![]() ![]() OriginsĪs early as 1550, the Sistine Chapel counted at least one castrate singer, a Spaniard. And nothing at all about those who failed as singers. Little is known about their private lives. But their story is limited to their successes on stage. In 1903 the newly-elected pope, Pius X, issued his motu proprio: boys were to replace castrati in church choirs.Ĭastrate singers evoke both fascination and speculation. Another one claimed to be bitten by a wild swan. Both Mustafa and Sebastianelli, for example, were bitten by a pig. When German singing teacher Franz Haböck interviewed the last castrate singers, every single one claimed to have been bitten by an animal at young age. With the operation officially illegal, common excuses for the boy's unmanned state ranged from his being a natural-born eunuch (or "congenital bilateral anorchia"), to a riding accident, an animal bite or castration for the cure of hernia. Illegal operationĮven after Pope Leo XIII had forbidden the practice, the church kept employing castrate singers. “Those singers who, let us say, are 'imperfect' on a physical plane although complete as singers, are totally excluded from the Sistine Chapel,” a local newspaper reported, and concluded: “This is a victory for Maestro Perosi.”Īt the same time Perosi, who referred to castrate singers as “ abnormal men”, finally managed to force his predecessor, the castrate singer, Domenico Mustafà, into retirement, so ending a tradition of more than three centuries. However in 1902 Lorenzo Perosi, appointed to head the choir by Leo XIII in 1898, convinced the pope not to hire any more castrati. He joined the Sistine Chapel choir in 1883. Moreschi was the last of the cantori evirati, Italian castrate singers. A black-and-white photograph shows a man with an impressively large chest and unusually thick hair. “Alessandro Moreschi Angelo di Roma, Cantore nella Capella Sistina 1858-1922” reads a tomb on the upper level of Rome’s Verano cemetery. When the highest notes arise from the deepest sighs: the tragic story of Italy's castrate singers. Axa, Casal Palocco, Infernetto districts.
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