Farinelli's Grave

[n3rf (imported)]

Italian scientists exhume body of 18th-century castrato

(AP) -- Scientists have exhumed the body of the legendary 18th-century opera singer Farinelli to learn more about the castrati, male singers neutered in childhood to preserve their high-pitched voices.

Farinelli was the most popular and best-paid opera singer in Europe before his death in 1782. His remains were exhumed Wednesday from the historic Certosa cemetery in Bologna, said musicologist Carlo Vitali, a founder of the Farinelli Studies Center.

The bones will be examined by scientists from the universities of Bologna and Pisa for insights into Farinelli's lifestyle, habits and possible diseases, as well as the physiology of a castrato.

Scientists were surprised to find not just Farinelli's remains but also those of his grandniece Carlotta Pisani Broschi.

''When Carlotta died in 1850, the grave was reopened and Farinelli's bones were stacked together at the base of the tomb to make (a) place for Carlotta's remains,'' Vitali said Thursday.

The stacking of the bones degraded the preservation of Farinelli's remains, which included his jawbone, several teeth, parts of his skull and almost all of his major bones.

Vitali described the major bones as ''long and sturdy, which would correspond with Farinelli's official portraits, as well as the castrati's reputation for being unusually tall.''

http://www.physorg.com/news72024845.html

[A-1 (imported)]

Farnelli's Grave?

Here, check this (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cg ... id=6901872) out and also this. (http://www.findagrave.com/php/famous.ph ... =Farinelli)

Great information...

Thanks, N3RF...

[JesusA (imported)]

Another interesting article on the same subject. The original article (link below) has two photographs and a link to a recording by Moreschi included.

Scientists study secrets of the castrati

Best-known castrated singer’s remains exhumed in Italy

By Stephen Brown

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

ROME – Historians and scientists have exhumed the remains of the legendary castrato Farinelli in Italy, to study the anatomical effects of castration carried out on young boys to turn them into high-pitched stars of the opera.

Castrati played heroic male leads in Italian opera from the mid-17th to the late 18th century, when bel canto was the rage in Europe. Farinelli, born Carlo Broschi in 1705, was the most famous of them all, in a stage career lasting from 1720 to 1737.

Carlo Vitale of the Farinelli Study Center in Bologna said Wednesday that scientists had recovered the bodies of the singer and his great-niece, who moved his body from a first grave destroyed in the Napoleonic wars.

His final resting place in Bologna’s Certosa cemetery was only recently discovered.

“They are in a middling state of preservation but the scientists say there is something to work on,” Vitale told Reuters from the graveyard, where Farinelli and his great-niece lay beneath a tombstone with a long Latin epitaph.

His remains were to be taken to Bologna University for study by a team of scientists, including an acoustics expert who was eager to find remains of the vocal chords and larynx to discover what gave castrati such extraordinary vocal range and power.

“This is the only skeleton of them we have,” said Nicholas Clapton, a British expert on the castrati.

“We want to know if they were like the cartoons at the time depicted them, tall and dangly, or with women’s breasts and large buttocks, or like the grand gentleman in Farinelli’s official portraits,” he told Reuters.

A singing professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London and curator of an exhibition on the composer Handel’s use of the castrati, Clapton said the removal of boy chorists’ testicles kept their vocal chords small while the hormonal changes meant their bodies kept growing well into adulthood.

“That gave them huge lung capacity but with a very sweet voice,” he said.

It could also mean castrati grew abnormally tall or fat and could sprout breasts, though surviving official portraits of Farinelli depict a handsome man in fine dress.

Castrati also had their critics, who thought their voices were ghastly and their mutilation was barbaric.

The Catholic Church banned the practice on pain of excommunication. Nevertheless, castrati were part of church choirs, even at the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, until as recently as 1903, Clapton said.

The last surviving castrato, Sistine Chapel chorist Alessandro Moreschi, lived long enough to make recordings in 1902 and 1904, though on the dated gramophone records his voice sound like what Clapton described as “Pavarotti on helium.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13827764/from/ET/

[Bagoas (imported)]

I must take issue with Nicholas Clapton's description of Alessandro Moreschi's voice. I have two original Moreschi recordings, one on the Gramophone and Typewriter label (Domine salvum fac Pontificam nostrum Leonem, G.C. -54766) and a re-release in the US of Oremus pro Pontificem on the Victor label.

Admittedly, the voice takes some getting used to. We must not only bear in mind the deficiencies of the recording process, but also that Moreschi's style of tone production and voice placement is that of the 19th century. The "scooping" approach to high notes, unacceptable today, seems to have been common prectise in Moreschi's day....The voice itself is hard to describe. I have never heard Pavarotti on helium and don't think that I would wish to. I can imagine such a sound, however, and it bears no resemblance to Moreschi's voice.

It is, indeed easier to describe what it does NOT sound like than what it DOES sound like. It does NOT sound like a more powerful version of a boy soprano voice, the timbre is very different. Similarly, it does not sound like a normal female soprano voice. Anyone who did not know that the recording had been made by a castrato would comment that "That's a strange-sounding soprano." Neither, however, does he sound much like a countertenor. In short, the voice is unique and rather unsettling because it does not fit well into any known category....

The recordings which Fred Gaisberg made of Moreschi in 1902 and 1904 have been re-released on LP and CD. I hope that the CD is better than the LP dubbing because the LP is a travesty. Professor Moreschi sounds like a nanny goat on the LP transfer. I can assure you that his voice sounds sweeter and more agreeable on the original recordings....

If we are justified in drawing any conclusions from Prof. Moreschi's recordings about the voices of Farinelli, Senesino, et al. I think that we might say that the castrato voice is sui generis and that attempts to synthesize an approximation to such a voice, as for that of Carlo Broschi in the film, "Farinelli", may well be foredoomed to failure.