MUHL 286 CAIN 1

Day 03 class assignments for Wednesday 4 May 2022

read before class

Roger Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto
Melani (Cambridge, 2009), 1-8 (12), 15-17, 23-32, 107-112, 116-121, 141-144, 146-148. 34 pages
[pdf file containing all excerpts has been posted to MyCourses]
Emily Wilbourne, Review of Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in
the Life of Atto Melani, by Roger Freitas, Current Musicology no. 88 (Fall 2009): 87-92.
[pdf file containing article has been posted to MyCourses]

supplemental reading (not required but relevant)

Margaret Murata, “Orfeo (ii) [L’Orfeo] (‘Orpheus’)” in Oxford Music Online.
https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O005885

listen with score before class

Atto Melani Fileno, idolo mio
Io voglio esser infelice
Luigi Rossi Lagrime, dove sete from L’Orfeo, beginning of Act III (1647)
https://youtu.be/4XXsE7e4BZ0
Mio ben, teco il tormenti from L’Orfeo
https://youtu.be/UXDFRaVRVdA lovely performance, with scrolling score
https://youtu.be/IKjS3LaSAMs nice, up-tempo performance, audio only
https://youtu.be/OqwW0jVEMF0 life-changing live video by Scherzi Musicali

questions to prepare for main reading assignment (Freitas)

What primary sources have been most valuable to Freitas in his study? What primary sources did
he draw upon? Keep track of the different kinds of primary sources uses as you proceed through
the reading.
Where and for whom specifically did Atto Melani work during his time as a musico?
To what factors does Freitas attribute the fact that Melani’s biography and related sources have
drawn so little scholarly interest? Why have people not written much about Melani previously?
What does Freitas mean when he writes (p. 3): “Indeed, the field of feminist studies has
established biographical models specifically for the unimportant subject.” Why does he says
this?
According to Freitas, Domenico Melani (Atto’s father) did not decide to have four of his sons
castrated out of duress or for money. On the contrary, he probably saw the decision as natural if
not inevitable, and perhaps even as a generous one. What are some of the factors in Domenico’s
world that might have led him to this view? Why was this normal in Domenico’s world?
What was the stance of the Catholic Church at this time regarding castration? How did the
seventeenth-century Church “directly fuel this practice”?
What are your thoughts regarding Freitas’s comparison of a father castrating his musically
talented son to a football dad encouraging his athletically talented son to take performance
 MUHL 286 CAIN 2

enhancing drugs? Does this seems like a fair comparison? In what ways are the two situations
similar and different from one another?
Where did the castrato fit into the “one-sex system” of describing gender, with its important
concept of “vital heat”? What was the nearest equivalent to the castrato?
What kinds of evidence does Freitas draw upon to support the argument (after p. 116) that in
seventeenth-century Italy the prepubescent boy was “repeatedly characterize[d] . . . as an object
of desire, and it was his physical effeminacy that made him so”?
p. 141 and after
In the light of all this, why might castrati have begun to take amorous male leads in Italian
operas during the seventeenth century?
When and in what city does Freitas argue for “the crucial moment in operatic history . . . when
the many conventions of the genre actually developed”, esp. with regard to the roles played by
castrati.
What character traits does Freitas link to operatic roles played by castrati circa 1650?
What specific composers and works does Freitas mention in his discussion of castrati roles in
opera?

questions for secondary reading assignment (Wilbourne)

What are some of the good things about Freitas’ book according to Wilbourne. What specifically
doe she mention is being positive and noteworthy (several things really).
How does Wilbourne identify the aim of Freitas’s book? What does she claim he tried to do?
What specific criticism does Wilbourne have of the way Freitas dealt with Melani’s music?

←to left
A cenotaph (memorial bust) of
Atto Melani (1715) in the Melani Chapel
of San Domenico in Pistoia, Italy.