The castrati were a musical phenomenon with a lot of mystery around them. Even today, almost a hundred years after the death of the last castrato, there is very little written about the men who changed the face of opera and the circumstances surrounding them.
The castrati were men who were castrated as young boys in order to keep their singing voices from changing. Women were not allowed to sing in churches, and young boys were undesirable as sopranos both because of their lack of focus and because of the high turnover in voices as the boys grew up. It is unknown when castrati were first used in church choirs, though there is some evidence that castrati may have been used as early as the fourth century AD in Rome, and in the twelfth century AD a man named Theodore Balsamone (himself possibly a eunuch) wrote a treatise in defense of eunuchs. A eunuch named Manual is recorded to have arrived in Smolensk in 1137 and sung there (Heriot, 10).
The Catholic Church, however, denied the use of castrati until 1599 when Pope Clement the VIII came into office and was impressed by the sweetness and flexibility of their voices. Previous to this, any possible castrato was listed officially as a falsettist. (Heriot, 12) Even when castrati were acknowledged within the Church, Pope Clement VIII officially authorized castration only for the glory of God. He took refuge from any dissenters behind the words of Saint Paul, First Corinthians, Chapter XVI, verse 34: "Let women be silent in the assemblies, for it is not permitted to them to speak." (Barbier, 19)
Once the Catholic Church approved of the castrati, they became more numerous. Soon poor families all around Italy were having the operation done on their sons, hoping that the church would take the boys in and take care of them. All operations were referred to as accidents, since the church still officially banned deliberate castration, and excommunicated anyone thought to be involved in such operations. Despite this, no attempt was made to discontinue the use of the castrati. Every church in Italy, including the Pope's private chapel, had castrati of staff, with the numbers being close to 200 by 1780. (Heriot, 25) In fact, the church was the last institution to continue its use of the castrati, clear through the start of the twentieth century.
Previous popes had succeeded, through official declarations, in advancing the decline of the castrati in the theatre and conservatoires. Pope Benedict XIV (1740 - 1758) began to talk of castration as "an unnatural crime, the victims of which are young boys, often through the complicity of their parents." (Barbier, 124) Pope Clement XIV (1769- 1775) forbade any preparation for singing that gave young boys an artificial voice; however, he never had the courage to ban castrati from the church choir. Clement XIV is also the pope responsible for allowing women to sing in church choirs and to appear in the theatre. While these measures did not have immediate results, they did play a part in the progressive disappearance of the castrati between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (Barbier 126)
Another inconsistency in the church that helped to make the castrati so prolific was the church's adamant and more strictly maintained ban on actresses on the stage. Pope Innocent XI, also known as "Papa Minga" maintained the ban on actresses from 1676 to 1798. (Heriot, 26) Occasionally, as a way of getting around such bans, women would take on the role of a castrati in order to be allowed in staged productions, going so far as to tape appropriately shaped objects to the groin area in order to pass the exams given by priests to keep the church and stage pure of women's voices. Previous to the castrati, children or falsettists were used in women's roles, but the boys were too young to convey the expression essential to the performance of baroque music, and the falsettists voices too strident to properly convey female roles. (Barbier, 20)
Once the castrati were heard as such in Rome, the public became so enthusiastic about them that the kingdom of Naples declared that any peasant family with at least four sons was allowed to have one of them castrated to serve the church. It is natural to question the actions of parents, coming from a time when to purposely castrate your child would be considered monstrous behavior. It is important to look at the images surrounding the castrati at the time, and to consider that many parents saw castration as a way out for their child, as well as the assurance that they would be taken care of in their old age by the child's wealth. The beginning of the eighteenth century saw a time when the castrati were painted as angels from heaven, and the circumstances surrounding the castrati were virtually absolved by the Church. Nearly all the castrati came from families of modest means who had been impressed by the glittering prospects described to them. Very few of the castrati came from musical backgrounds, and only one castrati named Farinelli belonged to an ennobled family. (Barbier 21)
Castration took place between the ages of seven and twelve, with a few exceptions. The operation could only take place if the boy himself asked for it, a condition imposed by the police in order to render its tolerance slightly less intolerable. How much the boy actually knew or could conceive during middle childhood was not important. Urgings by the parents or grand tales of living as a demigod to the child were not considered by the authorities, only that the child said he wanted the operation performed.
The castration itself was a difficult operation. Barbers and farmers who castrated pigs were primarily the ones to extend their businesses into castration, and the hygiene is best left unimagined. Anesthesia was at best a glass of wine with opium in it. More often it was considered adequate to compress the carotid arteries in order to interrupt circulation briefly and send the boy into a comatose state. Then the boy was plunged into a milk bath in order to soften the genitals, or a bath of icy water as a slight added anesthesia, and to prevent bleeding. Varying degrees of the boys died from the operation, with statistics from ten to eighty percent depending on the location and surgeon involved. Hemorrhaging and infection were common, and often lethal. (Barbier, 9)
Castration did not guarantee a beautiful voice, either. Many boys' voices became strident or hoarse, and some lost their voices altogether. The ones with possibly trainable voices were most often sent to conservatoires, the most famous of which were in Naples.
There a boy could expect his every waking hour, from dawn to dark, to be filled with either religious duties or musical training. The boys got up at dawn to prayers and mass, and went to bed after the evening examination of conscience in the chapel, at ten p.m. in the winter and as late as eleven-thirty p.m. in the summer. Dress, behavior, meals, and outings were all highly regulated, and studies were vigorous. The conditions the students lived in were not much better than the homes they came from, with two meals a day, the morning one consisting of a brown biscuit, the evening one consisting of salad, cheese, and fruit. Occasionally pasta was served. The rooms were mostly unheated, and it was noted that "As a rule, these schoolboys have thin faces, as pale as death." (Barbier, 45)
Often when a conservatoire did not have enough castrati to fill spaces requested by the Church or opera companies, they would pay older castrati students to attract younger boys. Many people outside the conservatoire were also given "rewards" for "handing over" a young castrati. Conservatoires began to give castrati slightly better treatment than the non-castrati, better food and living areas were set aside for them, as well as warmer clothing in the winter and private space to study in. Non-castrati had to practice in large groups, even though no two boys were studying the same thing. The castrati also had the most time with the choirmaster, and often took their stage names from the name of their choirmaster.
For six to ten years, the castrati worked on a program of breathing techniques meant to develop the muscles controlling inhalation and exhalation. This work on breathing formed the basis of elaborate ornamentation technique often found in baroque music. The castrati were expected to master to perfection all the techniques of ornamentation before they were allowed to sing a melody using them. (Barbier, 54)
Not all castrati who entered the conservatoires were happy with their lot, and many ran away. The non-castrati were often cruel to the castrati, from simple name-calling to refusing to be served by a castrato at dinner. The boys rotated duties around the conservatoires, and many non-castrati refused to work with castrati in joint duties. The students who behaved in such manners were punished, sometimes even expelled, but that did not stop the castrati from feeling the gap between themselves and the non-castrati.
Once a castrati emerged from a conservatoire, the choices they had were either to sing in a Church choir, or try for the opera. Of all the castrati, perhaps ten percent truly made top rank status. Of those ten percent, there was about one percent to whom the regal entry of European theatre was immediately open. The castrati who were in opera used pseudonyms, created either as a spin-off from a master's name, or a name given by the crowds they sang to. Many castrati debuted at a precocious age: Nicolino was twelve, Farinelli fifteen, and Cafferelli sixteen. (Barbier, 86) This was due to the fact that there was no set of years one must study, and each castrato's personal maestro decided when the time was right for a student to debut. The young men usually made their debut sometime after making a solo debut in the Church, and most of them had been in a Church choir for at least a year. Well-established tradition dictated that a castrato's first role be a female role, both as a transition to the heroic roles which would almost inevitably come their way later, and to take advantage of the youthful looks and fresh-sounding voice.
The castrato's training for female roles would be so complete that there are tales of castrati being pursued by men on the street. One anecdote tells of a castrati who dressed as a woman in order to have an affair with the lady of the house, only to be harassed by the husband so much that the castrati had his protectors kill the man, lest the man find out his secret. (Heriot, 85)
It is impossible for us to truly know why the castrati voice captured so many. The only recording made of a castrato was in the early twentieth century. It is of Alessandro Moreschi, a "modest religious castrato far removed from the golden age of his counterparts." (Barbier, 89) It is a poor recording, made between 1902 and 1904, and Moreschi's voice is well past his heyday. Over and over they have been described as ethereal, angelic, inhuman. Yet it is impossible to speak of "the" castrato voice, for each man had his own voice, some more colorful, powerful or agile than others, some soprani, some contralti. Every one had a unique technique, whether fascinating because of their florid technique, others overwhelming because of the sensitivity and emotion in their voices. (Barbier, 90)
Many aspects of opera which we take as tradition now were influenced by the castrati. While they are too numerous to mention in a paper of this length, some of the more tangible changes affected the soprano role and the aria structures. Before the castrati, a soprano role was never taken above a G4, and a contralto role never taken above a D4. Many of the castrati had ranges up to a C5, with one or two exceptions even going up to an F5. The aria structure also changed with the castrati, as the audience demanded they hear parts of an aria sung by the castrati both ornamented and unornamented. Thus arias began to be written for the castrati in an A-B-A fashion. These are only a couple of the aspects of opera that the castrati introduced that we take as tradition now.
By 1830, the last two great sopranists had left the stage. (Barbier, 126) Despite this, many boys underwent the operation until 1870, when the practice was totally banned. The last castrati, Alessandro Moreschi, left the Church in 1913, thus ending the tradition of the castrati forever. (Barbier, 239)
