For anyone interested, Anne Rice's book "Cry To Heaven" is back in print. Although it is fiction, it has some very good information about the Italian Castrati in it, and is a very good read as well.

I had an older copy and somehow managed to lose it, and when I went to get another one I was told it was out of print. Last week I was browsing Amazon and thought I would see if I couldn't pick up a used copy, but when I did a search I discovered that it is available again.

I got mine yesterday - it seems thicker, and there are sections in it (notably the back) giving details about Anne's research that were not in my other book. Maybe the one I had was some sort of an abridged one or something.

At any rate, for anyone who hasn't read the book, they are back on the shelves at Amazon.

That's interesting, as I've seen that book on the shelf at the local Waldenbooks here every time that I've been in. I usually like to look at books that I've already got, to see if they've come out with a different cover yet.

It IS a great read, if not lengthy. In fact, it was well after the film INTERVIEW WITH TOM CRUISE ... I mean VAMPIRE ... came out.



One point of interest that she does mention is that our hero in the book is castrated at the age of 14, which was a bit late - historically speaking - for that to happen. Boys intended to be trained up as singers were usually cut at a much earlier age. Anne does mention in the notes that she took a bit of peotic license there, though.

However, it IS possible for a boy's voice to NOT have broken by that age. In fact, as we've discussed on the boards before, if you take a large group of boys, all 13 or 14 for instance and line them all up, it's amazing how different they all are. While the boy 3 houses down from me is almost 16 and STILL shows no signs of maturation at all, his cousin (my godson) is 14.5 and he's ... well, how to put it delicately? Puberty isn't being kind to him, let's say! His best friend, 13, looks more like an 8 year old as well. Puberty, and that period of life, is a strange one indeed.

Still, for anyone who's not read CtH, give it a read if you like that period in history and don't mind a bit of sex. It's well worth the time.

Hello I found this : Sins of the Seventh Sister (non-fiction)

link:

http://home.earthlink.net/~renaissance/ ... sister.htm

Here's a search listing of available sources for Cry to Heaven on Bookfinder.com.

http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?autho ... t=sr&ac=qr

i read Cry to Heaven several years ago, and was really taken with it. It's one of my favourite books.

From the Publisher (Cry to Heaven):

"In this mesmerizing novel, the acclaimed author of THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES and the LIVES OF THE MAYFAIR WITCHES makes real for us the exquisite and otherworldly society of the eighteenth-century castrati, the delicate and alluring male sopranos whose graceful bodies and glorious voices brought them the adulation of the royal courts and grand opera houses of Europe, men who lived as idols, concealing their pain as they were adored as angels, yet shunned as half-men.

As we are drawn into their dark and luminous story, as the crowds of Venetians, Neopolitans, and Romans, noblemen and peasants, musicians, prelates, princes, saints, and intriguers swirl around them, Anne Rice brings us into the sweep of eighteenth-century Italian life, into the decadence beneath the shimmering surface of Venice, the wild frivolity of Naples, and the magnetic terror of its shadow, Vesuvius. It is a novel that only Anne Rice could have written, taking us into a heartbreaking and enchanting moment in history, a time of great ambition and great suffering—a tale that challenges our deepest images of the masculine and the feminine.

I read the novel several years ago. I very much enjoyed it.