Did anyone else notice this on the BBC News website?

BBC Magazine article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4853432.stm)

Singing in the Pain

By Sean Coughlan

BBC News Magazine

Castrati were the singing superstars of the 18th Century. But, as a new exhibition illustrates, theirs is a tale with some modern parallels.

They look rather innocent in the museum display case - like a pair of old-fashioned shears. But these "castratori" were the implements used to castrate boys - who were making an irreversible sacrifice for their singing careers.

It might seem more like tears in their eyes than Stars in their Eyes, but this was the uncomfortable route to stardom taken by thousands of poor families who wanted their sons to become rich and famous musical stars.

In 17th and 18th Century Italy, about 4,000 boys were castrated each year, from the age of eight upwards, with the aim of making a fortune as opera singers and soloists with choirs in churches and royal palaces.

The castrato's voice was prized for its combination of high pitch and power - with the unbroken voice able to reach the high notes, but delivered with the strength of an adult male.

Composers were enthusiastic about the more complex musical possibilities of these voices - and music lovers turned these exotic figures into the pop idols of their day.

Female fans

"The best castrati were superstars, adored by female fans. Their voices had a tremendous emotional impact on the audiences of the day," said Sarah Bardwell, director of the Handel House Museum, which is staging the exhibition.

These singers, known by nicknames such as Nicolini, Senesino and Farinelli, and often notoriously temperamental, travelled around the courts and capitals of Europe, pulling the crowds wherever they performed.

And as with today's celebrities, cartoonists lampooned their extravagant appearance, lavish lifestyles and their reputation for tantrums and stormy personalities.

Historian David Starkey draws several parallels with modern pop singers - not least the way young stars are the products of their parents' ambitions.

"The full horror of it is in that display case - those crude surgical instruments.

"But imagine his parents doing it. It's horribly like the child star of today, forced into this artificiality, forced through the shocking mill of Hollywood - to deliver that ineluctable, strange, desirable thing of star quality."

Mutilation

And he says that there are echoes in modern culture of this link between changing physical form as part of performance.

"We're very familiar in modern times with the association between mutilation and art - the idea of human beings changing themselves, the idea of the natural, physical body being something for you to transform," said Dr Starkey.

"This is the idea that art is something sublimely unnatural - and probably the supreme example of this is the art of the castrati.

"It is unnatural in every way, depending on an operation that is an abomination to every man, and yet if it worked, delivered something that, in the opinion of some of the greatest composers of all time, was the supreme human voice - founded on utter and supreme inhumanity."

And rather like many modern pop stars, he says that the androgyny and sexual ambiguity of the castrato singers was part of their appeal.

'Long live the knife!'

A further connection between the 18th Century singing stars and their modern equivalents is that the museum, in the Mayfair house where George Handel lived, was also where Jimi Hendrix lived in the 1960s.

Handel's era was the heyday of the castrati, but the fashion for their musical style faded - and increasingly women began to take the roles originally performed by the castrati.

The last premiere of an opera to feature a castrato was in 1824 - and the last performance of a castrato in London was in 1844. By 1870, the Italian government had banned such castration in the cause of art.

The last-ever performing castrato, and the only one recorded, was Alessandro Moreschi, who was supposedly applauded by crowds with the call "Eviva il coltello" ("Long live the knife!").

The voice of Moreschi, who had become conductor of the choir of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, was captured in 1902 by a gramophone company, when the singer was aged 44.

Described by the exhibition curator, Nicholas Clapton, as sounding like "Pavarotti on helium", these castrato voices had an eerie mix of power and innocence.

The vocal range was of a pre-pubescent boy, but the singer had the lung capacity of an adult - giving it a quality that was different from a woman, a boy or a male "falsetto" voice.

Rather grimly, only a small number of those boys who had been castrated became star performers, with the majority failing to make a career in music - even after this toughest of career choices.

Handel and the Castrati, Handel House Museum, 25 Brook Street, London W1K 4HB. Exhibition: 29 March to 1 October 2006.

Very interesting article but the recording of the castrati is incredible.

A far better and much more balanced article about the Handel House exhibit appeared in last week's issue of New Scientist. (I was on the road and only read the issue this evening.) I've added a few notes and comments in square brackets.

Superstar sopranos

By Stephanie Pain

"It would be difficult to give any true idea of the degree of perfection to which this singer has brought his art...an angel's voice...combined with the finest execution and surprising facility and precision, exert over the senses and the heart an enchantment which those least responsive to music would find hard to resist." The singer was the Italian opera star Gaetano Majorano, better known as Caffarelli. Some 18th-century critics considered his voice the finest in Europe. But an angel's voice came at a price: at the age of 10, Caffarelli had been castrated. [The above paragraph was the caption for an engraving of Caffarelli that accompanied the article below.]

GAETANO MAJORANO knew from an early age that he wanted to sing. He had a promising voice but he wanted the sort of voice that would make people weep and make him wealthy. In short, he wanted to be a castrato. In the early 18th century, Italy's most famous singers were all castrati, men with voices that soared as high as a woman's but were as powerful as a man's - yet unlike either. It was the sound of a boy's voice in a man's body, honed to perfection by years of training.

For centuries, Italian boys had been castrated to preserve their pure, young voices into adulthood. Many probably had no idea what was going to happen to them. Others knew and were resigned to it. But some boys were more than willing, says Nicholas Clapton, curator of a new exhibition about castrati at London's Handel House Museum. Majorano, from the little town of Bitonto in Apulia, was one of them. In 1720, when he was 10, he was granted the income from two vineyards belonging to his grandmother "that he might profit from the study of grammar and also give attention to music with the utmost propriety, towards which the said Gaetano is said to have a large inclination, desiring to be castrated and be made a eunuch".

The earliest records of castrato singers in Italy date from the 1550s, when they began to sing in aristocratic houses and Roman churches. Although the church expressly forbade castration, soon even the pope's choir included castrati. Women were barred from singing in church and choirboys' voices were all too temporary. The voice of the castrato was more powerful than either - and it lasted.

Many poor families were only too happy to allow a son with a good voice to be castrated if the Church would take him off their hands. By the mid-17th century demand for castrati was also coming from another quarter: the opera. The other-worldly voices of castrati were perfect for the mythical beings and heroes of the new style of opera. The Church offered a safe living, but the opera held out the prospect of fame and fortune. The fashion lasted two centuries in Italy, during which as many as 4,000 boys a Year were castrated in the hope they would become great singers. [Some doubt that the number was ever this high, though it is certain that castration was far more common in the early years of the castrati period than toward the end when we know much more about individual castrati.]

What made the castrato voice so popular, not just with their audiences but with the great composers of the day? "Part of it was the voice and part of it their training," says Clapton. "The voice had more power than any other voice, more flexibility and more brilliance." They could sing more notes in one breath than anyone else, yet they weren't just vocal acrobats. "They had amazing control over their voices. They could sing the highest notes with a softness and emotion that could reduce people to tears."

Castration influenced the voice in several ways. The most obvious was that it didn't break at puberty. In normal development, the increasing output of testosterone from the growing testes triggers the development of secondary sexual characteristics, including the deepening of thevoice. At puberty, the larynx grows larger and vocal cords grow longer by as much as 60 per cent. The longer cords vibrate more slowly, lowering the pitch of the voice. Collagen also accumulates in the cords, making them thicker and harder, deepening the voice still further. In a boy without testes, the cords remain short, about the same length as an adult woman's, so they vibrate faster and can produce higher notes.

Other changes associated with puberty are controlled by growth hormones rather than sex hormones, so castrated boys shot up in height like their peers. Some grew unusually tall because an absence of testosterone delays closure of the epiphyses, the growing ends of bones. "The result was that castrati had a boy's vocal cords in a man's body," says Clapton. "But because the ends of the ribs didn't fuse to the spine until very late, the ribcage remained flexible at the time they were training hardest and they developed unusually large chests and lungs. That probably accounts for their legendary breath control."

Despite the fame of the castrati, no one wanted to acknowledge the deed by which they were created. When English musicologist Charles Burney toured Italy in 1770 hoping to learn how and where it was done, he drew a blank. "I inquired throughout Italy at what place boys were chiefly qualified for singing by castration, but could get no certain intelligence. I was told at Milan that it was at Venice; at Venice, that it was Bologna; but at Bologna: the fact was denied.... The operation most certainly is against the law...and all the Italians are so much ashamed of it, that in every province they transfer it to some other." [There are surviving written records of the cathedral in Florence paying for the castration of choir boys in the town of Norcia. We have no record of the place of castration of most of the castrati, or even the age at which they were castrated, however.]

Understandably, accounts of how boys were castrated are hard to come by. By Majorano's time, there seem to have been two favourite methods, says Clapton. "One was to make a small incision in the scrotum then cut through the spermatic cords, leaving the testes to shrivel and die. The other was to remove the whole scrotum, testes and all."

Some boys died, either from crude attempts at anaesthesia or from infection. In any case, castration did not guarantee a successful singing career. "The unusual features produced by castration were not enough to create the castrate sound. Training was every bit as important as their physical state," says Clapton. Castration did mean that a boy's training wasn't interrupted by a change of voice. "By the time they were 16 they had a fantastic technique," says Clapton. "They were the ultimate singing machine. Their whole anatomy, life and psychology was devoted to singing." Even so, only 1 per cent of castrated boys were good enough for the opera. The best of the rest sang in church choirs, while thousands failed to make the grade as any kind of singer. [This was certainly true in the early years, when the most common source of castrati seems to have been orphans from poor families where more distant relatives wanted them removed from any inheritance disputes. Their sisters would have been placed in convents for the same reason. These early castrati were not necessarily even singers before their castration. Later, boys were selected for castration only after their abilities had been demonstrated and the success rate was much higher.]

Majorano got his wish and spent the next five years in Naples training at the school of Nicola Porpora, one of the most distinguished singing masters of the time. It was a tough life, rising early and singing for up to 6 hours a day. But by 16, Majorano had become Caffarelli, an accomplished mezzo-soprano who was ready for his debut at the opera.

By now the craze for Italian opera had spread beyond Italy. Opera houses across Europe competed to hire the best singers, offering huge sums in an effort to outbid their rivals. Following in the footsteps of other great castrati, Caffarelli performed for adoring audiences all over the continent.

The most lucrative place to sing was London. The English were fascinated by these exotic men with their strange voices and paid handsomely to hear them. Money wasn't the only attraction in London: it was also the home of perhaps the greatest composer of Italian opera, George Frederick Handel. "Handel's arrival on London's operatic scene in 1711 put Italian opera at the heart of the British cultural scene for several decades and brought the finest castrati to the city," says Clapton. For the 1737-38 season, Handel's star was Caffarelli, for whom he wrote two operas.

There's no record of whether Caffarelli ever regretted his decision to be castrated. He certainly achieved fame and amassed a fortune large enough to buy himself a dukedom in Italy. As for his voice, Porpora, who had taught some of the most famous castrati, said to Caffarelli at the end of his training, "Go my son: I have nothing more to teach you. You are the greatest singer in Furope." For a boy who just wanted to sing, that might have counted more than anything else.

Further reading: Moreschi: The Last Castrato, by Nicholas Clapton (Haus Publishing, 2004)

Handel and the Castrati is an exhibition at the Handel House Museum, London, from 29 March to 1 October 2006 (see www.handelhouse.org)

New Scientist, March 25, 2006, pp. 52-53.