Slumdog Millionaire

[JesusA (imported)]

While it’s certainly a minor point, there’s a reference to castrati in the film Slumdog Millionaire. It’s minor enough and obscure enough that few would catch it, but it shows just how much thought goes into the plot elements in a finely crafted film. Here’s a quotation from the Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010048/) site:

SPOILER: The opera that Jamal and Salim see a bit of from under the bleachers at the Taj Mahal is Christoph Willibald Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice," which is based on the Greek myth in which Orpheus, distraught at his wife Euridice's death, travels all the way to the Underworld in an attempt to retrieve her. Jamal's lifelong quest to rescue Latika from the various "underworld" figures who have control of her is an echo of this myth. Furthermore, the first singer to perform the role of Orpheus (in 1762) was a castrato, which means that while he was a little boy, he had been castrated so as to allow him to continue hitting the higher notes that boy singers can reach before they undergo puberty and their voices drop. The film's subplot in which children are kidnapped by Maman and mutilated so that they will be more lucrative beggars and street singers is an echo of this opera's history.

[Bagoas (imported)]

"Orfeo ed Euridice" is a fine opera as Gluck wrote it. What a pity that the current Metropolitan Opera production of it has made it absurd by attiring the ancient Greeks in blue jeans and T-shirts !