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A Byzantine castrato from the 11th century. Castration as a means of subjugation, enslavement or other punishment has a very long history, dating back to ancient Sumer.In a Western context, eunuch singers are known to have existed from the early Byzantine Empire.
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]
Critical opinion is divided about Moreschi's recordings, [18] some say they are of little interest other than the novelty of preserving the voice of a castrato, and that Moreschi was a mediocre singer, while others detect the remains of a talented singer unfortunately past his prime by the time of recording, as Moreschi was in his mid-forties ...
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.
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.
Atto Melani (30 March 1626, in Pistoia – 4 January 1714, in Paris) was a famous Italian castrato opera singer, also employed as a diplomat and a spy. [ 1 ] Life
Details of his early life are scarce. It is possible that he studied with Mario Bittoni, maestro di cappella in the cathedral of his home city, Fabriano.Under the stage name of Porfirio Pacchierotti, he made his début in Baldassare Galuppi's opera Le nozze di Dorina at the Teatro dei Nobili in Perugia during the carnival season of 1759, playing, as young castrati often did, a female role ...
A London audience of 1740 was indifferent, and he returned to Italy in the early 1740s (singing in Gluck's Demofoonte in Milan in 1743), but was an employee of Maria Theresa by 1744. From 1747-49 he sang for Hasse in Dresden , and then moved to Berlin (1750–54), and then St Petersburg (1754–56).