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A castrato (Italian; pl.: castrati) is a male singer who underwent castration before puberty in order to retain 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 .
Gioacchino Conti (28 February 1714 – 25 October 1761), best known as Gizziello or Egizziello, was an Italian soprano castrato opera singer. Gioacchino Conti Biography
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.
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.
Farinelli (Italian pronunciation: [fariˈnɛlli]; 24 January 1705 – 16 September 1782) [a] was the stage name of Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Broschi (pronounced [ˈkarlo ˈbrɔski]), a celebrated Italian castrato singer of the 18th century and one of the greatest singers in the history of opera. [1]
Charles Burney, a contemporary music historian, described the Florentine castrato thus: "Manzoli's voice was the most powerful and voluminous soprano that had ever been heard on our stage since the time of Farinelli; and his manner of singing was grand and full of dignity. The applause he received was a universal thunder of acclimation."
The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon transl. M. Crosland, Souvenir Press; Emerson, Isabelle Putnam (2005) Five Centuries of Women Singers. Greenwood Publishing Group. Rice, Paul F. (2015) Venanzio Rauzzini in Britain: Castrato, Composer and Cultural Leader. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
Pier Francesco Tosi (c. 1653 – 1732) was a castrato singer, composer, and writer on music. His Opinoni de' cantori antichi e moderni... was the first full-length treatise on singing and provides a unique glimpse into the technical and social aspects of Baroque vocal music.