Just read where Eunuchs in India were forming their own political party. I did not realize they still had those. Is this something of an honor? Is it something parents “choose” for their child (such as the priesthood)?
Secondly, are there still any castrati singers, and do they “make” new ones?
And third, (this one I have heard since my teens) is Wayne Newton a castrati singer?
Thanks
Q
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=42281
The pros and cons of becoming a eunuch
URL: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_058.html
Was there once a female pope?
URL: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_139.html
That search function.
Tricky beast to master but once you get the swing of it …
Okay, I do not know about castrati political parties in India, but musically, the castrato was important to late Renaissance and Baroque music, particularly opera.
In a nutshell:
Castration (orchidectomy - is that the word?) of young boys prior to adolecense was a way to preserve the higher pitched lyric quality of the voice, since, in general, girls and women were not allowed to perform in church or on stage. Trouble is, the voice still often broke after the operation, so the boy was useless as a singer.
As far as the ones who sucessfully retained the voice, there were quite a few well-known castrati - IIRC, many of Handel’s operas were written particularly for a couple of famous ones (whose names I cannot recall). From what I’ve gathered from my opera history classes, there were about the equivalent of the stereotypical prima donna - commanding high fees for performing, rights to change the music as it suited them, – one in particular insisted that his first entrance be on horseback from the top of a hill, whether or not the scene called for a horse or a hill, if he was gonna sing in the opera, he got his horse and hill and armor (did I mentioned armor was part of the contractual obbligation? It was.). Several stars had quite a following of female fans, too. (Hey no worries about offspring here, just plain old fun. Again, my OpHist books are at home, and I can name names there. IIRC, Rossini was about the last composer to write a role specifically for a castrato, since by then (1800s) women were acting and singing onstage - ironically, women were often in “pants roles”, playing the part of young adolescent boys, i.e. Cherubino in “Le Nozze de Figaro”.
As far as making new ones, highly unlikely in this country. There is a recording of the last surviving operatic castrato, recorded on 78 prm, before his death iin the early 20th Century. The voice takes a while to get used to it, particularly picturing a 6 foot tall man singing like an 8-year-old choirboy.
Now please do not mix up the castrato voice with another legitimate male voice type called the ‘counter-tenor’, nor with the ‘falsetto’ voice. In both cases, the men are intact.
The counter-tenor is a higher-pitched tenor (best example is the guy who sings on many of the P.D.Q Bach recordings [John ‘Somebody’, humorously listed as ‘bargain counter-tenor’]). My college did a performance of Berstein’s “Chichester Psalms” - the 2nd movement calls for a child (a very innocent and lyrical part), but the conductor brought in a counter-tenor - about the same voice range as the child, but with the musical maturity needed for the piece.
Falsetto is “head voice”, where the performer is reaching for the higher notes in his overall range. Using chest voice for the upper range would be too heavy quality and bad vocal practice. (Frankie Valli does a lot of falsetto in his performances.)
(Chiesu, I just previewed and gotta learn to type and think faster!)
This is from last February.
http://www.timesofindia.com/270200/27indi20.htm
This is from last March.
http://www.timesofindia.com/070300/07indi16.htm
From 1999:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/onair/DailyNews/eunuchs9910114.html
In order to save Screech Owl from being unable to post for the next 6 weeks, I will post some castrati websites here. (When you go home, you will reach down the Opera History books. They will be dusty. You will decide to dust them. You will notice that the top of the bookshelf is dusty. You will get out the Dirt Devil and attempt to vacuum the top of the bookshelf. The Dirt Devil will not reach. You will stand on a dining room chair, which will slide out from under you, and you will fall on the coffee table and break your arm. Your arm will be in a cast for 6 weeks and you will be unable to post. See, it’s perfectly simple.)
http://www.spe.sony.com/classics/farinelli/about/fcastrati.html
Sorry for the empty post:o I am still trying to get the hang of this. And of course you’re right: I should have tried the search engine first. Thanks for being cool about it.
Q
Screech,
How can we all hear the recording of the last surviving castrato?
A few years ago the BBC showed a short film of Kylie Monogue miming to that 78 recording. For some odd reason she was topless but with her back 3/4 on to the camera. It was weird.
No no no! I am at work and all the music questions show up when I am at work dealing with environmental issues.
When I am at home with the opera, calligraphy, art, costuming, etc. books, THAT is when the environmental questions arise and my environmental books (all 6,000) are at work.
And my opera books are NOT dusty, thankyouverymuch! 
Recording of OPAL Alessandro Moreschi - The Last Castrato
My mistake, it was done on a wax cylinder, not 78 rpm. Okay, he’s dead now, but he was the last of the era of castrati.
[Jeez, people, I made a joke about a nutshell in a thread about castrati, and nobody notices. Don’t make me try harder.]
Thanks for the link to the sound sample, Screech-owl. I had never actually heard it before. It’s worth noting that he was awfully old when that cylinder was made, and so it doesn’t really give an acurate picture of the castrato voice in its prime.
Sorry if someone has already mentioned this (I’m posting in a hurry and haven’t read everything), but the movie Farinelli is well worth seeing. It is a highly fictionalized (and wildly inaccurate), but extremely beautifully made, account of the life of one of the most famous castrati of all time (his real name was Carlo Broschi). The most misleading thing about the film is that it depicts him as a completely normal-looking person, whereas real castrati were horribly disfugured by their “gift”. Because of the loss of vital hormones that stop the growth process at the end of adolescence, castrati grew to be enormously barrel chested and freakishly tall, while retaining their tiny heads and childlike visages. They must have been monstrous, or maybe just very impressive, in person.
Thanks screech for the link to the recording. Whenever reading about these singers their voices have been described as “angelic” or “childlike”. I don’t know about that, what I just listened to was very odd, maybe just not to my liking and certainly not anything to get altered for. I feel sad for all of the boys put through such a horrible ordeal. Humans are warped.
The question I want answered is: Who made the decision to mutilate these boys? Was it the parents? The choir directors? Were they (ulp) volunteers? Did the choir director say, “Y’know that kid has a great voice. Let me get my knife…”?
I just wrote an article on the subject last week, but am at work so this is from memory. The reason for the mutilation was usually financial. Once the Pope at the time (George XII, maybe?) started openly accepting the “sans testes” crowd for the Sistine Chapel choir, their popularity spread dramatically. Poor folk saw their sons as possible providers for the family, and had many unfortunate “farm accidents”, since this was still forbidden, both socially and morally.
As for the last known castrati, his name was something like Alfredo Moreschi and he died in 1922. His recordings are available on CD somewhere, but the quality is not very good. He wasn’t considered one of the better singers of his ilk, nor was his music selection particularly moving. That, mixed with the technology of his day, makes for a less than impressive recording.