16th century practices
A01=Martha Feldman
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Martha Feldman
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bel canto
bodily mutations
castrated for music
castrated males
castrated singers
castrati
castrati and eunuchs
castrati musicians
castrati vocalists
castration
castrato
castrato voices
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AVGC
Category=AVLA
Category=HBJD
Category=HBLH
Category=HBLL
Category=NHD
catholic blood sacrifice
cavalli
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eunuch singers
handel
high male voices
historical body mutations
history of castration
history of music
history of singing
Language_English
mozart
music
music history
nonsexual castration
PA=Available
pergolesi
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
pulcinella
rossini
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780520292444
- Weight: 726g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 02 Aug 2016
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato's comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchy - involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives - whereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers - from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini - were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive, their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their literal demise.
Martha Feldman is President-Elect of the American Musicological Society and Mabel Green Myers Professor of Music, Romance Languages and Literatures and the Humanities at the University of Chicago. She is the author of City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice and Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italy and coeditor of The Courtesan's Arts.
