Gaetano Guadagni

[JesusA (imported)]

Gaetano Guadagni (1728-1792)

Guadagni was one of the castrati who worked with Handel in London. Three arias in the Messiah were re-written by Handel specifically for his voice, most importantly the first, "But who may abide." He sang the role of Orpheus in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice at its premier in Vienna, and many more times in theaters across much of Europe.

As part of a revival of interest in castrati among music scholars, a new biography of Guadagni has just appeared, The Modern Castrato: Gaetano Guadagni and the Coming of a New Operatic Age, by Patricia Howard (Oxford University Press, 2014).

While Guadagni's early life is barely touched upon in the book, there is one passage of interest:

Unusually for a castrato, he came from a family of professional musicians. Three sisters and a brother were opera singers. The operation that defined his career was undertaken not, as was so often the case, as an act of desperation by an impoverished family hoping for eventual riches, but must have been an informed choice by parents who knew the profession from the inside, and to whom it might have seemed of little more significance than choosing an instrument for a child – and in effect it was precisely that. (pp. 1-2)

Howard continues with a description of Guadagni's importance to the success of Gluck's opera at a time when most operas were quickly forgotten after a performance or two:

Calzabigi attributed the opera's initial success specifically to him: 'Orfeo went well because we discovered Guadagni...in other hands it would have fared disastrously,' and he was credited with the subsequent diffusion of the opera, even when the title role was entrusted to other singers: '[Gluck's] famous opera of Orfeo...with Guadagni's admirable action, succeeded so well, that it was soon after attempted in other parts of Europe.' (p. 2)

[Paolo]

That line just strikes me:

to whom it might have seemed of little more significance than choosing an instrument for a child.

It's hard to imagine a family, with the outlook on having a young boy castrated, as something so...clinically accepted.

[Uncle Flo (imported)]

Children have not always been treasured. --FLO--