Castrati Castration History

“Bring Back the Sun”:
The Historical Significance of the Castrati

Chuck Harris

Music 425
Dr. HM Lewis
December 15, 2009 The Castrato has long been a subject shrouded in controversy and mystery. Castration has been used in many cultures and religions since the dawn of time (Eunuchs). We don’t know exactly when castration started to be used specifically for the voice but we have records dating back to the 16th century. These documents hint towards it being done because of Christianity. This paper will look at one Castrato in particular, Carlo Broschi more commonly known as, Farinelli. I will use the film Farinelli and other historical and educational articles and
The beloved singer was treated in one full-length biography published as early as 1784, and even served as an informant to Dr Burney, who interviewed him for his treatise On the Present State of Music in France and Italy (1771). In the century after his death (long before Corbiau ever had the idea) at least half a dozen playwrights and composers used his life as a source of inspiration for operas, comedies and historic plays in French, English, Spanish and German. (3) In other words, the Corbiau film had a good number of precedents, and a good deal of information from which to construct a plausible picture of this curious historical figure. The plot does present, in a kind of deliberate jumble, a number of the more important episodes. The last quarter of the film, for instance, offers a brief glimpse of Farinelli 's semi-retirement to Spain where - the story goes - David-like, he cured King Philip of his depression, singing him to sleep nightly with the same four songs. This familiar anecdote is not actually enacted in the film, but merely hinted at. So is another odd fact of Farinelli 's long stay in Madrid (1737 to 1759). It is reported that the aging castrato became involved in the business of importing Hungarian stallions for the improvement of the native breed. He oversaw, that is, a kind of
In scene on historical scene, what Corbiau ultimately manages to show is just how much we - like audiences and critics who came before us - can fail to understand about the whole, shady business. In the face of historical scrutiny the castrato will always remain somehow inscrutable, a figure enshrouded in mystery. Such mystery, which tints the historical process, certainly extends to the single most colorful aspects of the castrato 's story. I refer, of course, to the mythic sexual prowess of the eunuch, a fable that has assumed many elaborate forms through history (the Corbiau film proving no exception). An unusually level-headed version of this mythology comes to us, interestingly, by way of the nineteenth-century surgeon Benedetto Mojon, in a little French treatise on the 'physiological effects ' of castration published in 1804 - just a few years, that is, after the French invasion of Italy initiated political changes that were said to have brought about the end of the castrato tradition.(9) The enlightened French of the previous century had, in fact, always looked down on the strange practice their Italian neighbors enjoyed, and Napoleon was no exception. As he explains, a eunuch castrated at around six years of age will retain, at eighteen, the penis of a six-year-old. But when the operation has been performed closer to the age of puberty, his equipment - or