Castrato (1 of 23)

Castrato

Castrati were the undisputed superstars of 18th-century musical culture, driving crowds wild with their intoxicatingly androgynous virtuoso voices.Nicholas Clapton, countertenor and castrato historian, analyses the anatomical mysteries of the castrato and the biological implications of castrato. He travels to Bologna, the adopted home of Farinelli, perhaps the most famous castrato. And for the first time in Britain, American male soprano Michael Maniaci, a young Baroque opera singer whose voice did not break at puberty, performs Mozart's Exultate Jubilate, a piece originally written for castrato Rauzzini.

Your young servant, Silvestro Prittoni, rejoicing in a voice sufficiently good to practise music, and wishing to retain it, begs Your Serene Highness to make it such that he is without those instruments which would allow the change of voice to take place.

MUSIC: "Cara Sposa" by Handel During the 18th century, as many as 100,000 small boys were castrated to preserve their high singing voices.
Of these, a mere handful became the most famous singers of the age.
The world's first international superstars, they were perhaps the greatest virtuoso singers ever heard on Earth - the castrati.
But the mature castrato voice didn't sound like a child, nor did it sound like a woman.
Cara sposa Amante cara...
'Nothing in the whole of music is as fine as the fresh young voice 'of a castrato.
'No woman's voice has the same firmness, the same strength 'and the same smoothness.'
Pianti miei...
And it didn't sound like a male countertenor or falsettist.
In this film, we are going to explore the sound and the world of the baroque operatic castrati, and in a unique scientific experiment, will attempt to bring something of this lost voice back to life...
Pianti miei...
'For the whole of my adult singing life, 'I've been fascinated by the castrati and the music they sang.
' These kings of the 18th century operatic stage were the richest, the most highly sought-after, the most extraordinarily virtuosic, the most pursued - in many ways - of all the singers we've ever heard.
And for 200 years now they've been extinct.