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A castrato (Italian; pl.: castrati) is a male singer who underwent castration before puberty in order to retain a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto. The voice can also occur in one who, due to an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity .
Farinelli is widely regarded as the greatest, most accomplished, and most respected opera singer of the "castrato" era, which lasted from the early 1600s into the early 1800s, and while there were a vast number of such singers during this period, originating especially from the Neapolitan School of such composers as Nicola Porpora, Alessandro ...
As women were sometimes forbidden to sing in Church, their place was taken by castrati. Castrati became very popular in 18th century opera seria. The practice, known as castratism, remained popular until the 18th century and was known into the 19th century. The last famous Italian castrato, Giovanni Battista Velluti, died in 1861.
Caffarelli was born Gaetano Carmine Francesco Paolo Majorano to Vito Majorano and Anna Fornella in Bitonto. [1] His early life is uncertain. His stage name, Caffarelli, is said to be taken from an early teacher Caffaro who taught him music in childhood, others say it was taken from a patron, Domenico Caffaro.
Alessandro Moreschi c. 1914. Moreschi's Director at the Sistine was Domenico Mustafà, himself once a castrato soprano, who realised that Moreschi was, amongst other things, the only hope for the continuation of the Sistine tradition of performing the famous setting of the Miserere by Gregorio Allegri during Holy Week.
Born in Siena in about 1735, Tenducci became a castrato and he was trained at the Naples Conservatory. [2] Castration was illegal in both church and civil law, but the Roman Church employed castrati in many churches and in the Vatican until about 1902; and throughout the 17th and 18th centuries the public paid large sums of money to listen to the spectacular voices of castrati in the opera houses.
Giovanni Carestini (13 December 1700 in Filottrano, near Ancona – 1759 in Bologna) was an Italian castrato of the 18th century, who sang in the operas and oratorios of George Frideric Handel. He is also remembered as having sung for Johann Adolf Hasse and Christoph Willibald Gluck .
Domenico Mustafà was born in the comune of Sellano, [1] province of Perugia, and had been castrated due to a bite from a pig. [2] He became a famous soprano castrato with the Cappella Sistina in the Vatican. He was particularly admired for his performances of Handelian music. At his prime, Mustafà possessed a voice of superior strength and ...