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The Castrato - Reflections on Natures and Kinds (Hardcover)
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The Castrato - Reflections on Natures and Kinds (Hardcover)
Series: Ernest Bloch Lectures, 16
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The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were
castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth
centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical
singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and
historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic,
economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was
understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as
expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and,
paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of
the castrato's comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was
inseparable from the system of patriarchy involving teachers,
patrons, colleagues, and relatives whereby castrated males were
produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized
males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers from Cavalli and
Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini were the extraordinary
capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by
Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive,
their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their
literal demise.
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