Castrati on the BBC
Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 6:57 am
BBC Television has scheduled a potentially interesting documentary on castrati. Any Archive members in the UK may want to watch and provide some feedback for the rest of us. Below are an article from Opera Today and the blurb from the BBC Press Office web site:
Castrato In Search of a Lost Voice
Nestling artistically in a bowl, carefully arranged and lit to suit the camera early in the programme, the testicles seemed to glow softly with their hidden history, their inherent potential and, now, their very lack of future.
One might say they reflected rather neatly the subject of this film recently made for television by BBC Producer Francesca Kemp: those fabled creatures of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Castrati. These singers were such artists, such performers, such celebrities in their heyday of the mid baroque, that our musical folk memory is still full of them they have never really died. It seems that each new generation of music lovers is re-discovering their story, is enraptured by the myth, and fascinated by the reality of their lives as we know it today. But the greatest fascination of all is the voice itself what did it sound like? Would we recognise it as the marvel it was then considered? We are still chasing that holy grail, that rainbows end, with ever more sophisticated methods, and this film sets out to try to illuminate, if not answer, some of the questions we still have about it.
If you are wondering just why people might be tempted to watch, Kemp herself has no such doubts. We're so much more interested in their repertoire now, especially the operatic; its a natural extension of the recent explosion of interest in the countertenor voice. And we're so much more aware of issues around period style we know how exciting and revealing it is to hear Mozart concerti played on a fortepiano, and I think there's an equally valid interest in getting closer to understanding what this particular vocal quality might or might not have been. She adds: And more broadly, it's a fascinating model for understanding our eternal obsession with the humanly bizarre or unusual, and our current preoccupations with a whole host of socio-cultural issues such as fame at any price/body alteration/gender models/child abuse and so on.
The films central scientific thrust is one of the attempted regeneration of the voice electronically, and unlike the well-known attempt to do this for the feature film Farinelli whereby the engineers rather crudely morphed a soprano and countertenor voice, here the professors and scientists seek to try to match electronically on a computer certain elements of what is probably our only recorded history of a castrato voice, that of Alessandro Moreschi, with elements of a tenor and treble voice. How they do this, and what they base their ideas on, makes for interesting viewing and listening. Whether the final result satisfies, or merely frustrates, will be up to the viewer to decide certainly there is no definitive answer here even if intriguing pathways are opened up for exploration. As presenter Nicholas Clapton (author of works on the castrati) says: In the recordings of Moreschi, which I do not believe are as bad as many people do, we have documentary evidence of the castrato sound. There is a strong tenor element in his voice, although because of his child-size vocal tract it is a tenor sound up an octave, with what sounds rather like a super-charged treble above that.
During the experiments, we hear examples of several voices: boy treble, soprano, countertenor (Clapton himself,) and perhaps most exciting of all, that of the young American operatic male soprano Michael Maniaci. Excerpts of his rendition of the Alleluja from Mozart's motet Exultate, jubilate, K. 165, written in 1773 for the famous castrato Venancio Rauzzini, certainly raise the musical temperature of the film many notches and were impressive. (As a footnote, Mozart also created the role of Cinna Silla for Rauzzini in his opera Lucio Silla a role that Maniaci has recently sung at Santa Fe Opera).
In contrast to the music made by this male soprano, the electronic experiments seem only to have produced some, frankly, unattractive sounds so far and I asked for Francesca Kemps view. Yes I agree Michael is completely wonderful. But I do wonder whether we're right to think that he's closer to the castrato sound than the other electronic or human examples we don't know what the end result should be, and as is pointed out in the film, we absolutely don't know that we'd like the sound of an 18th century castrato voice any more than we tend to like that of Moreschi. Clapton agrees: My hunch is that modern listeners would find the voice, manner and whole performance of a castrato like Farinelli extremely strange, indeed alien, much like we would find the conversation of Handel, Johnson, or George II extremely peculiar today.
If so, despite our enduring fascination with these long-dead superstars, perhaps this is a reason for letting sleeping voices lie?
S.C. Loder
(The broadcast is scheduled for screening on BBC 4 television in the UK, on July 5th at 2100hrs.)
Opera Today
Saturday, June 23, 2006
http://www.operatoday.com/content/2006/ ... in_sea.php
Castrato
Wednesday 5 July
9.00-10.00pm BBC FOUR
Castrati were the undisputed superstars of 18th-century musical culture, driving crowds across Europe into literal frenzies with their intoxicatingly androgynous virtuoso voices. The mythical status of these "third sex" singers to the 18th-century world, their ascension from church pew to operatic stage, and their sudden fall from grace at the turn of the century, remain music's great untold story.
Working with medical, vocal and acoustic experts, Nicholas Clapton, countertenor and castrato historian, analyses the anatomical mysteries of the castrato and the biological implications of castration. Clapton travels to Bologna, Italy's northern centre of castrato singing and the adopted home town of Farinelli, perhaps the most famous castrato. He visits one of Europe's few surviving 18th-century opera houses, the Teatro Comunale, to hear the church music of Nicolo Porpora the greatest castrato teacher of the time and tutor to Farinelli.
For the first time in Britain, American male soprano, Michael Maniaci a young Baroque opera singer whose voice remarkably did not break at puberty performs one of Mozart's best-loved pieces of church music, Exultate jubilate, originally written for castrato Rauzzini.
Professor David Howard guides viewers through the science of human singing, and the nature of these different voice types. With Nicholas Clapton, Howard devises an experiment to recreate the sound of the 18th-century operatic castrato. David proposes a synthesis whereby sophisticated audio technology will allow him to "place" an adult male's vocal tract on top of a boy's vocal chords (or "folds"). The repertoire selected for this synthesis is Handel's famous "Largo", the aria "Ombra mai fu" from his opera Xerxes, which can be heard at the end of the programme.
Source recordings for this experiment are made in the anechoic room at York University, using choristers from York Minster and Darren Abrahams, a young tenor with an extremely high range. The film ends with a full musical presentation of this synthesised sound.
LS
BBC Press Office
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/progin ... d_castrato
Castrato In Search of a Lost Voice
Nestling artistically in a bowl, carefully arranged and lit to suit the camera early in the programme, the testicles seemed to glow softly with their hidden history, their inherent potential and, now, their very lack of future.
One might say they reflected rather neatly the subject of this film recently made for television by BBC Producer Francesca Kemp: those fabled creatures of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Castrati. These singers were such artists, such performers, such celebrities in their heyday of the mid baroque, that our musical folk memory is still full of them they have never really died. It seems that each new generation of music lovers is re-discovering their story, is enraptured by the myth, and fascinated by the reality of their lives as we know it today. But the greatest fascination of all is the voice itself what did it sound like? Would we recognise it as the marvel it was then considered? We are still chasing that holy grail, that rainbows end, with ever more sophisticated methods, and this film sets out to try to illuminate, if not answer, some of the questions we still have about it.
If you are wondering just why people might be tempted to watch, Kemp herself has no such doubts. We're so much more interested in their repertoire now, especially the operatic; its a natural extension of the recent explosion of interest in the countertenor voice. And we're so much more aware of issues around period style we know how exciting and revealing it is to hear Mozart concerti played on a fortepiano, and I think there's an equally valid interest in getting closer to understanding what this particular vocal quality might or might not have been. She adds: And more broadly, it's a fascinating model for understanding our eternal obsession with the humanly bizarre or unusual, and our current preoccupations with a whole host of socio-cultural issues such as fame at any price/body alteration/gender models/child abuse and so on.
The films central scientific thrust is one of the attempted regeneration of the voice electronically, and unlike the well-known attempt to do this for the feature film Farinelli whereby the engineers rather crudely morphed a soprano and countertenor voice, here the professors and scientists seek to try to match electronically on a computer certain elements of what is probably our only recorded history of a castrato voice, that of Alessandro Moreschi, with elements of a tenor and treble voice. How they do this, and what they base their ideas on, makes for interesting viewing and listening. Whether the final result satisfies, or merely frustrates, will be up to the viewer to decide certainly there is no definitive answer here even if intriguing pathways are opened up for exploration. As presenter Nicholas Clapton (author of works on the castrati) says: In the recordings of Moreschi, which I do not believe are as bad as many people do, we have documentary evidence of the castrato sound. There is a strong tenor element in his voice, although because of his child-size vocal tract it is a tenor sound up an octave, with what sounds rather like a super-charged treble above that.
During the experiments, we hear examples of several voices: boy treble, soprano, countertenor (Clapton himself,) and perhaps most exciting of all, that of the young American operatic male soprano Michael Maniaci. Excerpts of his rendition of the Alleluja from Mozart's motet Exultate, jubilate, K. 165, written in 1773 for the famous castrato Venancio Rauzzini, certainly raise the musical temperature of the film many notches and were impressive. (As a footnote, Mozart also created the role of Cinna Silla for Rauzzini in his opera Lucio Silla a role that Maniaci has recently sung at Santa Fe Opera).
In contrast to the music made by this male soprano, the electronic experiments seem only to have produced some, frankly, unattractive sounds so far and I asked for Francesca Kemps view. Yes I agree Michael is completely wonderful. But I do wonder whether we're right to think that he's closer to the castrato sound than the other electronic or human examples we don't know what the end result should be, and as is pointed out in the film, we absolutely don't know that we'd like the sound of an 18th century castrato voice any more than we tend to like that of Moreschi. Clapton agrees: My hunch is that modern listeners would find the voice, manner and whole performance of a castrato like Farinelli extremely strange, indeed alien, much like we would find the conversation of Handel, Johnson, or George II extremely peculiar today.
If so, despite our enduring fascination with these long-dead superstars, perhaps this is a reason for letting sleeping voices lie?
S.C. Loder
(The broadcast is scheduled for screening on BBC 4 television in the UK, on July 5th at 2100hrs.)
Opera Today
Saturday, June 23, 2006
http://www.operatoday.com/content/2006/ ... in_sea.php
Castrato
Wednesday 5 July
9.00-10.00pm BBC FOUR
Castrati were the undisputed superstars of 18th-century musical culture, driving crowds across Europe into literal frenzies with their intoxicatingly androgynous virtuoso voices. The mythical status of these "third sex" singers to the 18th-century world, their ascension from church pew to operatic stage, and their sudden fall from grace at the turn of the century, remain music's great untold story.
Working with medical, vocal and acoustic experts, Nicholas Clapton, countertenor and castrato historian, analyses the anatomical mysteries of the castrato and the biological implications of castration. Clapton travels to Bologna, Italy's northern centre of castrato singing and the adopted home town of Farinelli, perhaps the most famous castrato. He visits one of Europe's few surviving 18th-century opera houses, the Teatro Comunale, to hear the church music of Nicolo Porpora the greatest castrato teacher of the time and tutor to Farinelli.
For the first time in Britain, American male soprano, Michael Maniaci a young Baroque opera singer whose voice remarkably did not break at puberty performs one of Mozart's best-loved pieces of church music, Exultate jubilate, originally written for castrato Rauzzini.
Professor David Howard guides viewers through the science of human singing, and the nature of these different voice types. With Nicholas Clapton, Howard devises an experiment to recreate the sound of the 18th-century operatic castrato. David proposes a synthesis whereby sophisticated audio technology will allow him to "place" an adult male's vocal tract on top of a boy's vocal chords (or "folds"). The repertoire selected for this synthesis is Handel's famous "Largo", the aria "Ombra mai fu" from his opera Xerxes, which can be heard at the end of the programme.
Source recordings for this experiment are made in the anechoic room at York University, using choristers from York Minster and Darren Abrahams, a young tenor with an extremely high range. The film ends with a full musical presentation of this synthesised sound.
LS
BBC Press Office
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/progin ... d_castrato
I managed to watch the programme and also to tape it- the BBC must surely be congratulated on such a first class documentry/factual film. Even given the dire censorship prevailing in the UK at the moment the film maker did not sidestep any of the issues especially when discussing in some graphic detail about "the operation". Absolutely brilliant! I am not sure of the technology but I think you should be able to download the programme via the BBC 4 Website, which would be better than the VHS tape that I have, and I do believe that this VHS does not work on US machines. I am looking forward to a repeat tonight (Sunday 9th) and a full showing of Il Castrato (Farinelli) hopefully in English as I have only a German copy that I made when it first came out.