1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910819177503321

Autore

Feldman Martha

Titolo

The castrato : reflections on natures and kinds / / Martha Feldman

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Oakland, California : , : University of California Press, , 2015

©2015

ISBN

0-520-29244-8

0-520-96203-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (496 p.)

Collana

Ernest Bloch Lectures

Disciplina

782.8/6

Soggetti

Castrati

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Preface -- Note on Textual Transcription, Translations, Lexicon, and Musical Nomenclature -- 1. Of Strange Births and Comic Kin -- 2 The Man Who Pretended to Be Who He Was -- 3. Red Hot Voice -- 4 Castrato De Luxe -- 5. Cold Man, Money Man, Big Man Too -- 6. Shadow Voices, Castrato and Non -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Illustrations -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

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.