every day, for years on end – of breathing exercises. What Porpora and his colleagues at the conservatories taught the boys was to filar il suono (spin the tone)- to convert breath into a whisper, then into a tone; to swell the tone on the breath and then develop it naturally, without any constriction or stutter, into a stream of sound. Eventually, it was hoped, the boy would abandon the natural abdominal breathing of childhood and develop the ability to control his breathing through the ribs as well as the abdomen (what is called “deep costal-abdominal breathing”). Spinning tone through this highly developed equipment was what enabled the castrati to perform vocal feats that were impossible for normal human beings. (pp. 54-55)

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The province of Apulia is on the Adriatic side of Italy, in the southeast corner. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it accounted for a large part of the kingdom of Naples and it faithfully reflected the economic and social conditions of the time – widespread poverty, the dominance of the Church, and an economy in which owning land was the only real source of security. These were also the conditions that gave rise to the phenomenon of the castrati, and it is not surprising that Apulia was one of the places from which many of them came, including Farinelli from Andria and Caffarelli from Bitonto.

Why would a family allow one of its sons to be emasculated in order to retain his childhood voice into adulthood? For many families it must simply have been a matter of money. Castrati could become very rich (perhaps one out a hundred did so), but even those who didn’t might be expected to support themselves and send money home to their families. In truth, very few of them – perhaps ten or fifteen out of a hundred – were able to do even this, but in largely impoverished communities those were attractive odds nonetheless. And unfavorable odds could be further discounted by the knowledge that the boys would be serving a “higher cause,” the Church – they would be working ad honorem Dei, as Pop Clement VIII’s edict had put it. Naturally, the Church condemned the practice of castration, but everyone knew it was prepared to turn a blind eye so as to ensure that church and monastic choirs had a good supply of male soprano voices to take the place of the female voices it had banned. For some families, especially those that owned land, there was further piece of contorted reasoning: celibacy was the most effective means of birth control, and enforcing celibacy on a younger son, who just happened to have a God-given voice, must sometimes have seemed an attractive way of safeguarding the family’s property rights and avoiding the subdivision of land that would be necessary to support another family. Greed, desperation, and cruel calculation were frequently dressed up in practical or high-minded rationales. (pp.63-64)

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Few of them suffered the misfortune that eventually overtook Giovanni Francesco Grossi in 1697: he was assassinated by the relatives of a Modenese widow with whom he had had an indiscreet affair. Castrati may have sounded effeminate in their singing, and many of them looked somewhat incongruous because of the after effects of the operation (the Frenchman Charles de Brosses, traveling through Italy in 1739-40, wrote that “most sopranists become big and fat like capons, their mouths, their rumps, arms, breasts and necks rounded and chubby as in women”), but this was not universally true – Carestini, Crescentini, and Marchesi were handsome men, the matinee idols of their day. And it was certainly not true that castrati were incapable of having sex (the fact that it was “safe” sex must often have made it more tempting for their lovers). (page 67)

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The bookends of Caffarelli’s career provide interesting insights into his determination to control his own destiny. It seems likely that he was originally castrated at his own insistence. A contractual agreement of 1720, when he was ten years old, stated that his grandmother had given him the income from two vineyards so that he could study grammar, and especially music, “to which he is said to have a great inclination, desiring to have himself castrated and become a eunuch.” The end of his opera career was no less remarkable. He was in Lisbon in 1755 and would probably have been a victim of the great earthquake that devastated the city had he not chosen that day to visit Santarém. It was in thanksgiving for his escape that he made the decision to retire from the opera stage immediately, though he was only forty-five and continued singing in churches for another fifteen years. (page 77)

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Despite his experience with Velutti [who had rewritten Rossini’s arias to show off his own voice], Rossini was a great admirer of the castrati. He thought their passing had done irreparable damage to the art of singing, and as late as 1863, when he wrote his Petite messe solennelle, he listed its requirements as “twelve singers of three sexes, men, woman and castrati” (which wasn’t what he got, of course). He spoke about castrati as “the bravest of the brave,” and he had good reason to empathize with them. He once told the Belgian musicologist Edmond Michotte that there had been a terrifying moment in his own boyhood when one of his uncles, a barber, had suggested that his fine treble voice might profitably be perpetuated if the necessary operation was speedily performed. “My brave mother would not consent at any price,” he recalled. (page 88)

[Skopztikov (imported)]

Angels & Monsters: Male and Female Sopranos in the Story of Opera

Thanks for the interesting lead on a book that apparently adds new material and information to the volumes already in my bookcase.

As you know, Jesus, I once owned what was probably the world's finest private collection of documents, engravings, autograph letters, etc. related to these great singers. Having had the privilege of being the assembler, conservator and custodian of this collection was a thrill unlike any other I have known.

It finally dawned upon me, however, that what I had been straining to experience, to hear, to possess in those ancient scraps of paper was my own life as a eunuch! When I realised that, I was able to let the collection go. Several years ago I sold it to the Harvard Theatre Arts Collection through a dealer in the UK. That was a good thing, for now it is available for study by any researcher who possesses proper credentials.

Today I live quite happily as a eunuch: my mind, body and spirit in alignment at last. I share an experience with my castrati bretheren of days gone by, and while I cannot sing notes above the treble staff, I think of them when I sing bass in my Russian Orthodox parish choir.

Just love having wings!