The castrato as history

Cambridge Opera Journal

Volumn 8, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 167-184

  Bergeron, Katherine ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61949370878     PISSN: 09545867     EISSN: 14740621     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0954586700004675     Document Type: Review

References (28)

1. Angus Herriot, The Castrati in Opera (New York, 1974), 189-99.
2. Daniel Heartz, 'Farinelli Revisited', Early Music, 18 (1990), 430-43.
3. To name a few: John Barnett, Farinelli, a serio comic opera, in two acts (London, 1839);
4. Tomás Bretón, Farinelli, opera en un prologo y tres actos (Madrid, 1902);
5. Henri Dupin Farinelli, ou La pièce de circonstance (Paris, 1816);
6. Henri Saint-Georges, Farinelli, ou Le bouffe du roi, comedie historique en trois actes (Paris, 1835);
7. Mariano Vazquez, Farinelli: zarzuela historica en tres actos (Malaga, 1855);
8. Herman Zumpe, Farinelli: Operette in 3 Acten (Hamburg, 1888).
9. Charles Burney, The Present State of Music in France and Italy (London, 1771), 206.
10. From a look at the sources of Artaserse, Robert Freeman concludes that 'the attribution of this aria by Burney and others to Riccardo Broschi is probably in error'. See 'Farinello and his Repertory', in Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Music in Honor of Arthur Mendel, ed. Robert Marshall (London, 1974), 327, note 69.
11. Translated by Robert Samber as Eunuchism Display'd, Describing All the Different Sorts of Eunuchs (London, 1718).
12. Anne Rice, Cry to Heaven (New York, 1982).
13. Burney (see n. 4), 301-2.
14. John Rosselli, 'The Castrati as a Professional Group and a Social Phenomenon, 1550-1850', Acta Musicologica, 60 (1988), 143-79.
15. Benedetto Mojon, Mémoire sur les effets de la castration dans le corps humain (Montpellier, 1804).
16. Mojon, 16.
17. Illustration reproduced in Heartz (see n. 2), p. 431.
18. The story is related in Jerrold N. Moore, A Voice in Time: The Gramophone of Fred Gaisberg (London, 1976), 66-70.
19. Roland Barthes, "The Romantic Song', in The Responsibility of Forms, trans. Richard Howard (New York, 1985), 286-92.
20. A full performance history is presented by Donald Burrows in Handel, Messiah (Cambridge, 1991).
21. One can hear performances of both versions of the aria on an extremely innovative recording, produced in 1991 by Harmonia Mundi and featuring the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, together with the Chamber Chorus of the University of California at Berkeley, under the joint direction of Nicolas McGegan and Philip Brett (Harmonia Mundi: HMU 907050-907052). The ambitious plan was to record, on to a single set of discs, all the extant versions of Messiah known in Handel's lifetime. With some skilful programming of a CD player, a listener can now compare the settings from different years and thus make judgements, purely by ear, about Handel's compositional choices. On this recording William Parker sings the 1742 version for solo bass; the countertenor Drew Minter does a more than respectable job playing the role of Guadagni.
22. According to Robert Freeman's statistics, this seems to be one work Farinelli never performed. See Freeman (n. 5), 324-30.
23. Cited in Roland Barthes, S/Z: An Essay, trans. Richard Howard (New York, 1974), 239.
24. See Heartz (n. 2), 441.
25. Emmanuel Legrand, 'Soundtrack for "Farinelli" Film Becomes Hit in France', Billboard, 107, No. 17 (29 April 1995), 50.
26. The Crying Game may not be such a bad analogy, in fact, given that the 'secret' that circulated about its plot had something to do with the mistaking of one character's gender identity. In Farinelli, of course, the mistaken thing is an unnaturally high male voice. That this unusual feature could inspire a similar curiosity is clear from the recent rise in popularity of countertenors- those rarified products of the decades-old early music movement. Such singers today attract a following beyond the typical early music audience, a fact that may have at least something to do with the delicious compromise they reflect- as vocal cross-dressers. For evidence we need look no further than a recent issue of a popular American fashion magazine, which featured an ultracampy photo essay on six newsworthy countertenors decked out, à la Wilde, in silk smoking jackets and feather boas. Ragin himself, sporting a cane, was pictured with three dalmatians in tow.
27. A summary of the procedure can be found in a recent issue of IRCAM's house journal Résonance. See Phillipe Depalle, Guillermo Garcia and Xavier Rodet, 'A la recherche d'une voix perdue', Résonance, 15 (1995), 14-15.
28. On the subject of 'passing', it is worth noting that one of the tracks from the Farinelli CD actually makes it onto a legitimate early music disc also distributed by Auvidis. It is a 1994 anthology called La Musique an temps des Castrats (Astrée E 8552) that features performances by the countertenors James Bowman and Gérard Lesne, among others. On the disc's final track, slipped in without any indication of foul play, we find the morphed Ragin-Mallas-Godlewska performance of the aria 'Son qual nave', offered as just one more early music voice.