Medicine and Music

The Castrati in Opera

E N I D R H O D E S P E S C H E L
R I C H A R D E. P E S C H E L

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F R O M its beginnings in the early seventeenth century and through the
end of the eighteenth century, the castrati played a prominent—often a
predominant—part in opera. During their two-hundred-year reign they were
designated by a variety of names: castrati, eunuchs, evirati (emasculated men),
and musici (literally, musicians).
No one knows exactly when boysfirstbegan to be mutilated for the purpose
of creating the adult male soprano, but music historians agree that the practice
probably had its origins in the Church. Interpreting Saint Paul verbatim when
he said, "Let your women keep silent in the churches" (i Cor. 14:34), the Ro-
man Catholic hierarchy forbade females to sing in church choirs; therefore,
when high voices were needed, young boys, falsettists, or eunuchs came to be
used.
Originally, falsettists supplied the high voices in the pope's chapel, but
among those falsettists there were perhaps some castrati. As Angus Heriot
suggests in The Castrati in Opera, to date the most comprehensive study in
English of these singers, T h e appearance of castrati in considerable numbers
around 1600 was to some extent an admission of their existence rather than a
completely new introduction."1 In April 1599 the first two acknowledged Ital-
ian castrati, Pietro Paolo Folignati and Girolamo Rossini, were listed on the
records of the papal chapel. Because Pope Clement VIII preferred the eunuchs'
voices to those of the falsettists, the castrati eventually became numerous and
immensely important in the pope's chapel. When Girolamo Rossini began to
sing there, the falsettist contraltini (contraltos), who were then in vogue, ob-
jected to his appointment so strongly that without the pope's support Rossini
might have had to leave. By 1625, however, the contraltini had been wholly su-
perseded by castrati, and Pope Clement VIII had proclaimed that the creation
of castrati for church choirs was to be held ad honorem Dei (to the honor
of God).2
The Church's position about the castrati was a hopeless paradox, in the
words of Heriot, "absurdly inconsistent and unreasonable . . .: anyone known
22 E N I D A N D R I C H A R D P E S C H E L

to have been connected with such an operation was punishable with excom-
munication, yet no attempt was made to discourage the use of evirati. Every
church in Italy, including the Pope's own private chapel, had castrati on its
staff—in the 1780's, there were reckoned to be over two hundred of them in
churches in the city of Rome alone."3 Indeed, the male soprano sang in the
church choirs of Italy until the end of the nineteenth century, long after his
operatic counterpart had disappeared from the stage forever. Finally Leo XIII,
who was pope from 1878 to 1903, banished the eviratofromSaint Peter's.4 The
last castrato of the pope's chapel seems to have been Alessandro Moreschi
(1858—1922). In 1902—1903, when he was music director of the Sistine Chapel,
Moreschi's voice was recorded by the Gramophone and Typewriter Company.5
The ascension of the castrati in the pope's chapel during the early 1600s led
to the rise of the evirati in the new art form that was developing at about that

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same time in Italy: opera. The title role of Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607) was sung
by a castrato. At first the castrati sang male roles, but due to a bias against
women on the stage and, in Rome, an actual papal prohibition, the castrati
began to sing female roles by the end of the seventeenth century. Yet some
women did sing on the stage, and this created strange situations when an evi-
ratds tessitura was above the woman's. For instance, the male roles of Nero and
Ottone in Monteverdi's Incoronazione di Poppea (1642) were composed for so-
prano voices and were sung by castrati, whereas Ottavia and Poppea were per-
formed by (female) contraltos. Even stranger, in Cavalli's Egliogabcdo the male
parts of Eliogabalo, Alessandro, and Cesare are for sopranos, while Zenia (a
woman) is written for the tenor voice.6 In Cavalli's Didone the part of Jarba,
Dido's rejected lover, is for an evirato who sings higher than Dido herself.7
Among the best-known composers who wrote operas for the castrati were
Monteverdi, Scarlatti, Handel, Porpora, Hasse, the early Gluck, and Mozart.
Mozart wrote for them in such works as Idomeneo and his often neglected but
delightfully lyrical opera seria La cletnenza di Tito. Sextus's aria "Parto, parto" is
arguably the most thrilling aria in that opera. It was written for a castrato.
An idea of what the castrati sounded like when they sang is provided by
music historian Charles Burney. He relates that as a youth the musico Farinelli
engaged in a spectacular contest with a trumpet player in Rome.

There was a struggle every night between him and a famous player on
the trumpet. . . : after severally swelling out a note, in which each
manifested the power of his lungs, and tried to rival the other in bril-
liancy and force, they had both a swell and a shake [trill] together, by
thirds, which was continued so long . . . that both seemed to be ex-
hausted; and, in fact, the trumpeter, wholly spent gave it up . . . ; [but]
Farinelli with a smile on his countenance . . . broke out all at once in the
same breath, with fresh vigour, and not only swelled and shook the
note, but ran the most rapid and difficult divisions, and was at last si-
lenced only by the acclamations of the audience.8
 CASTRATI IN O P E R A 23

Of course Farinelli (born Carlo Broschi, 1705—1782) was one of the foremost
castrati, but other evirati also performed astounding feats that melded melody,
emotion, and extraordinary technical skill. There is a moving description of
the voices of three castrati in Eunuckism Displafd (1718). This book is an
anonymous English version—a translation, sometimes a mistranslation, and
occasionally an amplification—of Charles Ancillon's 1707 Traite des eunuques
{Treatise on Eunuchs). The following remarks do not appear in Ancillon's
French edition.
There can be nofinerVoices in the World, and more delicate, than of
some Eunuchs, such as Pasqualini, Pauluccio, and Jeronimo, (or Momo,)
and were esteemed so when I was in Rome, which was in the Years 1705
and 1706. . . .
It is impossible to give any tolerable Idea o f . . . the Beauty of their

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several Voices: In short, they are above Description. . . .
[Pauluccio's voice] had all the Warblings and Turns of a Nightingal
[sic], but with only this difFerence, that it was much finer. . . . The soft
Strains of Jeronimo . . . [lull] the Mind into a perfect Calm and Peace.9
During the years when they dominated opera, the castrati were popular in
Italy, Germany, England, Spain, Russia, Austria, and wherever Italian opera
was being written and produced. Heriot maintains that in the eighteenth cen-
tury 70 percent of all male opera singers were castrati.10 London knew two
glorious decades of their singing in the 1720s and 1730s, when Farinelli, Caf-
farelli (born Gaetano Majorano, 1710—1783), Giovanni Carestini (ca. 1705-ca.
1760), Senesino (born Francesco Bernardi, ca. 1680-?), and Gizziello (born
Gioacchino Conti, 1714-1761) sang there. Then too Handel was in residence,
composing the operas in which the musici sang. In the 1780s London hosted
three more remarkable evirati: Giovanni Maria Rubinelli (1753-1829), Gasparo
Pacchierotti (1740-1821), and Luigi Marchesi (1754-1829). As this brief list il-
lustrates, several of the castrati were called by names that differed from their
family names. Because the musici generally came from poor families, some of
them took a name honoring the person who had taught them singing or who
had supported them during the long years of their training. Once in a while
the name might designate a place of origin, as in the case of Senesino, from
Siena. One castrato, Giovanni Francesco Grossi (1653—1697), acquired his nick-
name of Siface from his 1678 success in Venice in the role of Siface (Syphax) in
Cavalli's Scipione Africano.

Because castration was officially punishable by excommunication, little was

openly admitted about the practice in Italy. When Burney visited in 1770, he
tried to ascertain where the operation was performed. In every city he was told
it was not done there, but someplace else. According to two eighteenth-
century travelers, the Frenchman J. J. Le F. de Lalande and W. de Archenholtz,
a former captain in the Prussian service, many boys were castrated in Naples.11
24 E N I D A N D R I C H A R D P E S C H E L

Archenholtz also mentioned the harsh training the musid endured, the great
number of boys who were mutilated, and how eunuchs who could not sing
well often became priests.
One cannot really discover how many Italian boys were castrated to create
musid in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Henry Pleasants estimates
that when the castrati were at the pinnacle of their popularity in the eighteenth
century, as many as four thousand boys were castrated in Italy each year.12 In
regard to the many boys who had been emasculated and were later found unfit
for singing and thus became priests, Italian scholar Salvatore di Giacomo
wryly remarked, "No other road remained but the priesthood: [as a result the
church had] an infinite number of priests whose . . . misfortune made it defin-
itively impossible for them to be unfaithful to their vows of chastity."13
People gave all sorts of medical—actually pseudomedical—reasons to ex-

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plain why a boy had been emasculated. In that era, wrote Francesco Florimo,
Vincenzo Bellini's good friend, "people did not fail to find some pretext or
another to justify the turpitude of the fact. A wound, a wild boar's bite, incur-
able without performing castration, zfall, as it was said of [Farinelli], that ne-
cessitated the mutilation in his infancy, and so on; in sum there was not a mu-
sico in that time who could not or would not have known how to tell his own
little story, so that in the end all the stories were similar." Florimo cited Italian
"traditions" to the effect that Gizziello was subjected to emasculation because
that was the "one and only way" to cure him of a grave illness he had when he
was a baby.14 And the English writer who published Eunuchism Displafd said
that the musico Pasqualini had to undergo that "Melancholy and dismal Opera-
tion" as the result of "a Distemper, otherwise incurable."15
Although there might have been certain medical problems in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries that could have indicated castration (for ex-
ample, tuberculosis of the testicles), it is obvious that most if not all of the
medical reasons that castrati and their families used were merely stories fab-
ricated to save face and/or to save them from the threat of excommunication.

The center for training singing eunuchs was Naples. In its four conservato-
ries, which had begun as charitable institutions—Sant'Onofrio, the Pieta dei
Turchini, Santa Maria di Loreto, and Poveri di Gesu Cristo—many of the fa-
mous evirati were educated.16 When Burney visited in 1770, only three conser-
vatories remained: Sant'Onofrio with about 90 students, the Pieta dei Tur-
chini with approximately 120, and Santa Maria di Loreto with perhaps 200.
Eunuchs as well as unmutilated boys were admitted from ages eight to twenty.
Between ages sixteen and twenty the castrato would leave the conservatory to
go onto the stage if he had a good voice or, if he did not, to sing in church.
For both eunuchs and normal boys stria discipline was maintained in the
conservatories. The rules and statutes of 1746 for die Conservatorio della Pieta
dei Turchini state that when students hear the bell announcing that their music
teacher (maestro) has arrived, they must "immediately leave their dormitory,
 CASTRATI IN OPERA 25

go over to him, kiss his hand, and stand humble and very respectful [assequiosi]
before him, learning what he teaches and obeying his orders and, when pun-
ished, they may not dare answer back, even if they consider the punishment
unreasonable."17
Though all the boys were subjected to the same severe discipline, in numer-
ous ways—musical, physiological, psychological, and social—the evirati were
unlike the rest. Various customs set them apart. They wore special clothes. A
document from the Poveri di Gesu Cristo in 1673 says that the eunuchs were
made to dress in black ("di nero si fanno vestire gli eunuchi"), while a report
from the same institution in 1736 says that the eunuchs wore, as their distinc-
tive emblem, a red belt and a dark blue cap ("il berretto turchino").18
The evirati received a certain degree of preferential treatment in the conser-
vatories. Considered important and delicate, they lived in better quarters, as

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Burney noted during his visit to Sant'Onofrio in 1770: The "sixteen young cas-
trati . . . live up stairs by themselves, in warmer apartments than the odier
boys, for fear of colds, which might not only render their delicate voices unfit
for exercise at present, but hazard the entire loss of them for ever."19 Often the
eunuchs also got finer food and clothing. In Sant'Onofrio, Giacomo explains,
"the refectory was in common; but, especially in the winter, they took care to
guard the little nightingales-in-training from the rigors and changes of tem-
perature, and so they were fed in their own rooms; moreover, the food pre-
pared for them differed from the food for the other boys. Eggs, broth, boiled
chicken, a generous wine habitually filled these delicate stomachs: even the
clothes these preferred boys wore were such as to protect them much better
from the seasons' inclemencies."20
Despite the preferential treatment they received, the castrati endured tre-
mendous psychological, social, and emotional sufferings in the conservatories.
They lived apart. They sounded strange. Their bodies, whether naked or
clothed, looked peculiar. Their physiological development deviated from a
normal male's. And they could do nothing to change that. Further, the castrati
had to face the prejudice and cruelty of their fellow students. In the 1780s at
the Pieta dei Turchini there was "the habitual contact between the whole boys
and the eunuchs [gl'integri e i non integri\ . . . ; eternal dissension that then
was the incessant cause of measures that nevertheless only succeeded in exacer-
bating the situation."21
By the end of the eighteenth century both the conservatories and the cas-
trati's fortunes were in a state of decline. Still, between 1794 and 1797 at least
nine new eunuch boys—sopranos and contraltos—entered the Pieta dei Tur-
chini.22 When the French invaded and conquered Italy, stricter measures were
taken against castration than ever before. In 1813 Gioacchino Rossini com-
posed Aureliano in Palmira for Giovanni-Battista Velluti (1781—1861), the last
outstanding male soprano, but the composer was angered by the evirato's
florid embellishments of his music. (In later years Rossini would also disap-
prove when, in the tradition of the castrati, Maria Malibran [1808-1836] and
26 E N I D A N D R I C H A R D P E S C H E L

Adelina Patti [1843—1919] added their own fioriture to his arias.) It may be that
Rossini's displeasure with Velluti's vocal embroideries helped hasten the mu-
stcPs disappearance from opera. Nonetheless, one must not forget that by 1813
the supply of these mutilated men who had sung and frequendy starred in
opera for some two centuries was diminished anyway.

The Medical Perspective

A human male who is castrated before he reaches puberty—as were the mu-
sici—develops differendy from one who matures normally. Some of these di-
vergencies account for the high voices the castratd had; others influenced their
appearance, physiological growth, hormonal makeup, psychological develop-

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ment, and sexual maturation and functioning.
Of foremost interest in the case of die castrati is the development—really,
lack of development—of the vocal cords. The vocal cords are comprised of a
firm cartilaginous portion and a more pliable membranous part.23 From birth
to the onset of puberty the male and female vocal cords are approximately the
same size. During adolescence the female vocal cords enlarge only slighdy,
whereas the male vocal cords, particularly die membranous part, enlarge sig-
nificandy. This dramatic increase in size of the membranous portion of the
adult male vocal cords produces die characteristic decrease in pitch (in singing)
and change in voice (in speaking) in the maturing male. Although additional
anatomical changes also occur during puberty (such as enlargement of the
pharynx and the nasal sinus cavities), those changes are much less important
than the growth of the membranous vocal cords in determining the pitch of a
male singer's voice. The large size of the membranous adult vocal cords is what
prevents the adult male from singing naturally in die soprano range. (An adult
male may, of course, sing in falsetto in that range.) Table 1 summarizes the
differences in length of the membranous part of the vocal cords in prepubertal
children and in adults.

Table 1: Length of the Membranous Vocal Cords

Prepubertal Adult Adult

male and female female male

7-8 mm. 8—11.5 mm. 12-16 mm.

It is now known that the dramatic enlargement in the male vocal cords dur-
ing puberty is due to the increased production of androgen hormones in die
interstitial cells of Leydig that reside in the male testes. In a male castrated
before puberty die enlargement of the membranous vocal cords does not take
 CASTRATI IN OPERA 27

place because the androgen stimulation necessary for rapid growth during
puberty is absent. The membranous vocal cords of a male castrated prepubertaUy
remain at their prepubertal length of 7-8 mm. Even though the hormonal
mechanism was unknown during the days of the castrati, it was understood
that castration of a prepubertal male would prevent the characteristic male
voice change during adolescence. Thus, the abhorrent practice of male castra-
tion became entrenched in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italy to pro-
vide evirati with beautiful high singing voices for the churches, courts of no-
bility, and opera houses of Italy—and beyond.
While the purpose of castration was to create the adult male soprano (and
contralto), the lack of androgen hormone stimulation by the Leydig cells in
the testes had numerous dire medical consequences that affected the lives of
those unfortunate singing eunuchs. These distressing physiological conse-

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quences of prepubertal castration have often been ignored. In his otherwise
very informative Castrati in Opera, Angus Heriot writes: "The operation ap-
pears, for all its cruelty, to have had surprisingly little effect on the general
health and well-being of the subject, any more than on his sexual impulses and
intellectual capacities. The hurt was very largely a psychological one, in an age
when virility was accounted a sovereign virtue."24 Although we agree that cas-
tration did not harm the eunuch's intellectual capacities, we disagree widi
everything else that Heriot says here.
Castration of the prepubertal male produces the medical condition called
primary hypogonadism, which is characterized by multiple developmental ab-
normalities as adulthood is reached. Among these abnormalities, caused by
the lack of androgen stimulation on the male body, are: (1) the adult eunuch
has an infantile penis; (2) the prostate is also underdeveloped, though this
effect is not visible because the prostate is an internal organ; (3) there is no
beard growth; (4) the usual male distribution of axillary hair and hair on the
extremities is lacking; (5) the distribution of pubic hair parallels the female in-
stead of the male pattern; (6) subcutaneous fat becomes more developed than
in the normal male, and fat deposits are localized to the hips, buttocks, and
breast areas (some castrati developed fatty breasts of very large dimensions
that gave the appearance of female breasts); (7) occasionally, fatty deposits oc-
cur in the lateral portions of the eyelids, producing facial distortions; (8) the
eunuch's skin is pale and frequently appears swollen and wrinkled; and (9) the
arms and legs of the eunuch grow abnormally long; this disproportionately
long arm and leg size relative to the torso size is defined medically as a
"eunuchoid appearance."
The multiple developmental abnormalities that affect males emasculated
prepubertally contribute to create in the adult eunuch a freakish appearance.
This is the result of primary hypogonadism. Descriptions of some of the tnu-
sici testify to these distorting and terrible effects. Some of the castrati who
clearly presented a eunuchoid appearance were Senesino, Farinelli, Tommaso
Guarducci (ca. 1720—after 1770), Gasparo Pacchierotti, and Marianino. Allud-
 E N I D A N DR I C H A R D P B S C H E L

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Figure i: Farinelli in Gala Dress. Pen drawing attributed to Antonio Maria Zanetti.
(Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.)
 C A S T R A T I I N O P E R A 29

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Figure 2: Caricature cfa scene from a Handel opera showing the eunuchoid appearance of
two castrati. (James Goodfriend Collection.)

ing to Farinelli's eunuchoid appearance, one observer wrote that he was "as tall
as a giant and as thin as a shadow, therefore, if he had grace, it could be only of
a sort to be envied by a penguin or a spider."25 Farinelli's grotesquely long
arms, legs, and hands are depicted in a pen drawing, "Farinelli in Gala Dress,"
which is attributed to Antonio Maria Zanetti (see figure 1). Another carica-
ture deriding the musici's eunuchoid appearance depicts a scene from one of
Handel's operas: two giant-size, malformed males stand on either side of a
normal-size woman (see figure 2). The caption in Francis Toye's Italian Opera
says the picture is a scene from Handel's Giulio Cesare; that in Henry Pleas-
ants's Great Singers says it is "probably from Handel's Flavio" and that the
evirati depicted are Senesino and Gaetano Berenstadt, "one of the very few
non-Italian castrati."26 Burney characterized Tommaso Guarducci as "tall and
aukward [sic] in figure."27 The Frenchman Charles de Brosses, who visited
Italy in 1739-1740, commented that in Rome men sang the women's roles in
opera and that one of them, the castrato "Marianini [sic], at six feet tall, . . . is
the largest princess I'll see in my time."28
A number of evirati, however, looked like women. Describing the opera in
Rome in the 1760s, the traveler Lalande wrote, "The principal actors in the
opera are the castrati, there are never any actresses, and it is the same castrati in
3O E N I D A N D R I C H A R D P E S C H E L

disguise who play the women's roles, sometimes in such a way as to create an
illusion, as much for their voices as for their figures."29 According to Brasses,
the castrato Anton Hubert (known as Porporino, 1697-1783), one of Porpora's
young pupils, was "as pretty as the prettiest girl."30 Some of these castrati were
homosexual, as Casanova reported in 1762: "The castrato who played the prima
donna was . . . the favourite pathic of Cardinal Borghese. . . . His breast was
as beautiful as any woman's."31

The Question of Heterosexual Sex

As a result of the multiple physical abnormalities caused by primary hypo-
gonadism, the castrati must have endured enormous emotional torment. A

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glimpse into their pain is suggested by a remark that Farinelli made to Burney.
When the Englishman told the evirato that he wanted to include several details
of Farinelli's life in the history of music he was preparing, the castrato replied,
"If you have a mind to compose a good work neverfillit with accounts of such
despicable beings as me."32 "Despicable" is not a word one would ordinarily
apply to Farinelli. Although some of the musici were known for being unpleas-
ant people, Farinelli was renowned for his kindness and "the prudence and
moderation of his character."33
Psychological sufferings are also evident in conversations the castrato Pauluc-
cio had with the English writer ofEunuchism Display3A. After he had been cas-
trated at the age of ten, Pauluccio said, "With Floods of Tears for many
Months together, [he had] bewailed the Loss of what was impossible for him
to recover." Even though he had become rich and celebrated, he continued to
lament that terrible loss. As the Englishman reported, "I have often heard him
bemoan his Misfortunes in the most moving manner. . . . I told him one Day
. . . that I thought him mighty happy being so much respected by the greatest
Quality, and living in the greatest Affluence and Plenty, die World at his Com-
mand, and had the Favour of Princes. He replied, with a deep sigh, and the
Tears stood in his Eyes, Si, Signor ma si tnanca qualcbe Cosa, Yes, Sir, says he,
but there is something wanting."34
Along with all the problems we have already noted, there is one more devas-
tating consequence of castrating a prepubertal male that we have not yet men-
tioned. In studies of many mammalian males, castration results in a total lack
of sexual activity.35 As in the case of other mammalian males, the lack of an-
drogen stimulation coupled with abnormal sex organ development probably
produced asexual behavior in die castrati. Yet stories say diat some of die cas-
trati had heterosexual love affairs. Can we believe diem?
The tale goes diat because of his liaison widi die Countess Elena Forni, ne'e
Marsilii, die castrato Siface was murdered on the road between Ferrara and
Bologna by killers hired by die Marsilii family.36 Florimo relates that when
Caffarelli was singing at the Teatro Argentina in Rome in 1728, "many women
 C A S T R A T I I N O P E R A 31

from noble families fell madly in love with him . . . [and] it was not always
easy for him to avoid the anger of some jealous husbands. One time he was
obliged to hide in the bottom of an empty cistern located in the garden of the
house from which he had fled; and he remained there until late at night, catch-
ing a raging cold, which kept him in bed for over a month."37 It is said that
another eighteenth-century evirato, Luigi Marchesi, inspired intense female
passions and that he caused a great scandal when Maria Cosway (or Conway),
wife of a miniaturist, abandoned her husband and children for Marchesi and
followed him through Europe.38
We do not deny that some women became close with certain castrari and
even ran off with them. The most successful evirati were, after all, gloriously
talented, illustrious, and very wealthy. Still, we do seriously question whether
a castrato could have consummated a sexual relationship with a woman. The

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tales about their amorous liaisons do not prove that they did; they only imply
that they did. Reports about two musici who became close with women—one
even married—actually suggest, to anyone who reads the accounts carefully,
that these evirati did not consummate their affairs with the women.
When Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci (ca. 1736—i79o[?]) was singing in Ire-
land, the castrato married a girl named Dora Maunsell. Apropos of this mar-
riage, Casanova wrote: "[At] Covent Garden, . . . the castrato Tenducci sur-
prised me by introducing me to his wife, by whom he had two children. He
laughed at people who said that a castrato could not procreate. Nature had
made him a monster that he might remain a man; he was born triorchis [with
three testicles], and, as only two of the seminal glands had been destroyed, the
remaining one was sufficient to endow him with virility."39 We are skeptical
about this on at least two counts. First, even if Tenducci's wife had borne two
children, that does not prove that die castrato had fathered them. Second, tri-
orchism is extremely rare. Are we to assume that this evirato had been one of
the world's few cases? Even Heriot, who thinks that the castrari could have
consummated heterosexual relations, argues that Casanova's story "cannot be
true as it stands, for Casanova was in London in 1763—4, and Tenducci was not
even married till 1766." Moreover, Heriot adds, "Tenducci's marriage was, in
1775, declared null and void."40
The other questionable case concerns Giovanni-Battista Velluti, the castrato
whose embellishments of Aureliano in Palmira had annoyed Rossini. When
Velluti went to Saint Petersburg, Heriot relates, "a certain Grand Duchess be-
came enamoured of him, and took him off to her palace in the Crimea; yet
even the satisfaction of having the Tsar's close relative for a mistress could not
compensate for the lady's incessant tantrums and jealousies, and Velluti soon
broke with her." To support his contention that Velluti had "the Tsar's close
relative for a mistress," Heriot quotes a letter Velluti wrote to a friend to ex-
plain why he and this Grand Duchess were not able to have any children.
"Uomo a donna soli soli / e la via d'aver figlioli [A man and woman alone
alone / is the way that children are sown] says the proverb: but it needs correc-
32 E N I D A N DR I C H A R D P E S C H E L

tion. We were so much alone there [in the Crimea] that eventually we left our
clothes off altogether; but, whether because some utensils were missing from
my knapsack, or because she suffers from excess in one direction, i.e. in having
some thirty years more of age than she should have, I am led to believe that the
only way to have children at Court is by using a great deal of patience."41 In all
likelihood the phrase "some utensils were missing from my knapsack" refers
obliquely to Velluti's castrated parts and, therefore, to his maimed sexual
condition.
We are not the only ones to consider that the evirati could not consummate
heterosexual love affairs. Heriot reports that when Velluti appeared in London
in 1826, "he incurred much ridicule when he first sang the part of Tebaldo [in
Morlacchi's Tebaldo edlsoline]. He had to sing an aubade, in which occurred
the words 'il nostro casto amor' [our chaste love], and someone in the gallery

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shouted, cWhat else could it be?'—or words to that effect. This simple pleas-
antry [as Heriot calls it] brought the house down and only with difficulty
could the opera be proceeded with at all."42
The Italian musician Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739), author of 7/ teatro
alia moda, wrote two burlesque madrigals that deride the evirati's unfortunate
sexual condition. In the first madrigal, tenors and basses (that is, unmutilated
male singers) tell the distraught male sopranos that because they are barren
trees, it is decreed that they should burn in hell.
(per due tenon e due bassi) (for two tenors and two basses)
No, chc lassu ne' cori almi c bead No, in the divine choirs of heaven
Non entrano castrati, Above castrati do not enter,
Perche e scritto in quel loco Because it is written in that sphere
(i soprani interrompono) (the sopranos interrupt)
Dite che e scritto mai> Just what is it that the writing
proclaims?
(tenori e bassi rispondono) (tenors and basses respond)
Arbor che non fa frutto arda nel fuoco! Let a tree that makes no fruit burn in flames!
(»sopranigridano) (the sopranos shriek)
Ahi! Ahi! 43 Oh dear! Oh dear!

Casting doubt on the castrati's ability to have normal heterosexual relations,

Charles de Brosses wrote that "one of these half-men [a castrato] presented a
request to Pope Innocent XI [pope from 1676 to 1689] for permission to marry,
explaining that the operation had been done poorly; whereupon the pope
wrote in the margin: Che si castri meglio [Let him be castrated better]."44 Of
course the question of whether castrati could have normal sexual relations was
decided in the negative by the Roman Catholic Church because the Church
does not permit eunuchs or those known to be impotent to marry.
Owing to the fact that anyone involved in castration in Italy could be ex-
communicated, there is no accurate description of the operation that was per-
formed to create the musid. The only contemporary account is that of Charles
Ancillon, a French lawyer, who published his Traite des eunuques in France in
 C A S T R A T I I N O P E R A 33

1707.*s A careful reading of Ancillon's text suggests that some boys were cas-
trated by trauma alone, others by surgical methods; but it is impossible to con-
dude from Ancillon's descriptions whether the procedures would have pro-
duced a partial castration or a complete castration. Because there is no way to
ascertain the procedure or procedures used, all opinions about whether the
eunuchs created could be fertile and potent can be only speculations.
Our opinion is that the great castrati had a complete castration and, conse-
quently, could not have had any normal male sexual function. Stories about
their sexual relationships with women must be viewed with skepticism. The
lack of androgens that permitted them to have their infantile vocal cords and
extraordinary voices also made them have an infantile penis, a lack of beard
growth, and a grotesque-looking body characterized by a eunuchoid appear-
ance and/or womanlike features, including breasts. All these results of pre-

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pubertal castration (and primary hypogonadism) are consistent with a lack of
male sexual function. The notion that various castrati had natural sex lives with
women is, in our judgment, a hoax.
Although it is interesting to speculate about the castrati's sexual abilities,
and one may be tempted to consider one argument more convincing than an-
other, far more weight must be given to the testimony of the evirati them-
selves. Their accounts furnish strong evidence for the devastating effects of
prepubertal castration on sexual function. We need only recall how Farinelli
called himself a "despicable" being, how Velluti referred symbolically to the
"utensils" missing from his "knapsack," and how Pauluccio told the writer of
Eunuchism Displafd that despite all the riches and glories he had known as a
famous singing eunuch, "si manca qualche Cosa . . . there is something
wanting."
Even more poignant and to the point are the firsthand documents actually
written by a castrato: the verse autobiography and last will and testament of
Filippo Balatri (ca. 1676-1756). As far as we know, Balatri is the only castrato
who wrote an autobiography.
Born in Alfea, near Pisa, the soprano Balatri began his singing career at age
fifteen but did not make his operatic stage debut until 1724, when he was
about forty-eight. He served his sovereign Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand
Duke of Tuscany, by singing for Peter the Great in Moscow, for the Great
Khan (U Gran Kam) in Tatary, and for the Emperor Charles VI in Vienna.
Balatri also sang for some noblemen at Versailles, and he had an audience with
Louis XIV. He went to London, where he hoped to sing for Queen Anne, but
she died in 1714, shortly after his arrival. Her successor, George I, took "as
little pleasure / in music as a deaf man,"4* Balatri lamented, and so the soprano
had to content himself with singing for members of the English aristocracy.
During his later years Balatri sang in and around Munich, for the most part.
He entered the monastery of Fiirstenfeld in Bavaria and at age sixty-three was
ordained a priest. The evirato remained at the monastery until his death on
10 September 1756.
34 ENID A N D R I C H A R D P E S C H E L

Balatri's autobiography, composed in four-line rhyming verse and com-

pleted on 25 August 1735, along with his last will and testament, written be-
tween 27 November 1737 and 8 January 1738, supply some moving insights into
the mind and emotional life of this fortunate—and unfortunate—castrato.
He called his autobiography Fruitti del mondo (Fruits of the World), a title
both serious and ironic. "Fruits of the World" implies the fleeting pleasures,
monetary rewards, vanities, and unhappy experiences that Balatri has encoun-
tered in the world: "the insane World," "cruel World," "wicked World," "per-
verse World," "knavish, infamous and villainous World," "swinish World," "the
World my enemy," as he calls it.47 But the tone of his autobiography is not
wholly bitter, for the musico mingles resentment with humor, hate with love,
sadness with happiness, and bitterness with a craving for something better.
The mood of his writing is, therefore, highly ambivalent. As Balatri explains,

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he often uses wit as a defense against the poisons and evils of the world:
"Thus, joking, I give the true method that can be / a powerful antidote [forte
antidoto] for me/' 48
In Fruitti del mondo he describes the joys, artistic achievements, and material
rewards that result from his being a castrato—and his sufferings for precisely
the same reason. When his triumphs are musical, they fill him with a sense of
pride and glory: "I sing as die Captain of the Sopranos / who brought Music
to foreign places," he proclaims. Recalling his performance that delighted die
Great Khan, Balatri celebrates the power of his artistry: "I release passages and
trills by the hundreds"; "I give off trills and warblings like lightning."49 He
enumerates his successes in Russia, Italy, France (at Versailles, not in Lyons,
where the French laughed at the Italian style of singing), England, and
Germany.
Yet diis accomplished artist also evokes die anguish he experiences as a cas-
trato. After Balatri had sung for the Great Khan, who had never heard such a
singer before, the Eastern potentate had the young musico asked if he was male
or female. The eunuch was embarrassed about how to reply. Hiding behind
symbols to conceal his confusion and shame, and using droll images as an anti-
dote for his blushes because, as Balatri says, he is sexually "neuter," he con-
structed a litde fable for die Great Khan.
Incomincia dal farmi domandare He begins to have me asked if I am male
se maschio son o femmina e da dove, or female and wherefrom I did spring,
se nascc tale gente (owero piove) if such people are bom (or else rain down)
con voce e abilitade per cantare. with a voice and the ability to sing.
Resto imbrogliato ailor per dar risposta. I remain confused about how to reply.
Se maschio, dico quasi una bugia, To say I am male is almost a lie,
femmina, men che men diro ch'io sia, to say I am female is true even less,
e dir che son neutral, rossore costa. and to say I am neuter makes me blush.
Pure, fatto coraggio, al fin rispondo But, having roused my courage, I answer
che son maschio, Toscano, e che si trova finally •
 CASTRATI IN OPERA 35

galli nelle mie parti che fanno uova,
dalle quali i soprani son al mondo;
Che li galli si nomano Norcini,
ch'a noi lc fan covar per mold giorni
e che, fatto il cappon, son gli uovi adorrti
da lusinghe, carezze e da quattrini.50
that I am a male from Tuscany,
and that there are roosters in my country
that make eggs from which emerge soprani;
That these roosters are called Norcini,
that they make us brood the eggs for many
days and that, when the capon is ready, the
eggs
are adorned with caresses, flattery, and
money.

Thefigureof the capon, the castrated rooster, suggests the castrato's asexual
condition, his neuter gender. On at least three more occasions, Balatri uses the
derogatory image of the capon to describe himself.51
The torment Balatri endured is apparent when he describes how he reacted to

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girls. Young and in Moscow, he fell in love with Anna, an English beauty. When
he sees her, the musico says, sounding like a typical moonstruck adolescent:
. . . in me s'accende il fuoco.
Eccomi mesto, ognor cogitabondo,
inquieto, taciturno e solitario,
dove che non e l'Anna fo il lunario,
poiche, s'alcun mi parla, non rispondo. . . .
Mi tuffo nell'amor fin ai capelli,
e se non son dall'Anna, non son vivo. . . ."
Ultimately, however, Balatri recognizes that because he is an evirato, he must
give up loving—and longing for—women.
Bead quelli che s i . . . (fer soprani)
per il regno dei cieli! Io tal vogl'essere,
e se necessita virtu fa intessere,
di cuore a tal virtu dard di mani.
Che al mondo vi sian Anne oppur Luise,
Fmncesche, Catcrine (e ancor Pancmzie),
che sian belle quai Soli e tutte grazie,
che m'amin tutte assieme, owcr divise,
Ch'io crepi, se m'importa! Gia a sposarle
modo per me non Ve; dunque che fame?
A che perder il tempo e in pene starne?
La meglio e viver quieto, e abbandonarle.5
. . . afireis kindled in me.
Now here I am sad, always restive, pensive,
solitary and uncommunicative,
when Anna is not there, then moonstruck am
I,
since, if someone speaks to me, I do not
reply. . . .
Head over heels, into love I dive,
and if I am not near Anna, I am not
alive. . . .
Blessed are those who . . . (became soprani)
for the Kingdom of Heaven! Such I want to
be,
and if virtue is woven in by necessity,
to such virtue I'll give myself wholeheartedly.
Let there be in die world Annas or Louisas,
Francescas, Caterinas (and even Pancrazias),
let them be pretty as Suns and charming as
' can be,
let them love me all together, or separately,
If I die, what do I care! Already there is no
way
for me to many them; what to do with
them, then?
Why waste rime and suffer for loving them?
The best thing is to live quiedy, and give up
women.
36 E N I D A N D R I C H A R D P E S C H E L

Although Balatri's tone is playful, the import of his words is terrible, even
tragic. There is no question here that this musico could not make love to a
female.
Written a little more than two years after his autobiography, Balatri's last
will and testament also reveals, despite its frequently facetious tone, the an-
guish of his asexuality. "I, thanks to heaven, my industry, and the surgeon Ac-
coramboni of Lucca, will not have a wife around, who after having loved me
little would be shrieking in my ears," Balatri wrote in this document.54 Acco-
ramboni of Lucca was undoubtedly the surgeon who castrated Balatri. In the
same humorous/serious vein, the evirato writes that he does not want any
women to wash his body when he dies, even though that is the custom in Ba-
varia, where he is living. As he explains, "In addition to the indecency that I
see . . . in that [custom], I do not want them amusing themselves by examin-

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ing how Sopranos are made." To ensure that no female will see him naked, he
leaves the following instructions in his will: "I want . . . [my] casket to be
nailed down before she [the woman who will sit vigil over his corpse] puts her
feet in the room."55 What a sense of suffering and shame these instructions
reveal! Far more than any anecdotes about the love affairs some castrati were
said to have had with women, and far more than any speculations by medical
or lay people, Filippo Balatri's words bear testimony to the castrate's inability
to have a normal sexual relationship with a woman.

It has often been noted that the "trouser" or "breeches" parts in opera—
male roles written for the female voice, such as Nicklausse in Les contes d'Hoff-
mann, Siebel in Faust, Oscar in Un hallo in maschera, and so on—are links with
the castrati of the past. But the castrati's legacy goes beyond these hermaphro-
ditic roles. Aspects of what was their extraordinary vocal art appear in the
operas of Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti, which we now call bel canto. For the
castrati's art was quintessential bel canto: that is, literally, "beautiful song."
When the musici reigned in the eighteenth century, the vocal standard was
bel canto. Time and again we read about the evirati's wonderful art. Runs, rou-
lades, cadenzas, arpeggios, all sorts of flowery ornamentation, trills, and im-
provisations were their specialty and glory. Elements of the castrati's art of bel
canto made their way into the lyrical operas of the first part of the nineteenth
century. When Bellini was a student at the Naples Conservatory, he was taught
the theoretical study of singing by the castrato Girolamo Crescentini (1762-
1846), one of the preeminent performers of genuine bel canto. Crescenrini's
pupils sang Bellini's first opera, Adelson e Salvini (1825).**
Not surprisingly, the singers in the early part of the nineteenth century
owed a huge debt to their immediate predecessors, the castrati. When Giuditta
Pasta (1798—1865), the remarkable singing actress for whom Bellini composed
the role of Norma, emerged on the scene, the art of bel canto was already two
hundred years old. Pasta, of course, is the forerunner of the distinguished dra-
matic sopranos of more modern times; in technique, however, she was a lineal
 C A S T R A T I I N O P E R A 37

descendant of Farinelli, Caffarelli, Pacchierotti, and Crescentini. This also held

true for her contemporaries, both male and female.
And so, despite the musici's mutilated bodies, their frequently distorted
physical appearance, and their neutered sexual condition—and in spite of the
fact that those astounding voices that filled the seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century opera houses and courts of Europe are lost to us forever—the castrati
have left an enduring legacy. Their bequest goes far beyond the hermaphro-
ditic "trouser" roles that form a vestigial link with the past. For the castrati's
supreme legacy, which we thrill to hear in the operas of Rossini, Donizetti,
and Bellini, is the "sound of sweetest melody"57 that is the art of bel canto.

NOTES

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Unless otherwise indicated, all translations in
this article are by Enid Rhodes Peschel, who
gratefully acknowledges die generous help of
Nicoletta Alegi and Diana Festa-McCormick
in translating the Italian texts.
1. Angus Heriot, The Castrati in Opera
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1975), p. li.
2. Francis Rogers, T h e Male Soprano,"
The Musical Quarterly 5, no. 3 (July 1919):
414.
3. Heriot, Castrati in Opera, p. 25.
4. Rogers, T h e Male Soprano," p. 422.
5. For a fascinating discussion of these
recordings, see Joe K. Law, "Alessandro
Moreschi Reconsidered: A Castrato on
Records," The Opera Quarterly 2, no. 2
(Summer 1984): 1—12.
6. Heriot, Castrati in Opera, p. 33.
7. Gerald Abraham, The Concise Oxford
History ofMusic (London: Oxford University
Press, 1979), p- 319.
8. Charles Burney, An Eighteenth-Century
Musical Tour in France and Italy, ed. Percy A.
Scholes (London: Oxford University Press,
1959), p. 153-
9. Eunuchism Displa/d (anonymous ver-
sion of Charles Ancillon, Traiti des eunuques)
(London: E. Curll, 1718), pp. 29-31.
10. Heriot, Castrati in Opera, p. 31.
11. J. J. Le F. de Lalande, Voyage d'unfran-
cois en Italic, fait dans les armies 176s & 1766,
Nouvelle Edition (Yverdon, 1759), 6:219; and
W. de Archenholtz, A Picture ofItaly, trans.
Joseph Trapp (Dublin: W. Corbet, 1791),
p. 298.
12. Henry Pleasants, The Great Singers:
From Jenny hind and Caruso to Callas and
Pavarotti, rev. ed. (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1981), p. .38.
13. Salvatore di Giacomo, II Conservatorio
di SantX)nofrio a Capuana e quello di S. M.
delta Pitta dei Turchini (vol. 26 of Collezione
settecentesca) (Naples: Remo Sandron,
1924), p. 97.
14. Franceso Florimo, La Scuola musicale di
Napoli e isuoi conservatorii (Naples: Stabili-
mento Tipografico di Vine. Morano, 1882),
3:455, 463-
15. Eunuchism Displa/d, pp. 14, 40.
16. The Poveri di Gesu Cristo was opened
in 1589 and closed in 1743. The three others
were merged in 1807 and eventually became
the Real Collegio di S. Pietro Majella.
Heriot, Castrati in Opera, p. 4on.
17. Quoted in Florimo, Scuola musicale di
Napoli, 3:13.
18. Salvatore di Giacomo, II Conservatorio
dei Poveri di Gesu Cristo e quello di S. M. di
Loreto (vol. 27 of Collezione settecentesca)
(Naples: Remo Sandron, 1928), pp. 85,120.
On p. 41 of Castrati in Opera, Heriot mis-
takenly says that the first document is from
Sanr'Onofrio and that the second one is from
the Pieta dei Turchini; in addition, he mis-
translates "turchino" as Turkish," instead of
"dark blue."
19. Burney, Eighteenth-Century Musical
Tour, pp. 269-70.
20. Giacomo, Conservatorio di SanfOnqfrio,
p. 101.
zi. Ibid., p. 256.
22. Ibid., pp. 279-81.
 E N I D A N D R I C H A R D
23. For the medical information in this sec-
tion, see John Jacob Ballenger, Diseases of the
Nose, Throat, Ear, Head, and Neck (Phila-
delphia, Pa.: Lea and Febiger, 1985), pp.
371-75; and M. W. Wintrobe et al., eds.,
Principles of Internal Medicine (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1974), PP- 561-68.
24. Heriot, Castmti in Opera, p. 63.
25. Quoted in Rogers, "The Male So-
prano," p. 417-
26. Francis Toye, Italian Opera (London:
Max Parrish and Company, 1952), p. 19; and
Pleasants, Great Singers, p. 41.
27. Charles Burney, A General History of
Music: From the Earliest Ages to the Present Pe-
riod (1789) (New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Company, n.d.), 2:872.
28. Charles de Brasses, Lettre ditalie sur les
spectacles et la musique (Paris: La Flute de
Pan, 1980), p. 39.
29. Lalande, Voyage d'unfrancois en Italie,
5 = 3-
30. Brasses, Lettre ditalie, p. 39.
31. Jacques Casanova, The Memoirs of Jacques
Casanova de Seingalt, trans. Arthur Machen
(New York: Dover Publications, 1961),
2:1303.
32. Charles Burney, Music, Men, and Man-
ners in France and Italy, 1770, ed. H. Edmund
Poole (London: Eulenburg Books, 1974),
P-93-
33. Burney, Eighteenth-Century Musical
Tour, p. 155.
34. Eunuchism Displafd, p. 4 0 .
35. Alexander Lipschutz, The Internal Se-
cretions of the Sex Glands (Baltimore, Md.:
Williams and Wilkins, 1924), pp. 1—35.
36. Heriot, Castrati in Opera, p. 134; see
also Giacomo, Conservatorio di Sant?Onafrio,
p. 98.
37. Florimo, Scuola musicale di Napoli,
3:450.
38. Heriot, Castmti in Opera, p. 157. Ac-
cording to Pleasants, Great Singers, p. 90,
the woman's name was "Mrs. Conway."
P E S C H E L
Neither Heriot nor Pleasants gives any
documentation.
39. Casanova, Memoirs of Jacques Casanova
de Seingalt, 3:1737.
40. Heriot, Castrati in Opera, p. 188.
41. Ibid., p. 193-
42. Ibid., p. I97n.
43. Benedetto Marcello "No, die lassu ne'
cori almi e bead," in Enrico Fondi, La Vita e
I'opera letteraria del musicista Benedetto Mar-
cello (Rome: Walter Modes, Editore, 1909),
p. 89.
44. Brasses, Lettre ditalie, p. 36.
45. In 1983, starting basically from An-
dllon's descriptions, a former uropathologist,
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Meyer Melicow, tried to argue that some of
the castrati could have had heterosexual love
affairs. But MelicoVs arguments are purely
speculative. As Willet F. Whitmore, M.D.,
chief of urology at Memorial Sloan Kettering
Hospital in New York, says in Melicow's ar-
ticle, "All opinions [are] speculative in regard
to the castrato period." Meyer M. Melicow,
"Castrati Singers and the Lost 'Cords,'" Bul-
letin ofthe New York Academy of Medicine 59,
no. 8 (1983): 752-
46. Filippo Balatri, Fruitti del mondo, ed.
Karl Vossler (vol. 24 of Collezione settecen-
tesca) (Naples: Remo Sandron, 1924), p. 223.
47- Ibid., pp. 31, 67, 68, 83, 230.
48. Ibid., p. 138.
49- Ibid., pp. 31, 62, 67.
50. Ibid., pp. 69-71-
51. Ibid., pp. 64, 69, 263.
52. Ibid., pp. 97—100.
53. Ibid., p. 124.
54. Ibid., p. 12.
55- Ibid., pp. 13,15.
56. Herbert Weinstock, Vincenzo Bellini:
His Life and His Operas (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1980), pp. 16, 27.
57. William Shakespeare, Henry TV, Part II,
act 3, sc. 1, line 14, in The London Shakespeare,
ed. John Munro (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1957), 4 = 947-