Castrati on the BBC

[JesusA (imported)]

BBC Television has scheduled a potentially interesting documentary on castrati. Any Archive members in the UK may want to watch and provide some feedback for the rest of us. Below are an article from Opera Today and the blurb from the BBC Press Office web site:

“Castrato” — In Search of a Lost Voice

Nestling artistically in a bowl, carefully arranged and lit to suit the camera early in the programme, the testicles seemed to glow softly with their hidden history, their inherent potential and, now, their very lack of future.

One might say they reflected rather neatly the subject of this film recently made for television by BBC Producer Francesca Kemp: those fabled creatures of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Castrati. These singers were such artists, such performers, such celebrities in their heyday of the mid baroque, that our musical folk memory is still full of them — they have never really died. It seems that each new generation of music lovers is re-discovering their story, is enraptured by the myth, and fascinated by the reality of their lives as we know it today. But the greatest fascination of all is the voice itself — what did it sound like? Would we recognise it as the marvel it was then considered? We are still chasing that holy grail, that rainbow’s end, with ever more sophisticated methods, and this film sets out to try to illuminate, if not answer, some of the questions we still have about it.

If you are wondering just why people might be tempted to watch, Kemp herself has no such doubts. “We're so much more interested in their repertoire now, especially the operatic; it’s a natural extension of the recent explosion of interest in the countertenor voice. And we're so much more aware of issues around period style — we know how exciting and revealing it is to hear Mozart concerti played on a fortepiano, and I think there's an equally valid interest in getting closer to understanding what this particular vocal quality might or might not have been.” She adds: “And more broadly, it's a fascinating model for understanding our eternal obsession with the humanly bizarre or unusual, and our current preoccupations with a whole host of socio-cultural issues such as fame at any price/body alteration/gender models/child abuse and so on.”

The film’s central scientific thrust is one of the attempted regeneration of the voice electronically, and unlike the well-known attempt to do this for the feature film “Farinelli” whereby the engineers rather crudely morphed a soprano and countertenor voice, here the professors and scientists seek to try to match electronically on a computer certain elements of what is probably our only recorded history of a castrato voice, that of Alessandro Moreschi, with elements of a tenor and treble voice. How they do this, and what they base their ideas on, makes for interesting viewing and listening. Whether the final result satisfies, or merely frustrates, will be up to the viewer to decide — certainly there is no definitive answer here even if intriguing pathways are opened up for exploration. As presenter Nicholas Clapton (author of works on the castrati) says: “In the recordings of Moreschi, which I do not believe are as bad as many people do, we have “documentary” evidence of the castrato sound. There is a strong tenor element in his voice, although because of his child-size vocal tract it is a tenor sound “up an octave”, with what sounds rather like a super-charged treble above that.”

During the experiments, we hear examples of several voices: boy treble, soprano, countertenor (Clapton himself,) and perhaps most exciting of all, that of the young American operatic male soprano Michael Maniaci. Excerpts of his rendition of the Alleluja from Mozart's motet “Exultate, jubilate”, K. 165, written in 1773 for the famous castrato Venancio Rauzzini, certainly raise the musical temperature of the film many notches and were impressive. (As a footnote, Mozart also created the role of Cinna Silla for Rauzzini in his opera “Lucio Silla” — a role that Maniaci has recently sung at Santa Fe Opera).

In contrast to the music made by this male soprano, the electronic experiments seem only to have produced some, frankly, unattractive sounds so far and I asked for Francesca Kemp’s view. “Yes I agree Michael is completely wonderful. But I do wonder whether we're right to think that he's “closer” to the castrato sound than the other electronic or human examples ………we don't know what the end result should be, and as is pointed out in the film, we absolutely don't know that we'd like the sound of an 18th century castrato voice any more than we tend to “like” that of Moreschi”. Clapton agrees: “My hunch is that modern listeners would find the voice, manner and whole performance of a castrato like Farinelli extremely strange, indeed alien, much like we would find the conversation of Handel, Johnson, or George II extremely peculiar today”.

If so, despite our enduring fascination with these long-dead superstars, perhaps this is a reason for letting sleeping voices lie?

S.C. Loder

(The broadcast is scheduled for screening on BBC 4 television in the UK, on July 5th at 2100hrs.)

Opera Today

Saturday, June 23, 2006

http://www.operatoday.com/content/2006/ ... in_sea.php

Castrato

Wednesday 5 July

9.00-10.00pm BBC FOUR

Castrati were the undisputed superstars of 18th-century musical culture, driving crowds across Europe into literal frenzies with their intoxicatingly androgynous virtuoso voices. The mythical status of these "third sex" singers to the 18th-century world, their ascension from church pew to operatic stage, and their sudden fall from grace at the turn of the century, remain music's great untold story.

Working with medical, vocal and acoustic experts, Nicholas Clapton, countertenor and castrato historian, analyses the anatomical mysteries of the castrato and the biological implications of castration. Clapton travels to Bologna, Italy's northern centre of castrato singing and the adopted home town of Farinelli, perhaps the most famous castrato. He visits one of Europe's few surviving 18th-century opera houses, the Teatro Comunale, to hear the church music of Nicolo Porpora – the greatest castrato teacher of the time and tutor to Farinelli.

For the first time in Britain, American male soprano, Michael Maniaci – a young Baroque opera singer whose voice remarkably did not break at puberty – performs one of Mozart's best-loved pieces of church music, Exultate jubilate, originally written for castrato Rauzzini.

Professor David Howard guides viewers through the science of human singing, and the nature of these different voice types. With Nicholas Clapton, Howard devises an experiment to recreate the sound of the 18th-century operatic castrato. David proposes a synthesis whereby sophisticated audio technology will allow him to "place" an adult male's vocal tract on top of a boy's vocal chords (or "folds"). The repertoire selected for this synthesis is Handel's famous "Largo", the aria "Ombra mai fu" from his opera Xerxes, which can be heard at the end of the programme.

Source recordings for this experiment are made in the anechoic room at York University, using choristers from York Minster and Darren Abrahams, a young tenor with an extremely high range. The film ends with a full musical presentation of this synthesised sound.

LS

BBC Press Office

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/progin ... d_castrato

[Sac_mec (imported)]

Here is some good news to celebrate, Jesus. I am pleased to read Francesca Kemp's quotes which illustrate the interest of the broadcast not just in musical terms but in all sorts of contemporary terms also. I'm no great opera buff sadly and neither have I heard of the American singer Michael Maniaci, but it will be fascinating to hear him sing Mozart. The technical attempts and aspects of the programme also appear fascinating.

Excuse me now for being a bit geekish but also I hope, helpful.

BBC 4 TV is a minority TV channel that broadcasts just in the evenings,from 20.00hrs CET/ 19.00 BST and only on digital terrestial TV, digital satellite and via cable. Sadly, that means that about 40% of British viewers who are sticking with analogue TV cannot see the programme. There is also good news though for Eunuch Archive readers in mainland Europe who want to see this programme; many of you will be able to.

All BBC TV and radio programmes are transmitted without encryption, that is to say they are Free To Air and the signals reach across the UK and up to Iceland.

A bigger dish is needed, but the programmes can be seen across most of Western Europe and as far South as Spain.You do not need a Sky TV receiver or subscription. Any satellite receiver will pull in the signal as long as you can point your satellite dish to Astra 2A/2B. Astra 2A/2B etc.. are located at 28.2E and you need to load the following signal:

10772 H 22000 5/6 So, the programme will be broadcast to a potentially large area. (During the day a Children's channel is on this transponder)

Isn't it good to celebrate an eunuch/castrati related arts TV event which will

be pure entertainment?

Should this programme be a co-production then it may well be broadcast again in Europe on Arte, or 3Sat. It has to be said that Arte is the best European Arts Channel and it also broadcasts on many satellites.

[HairyHarry (imported)]

I watched the programme, and found it interesting. The electronic simulation was a good attempt, but did all of the castrati sound the same anyway. The narrative was informative, as were the locations.

[Quillman (imported)]

I managed to watch the programme and also to tape it- the BBC must surely be congratulated on such a first class documentry/factual film. Even given the dire censorship prevailing in the UK at the moment the film maker did not sidestep any of the issues especially when discussing in some graphic detail about "the operation". Absolutely brilliant! I am not sure of the technology but I think you should be able to download the programme via the BBC 4 Website, which would be better than the VHS tape that I have, and I do believe that this VHS does not work on US machines. I am looking forward to a repeat tonight (Sunday 9th) and a full showing of Il Castrato (Farinelli) hopefully in English as I have only a German copy that I made when it first came out.

Cheers!

Quillman UK

[Paolo]

If you have access to a DVR that can copy the program to a blank DVD, and you wanted to share it, Quillman, that would eliminate the issue of compatibility. I'm not sure about DVR's outside the USA, but mine is not even equipped to make a region coded DVD on a DVD blank. Even if it did, the region codes on DVD's when played on computers is a moot point with DVD Region Free software. There's a purchase package and a limited free trial version.

http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-region-free.htm

You can find that online. It makes a computer's DVD ROM play any DVD you shove into it, without touching the firmware of the drive. In fact, if you have a watchable copy on VHS, I'd recommend doing that. If there are video service shops available there, the fee to transfer it probably isn't high. It's not here.

[JesusA (imported)]

A somewhat degraded copy of the program has been posted on the download site rapidshare.de. It is in five separate files that need to be rejoined with an appropriate program before they can be watched. The original file was split with HJSPlit, which is a PC only program. I was able to rejoin the parts on my Mac with MacHacha. The visuals and sound are slightly out of synch and the video is degraded enough that it can only be watched on a very small screen, but the program is stunning.

Split with HJSPlit.

The five files need to be rejoined to produce a playable file.

SIZE: 416MB (a normal hour of TV programming should be about twice this)

RUNNING TIME: 1 hour

Your Links to retrieve the pieces:

http://rapidshare.de/files/25064290/castrato.avi.002 (]http://rapidshare.de/files/25062213/castrato.avi.001[/url)

[url=]http://rapidshare.de/files/25068535/castrato.avi.004 (]http://rapidshare.de/files/25066402/castrato.avi.003[/url)

[url=]http://rapidshare.de/files/25069883/castrato.avi.005

I hope that a DVD version of the program is eventually available. I will certainly be one of the first customers.

[Patient (imported)]

Unless you have access to at least five ipa's or pay about 10 euros you will be limited to one file each 80 minutes. It will take about 3.5 hours if you start each download promptly.

I can't guess where i got that 3.5 hours figure. It actually took six, but was well worth it. Many thanks for the links, Jesus.

.

[Testman (imported)]

http://www.freebyte.com/hjsplit/#hjjoin

I'll join them up with this I guess. After that, I'll compress this avi file into another format that takes up far less space.

[Paolo]

Just a quick note for your own info:

If you have a DivX certified player that will play most AVI files - the Philips DVP 642/37 is a good one - an hour worth of video in Divx or Xvid will be about 700 MB in size. That's at a res of 640x480. Anything smaller, and you get chunks when viewing it on the DVD player, or it's the size of a postage stamp on the PC.