Their fate from then until their reappearance in Italy more than three hundred years later is not clear. By the 9th century, eunuch singers were well-known (not least in the choir of Hagia Sophia) and remained so until the sack of Constantinople by the Western forces of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. In Constantinople around 400 AD, the empress Aelia Eudoxia had a eunuch choir-master, Brison, who may have established the use of castrati in Byzantine choirs, though whether Brison himself was a singer and whether he had colleagues who were eunuch singers is not certain. In a Western context, eunuch singers are known to have existed from the early Byzantine Empire. Eunuch is a more general term since, historically, many eunuchs were castrated after puberty and thus the castration had no impact on their voices.Ī Byzantine castrato from the 11th centuryĬastration as a means of subjugation, enslavement or other punishment has a very long history, dating back to ancient Sumer. Listening to the only surviving recordings of a castrato (see below), one can hear that the lower part of the voice sounds like a "super-high" tenor, with a more falsetto-like upper register above that.Ĭastrati were rarely referred to as such: in the 18th century, the euphemism musico (pl musici) was much more generally used, although it usually carried derogatory implications another synonym was evirato, literally meaning " emasculated". Their vocal range was higher than that of the uncastrated adult male. Operating through small, child-sized vocal cords, their voices were also extraordinarily flexible, and quite different from the equivalent adult female voice. This, combined with intensive training, gave them unrivalled lung-power and breath capacity. Thus the limbs of the castrati often grew unusually long, as did their ribs. Īs the castrato's body grew, his lack of testosterone meant that his epiphyses (bone-joints) did not harden in the normal manner. it is said that there are shops in Naples with this inscription: 'QUI SI CASTRANO RAGAZZI' ("Here boys are castrated") but I was utterly unable to see or hear of any such shops during my residence in that city. I was told at Milan that it was at Venice at Venice that it was at Bologna but at Bologna the fact was denied, and I was referred to Florence from Florence to Rome, and from Rome I was sent to Naples .
I enquired throughout Italy at what place boys were chiefly qualified for singing by castration, but could get no certain intelligence. During the 18th century itself, the music historian Charles Burney was sent from pillar to post in search of places where the operation was carried out: The geographical locations of where these procedures took place is not known specifically. To prevent the child from experiencing the intense pain of castration, many were inadvertently administered lethal doses of opium or some other narcotic, or were killed by overlong compression of the carotid artery in the neck (intended to render them unconscious during the castration procedure). The means by which future singers were prepared could lead to premature death. The procedure was usually done to boys around the age of 8–10, recovery time from the procedure took around two weeks. Methods involved using opium to medically induce a coma, then submerging the boy into an ice or milk bath where the procedure of either severing the vas deferens (similar to a vasectomy), twisting the testicles until they atrophied, or complete removal via surgical cutting was performed (however the complete removal of the testicles was not a popularly used technique). Methods of castration used to terminate the onset of puberty varied. Prepubescent castration for this purpose diminished greatly in the late 18th century. As a result, the vocal range of prepubescence (shared by both sexes) is largely retained, and the voice develops into adulthood in a unique way. The voice is produced by castration of the singer before puberty, or it occurs in one who, due to an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Ĭastration before puberty (or in its early stages) prevents the larynx from being transformed by the normal physiological events of puberty. A castrato (Italian, plural: castrati) is a type of classical male singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto.
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