The following magazine has a 20 pages special on castrato's.

'Diapason' Le magazine de la musique classique et de la HIFI

No. 527 Juillet-Août 2005

Dossier: Les Castrats par Ivan A. Alexandre

Siface, Farinelli, Caffarelli... Qui sont ces êtres surnaturels dont le règne dura plus de deux siècles à l'église comme à l'opéra? D'où viennent-ils?

Que chantent-ils? Comment? Pourquoi ont-ils dominé si longtemps l'art du chant, et pourquoi ont-ils disparu?

Enquête au paradis et dans l'enfer du bel canto absolu.

[... Who are these supernatural being whose reign lasted for over two centuries, in church as well as in the opera? Where do they come from? What do they sing? Why? How could they domineer the art of singing for such a long time and why did they disappear?

An inquiry in paradise and in hell of bel canto absolute.]

I bought the magazine, but haven't read the vast article yet.

It consists of 13 small portraits and one bigger one [of Farinelli], a central feature going over the history of castrats as the title promises and another one about the rendition of castrato music without the castrato voice.

Illustrations are mainly era portraits.

Aditionally, there is a free CD with 11 choice pieces, the last one being Moreschi's rendition of Crucifixus.

All in all, this should be well worth the € 5.80 I spent on it.

If any are interested, I'll keep you posted or will try answering questions regarding this article.

Mandragora--

The CD sounds interesting. To my knowledge, Moreschi was the only individual who performed professionally as a castrato, after the invention of the phonograph. So are some of the eleven songs on the CD, modern simulations of castrato performances, either by males whose voices didn't change, or by female sopranos with exceptional timbre and lung capacity?

I'm not all that knowledgeable about castrato's [working on it ]

but I think you are right about Moreschi.

No, the other 10 aren't

An Onymus (imported) wrote: Sun Jul 17, 2005 12:36 pm modern simulations of castrato performances.

Rather, they are mostly instrumental pieces [apart from the last one] and not even tunes spanning the castrato era.

Since listening to them and after a closer look, they refer to the whole content of the magazine, as the 11th one ~ Moreschi ~ refers to the month's special.

I've started on the article and though I will not do a full translation, I certainly plan to do a summary; I already picked up on some facts new to me that I'd like to share here.