What kind of parent would agree to have his or her seven-year-old son castrated? Horrifying as it may seem, if viewed in historical context the willingness of a parent may be akin to advocating Baby Einstein, coaxing an infant to swim, or securing a prenatal Ivy League admission. True eunuchs, often savagely mutilated as captives or slaves, served princely masters in the ancient world. The practice persisted at the Ottoman and Chinese Imperial courts until recent memory, albeit with some degree of consent and better intentions. But the tradition of castrating boys to retain their soprano voices was mostly a phenomenon of the Italian peninsula during the 17th and 18th centuries—the period known as the “Baroque era.” Of course, as depicted in The Last Castrato , the castrati, or musici, although no longer appearing on the opera stage, were nonetheless integral, though not necessarily beloved, members of the Papal Choir of the Sistine Chapel, even in the first years of the 20th century.

It was during the Baroque era that castrati achieved their true glory, as women were at best tolerated in selected communities but generally banned from the opera stage. The leading castrati traveled throughout Europe, feted and highly paid; a few perhaps even actually did enjoy the gender-bending scandal and financial gain depicted in contemporaneous literature, i.e., a woman artist posing as a castrato posing as a woman. The best castrati indeed enjoyed wine, women, and song, princely patronage, good housing, finery, and an abundance of quality food. Some became quite wealthy. The majority however, were not international stars. By some estimates, only ten percent of castrati supported themselves as professional church and chamber singers. The rest succumbed to a life we can barely imagine.

It was not uncommon for families, and for boys themselves with few other prospects, to petition local nobility or a wealthy church to fund the operation. Family’s justified their consent on the grounds of future acclaim for their sons, and also on semi-religious grounds in that castration promised celibacy. Patronage alone did not guarantee stardom—that was of course dependent upon the young man’s technique and entrepreneurial spirit. Boys were about seven or eight when the operation took place. A variety of procedures were used, usually “kneading” of the testicles or an incision in the groin and removal of the spermatic cord and destruction of the testes. Operating conditions were nothing short of horrifying, with anesthetics varying from opiates to pressing on the carotid artery, to a warm milk bath. At the very least, the western practice did not involve the potentially fatal amputation associated with Eastern eunuchs. Although we know of noble and clerical funding in the German and Italian states, few barber-surgeons owned up to actually performing the act. Indeed, though princes and church authorities hired castrati, they threatened to punish the makers of castrati with excommunication, fines, imprisonment, and, in France, where female sopranos and male falsettists thrived, with hanging. As a result, the names, numbers, and exact methods of castrato-makers are lost, often kept secret even in their day. Mustafa, Moreschi’s mentor at the Vatican, was told as a child that his “goods” had been swiped by a raging boar. Yet we know that an outbreak of plague in Naples in 1657 killed hundreds of young castrati in one conservatory alone, so undoubtedly, many barber-surgeons took the risk.

Castrated boys underwent a training regimen nothing short of abusive, although they were fed somewhat better than other students and kept a bit warmer in winter; the Baroque was not exactly known for its understanding or tolerance of the emotional and caloric requirements of adolescents. In the Italian states, they were allowed outside the conservatory dressed only as acolytes of the church. Their training combined mastery of the divine service with composition, instrumental music, and of course vocal discipline. They were trained in producing affective messa di voce, a Baroque device employing a controlled crescendo and a crescendo on an individual note (a “swell”), and in executing highly florid articulation, often with extraordinary throat articulation. To the castrati—first as boys, then adolescents, as young men seeking patronage, and for the rest of their lives—and to their tutors and the governors of the conservatory of religious establishment, their destiny had begun with a deep and mutilating incision, and every effort was made to make it worthwhile.

The physical consequence of castration and ten years of training resulted in a powerful thoracic cavity, a more delicate larynx, and the eventuality of excess body fat and a somewhat smaller size head. In layman’s terms, they often had the range of a woman with the textures and power of a man. Individual castrati ranged from high sopranos down to contraltos.

We can follow the careers of many castrati, among them Grimaldi, Guadagni. Carestini, Mamiliano, Matteo, Merola, Pacchiarotti, Pasqualini, Pistocchi, Rauzzini, Sassano (aka Matteuccio), Senesino, Siface, Tosi, Vittori, and, of course, Farinelli (né Carlo Broschi). These leading virtuosos, like most successful castrati, had long since shed their birth names and severed ties with their poor families. Many of them took the name of a role that had made them famous or that of a teacher, perhaps adding a fanciful diminutive. Those that succeeded were acclaimed throughout Europe as stars in serious, comic, and “magic” operas. Anecdotes of temper tantrums, insults directed at patrons, and startling financial demands abound, adding only to their fame and the expectations of their followers. Composers throughout the baroque, classic, and even the early romantic eras wrote them, including L. Rossi, Handel, Porpora, A. Scarlatti, Gluck, and Mozart, with Rossini and Meyerbeer being the last.

As the neo-classic era progressed and Christian orthodoxy waned, aesthetic tastes changed. Women were accepted on the stage throughout Europe and the castrati gradually become outmoded. Critics began to mock these un-men playing leading roles and seized on every opportunity to decry decadence and scandal. Fewer surgeons would undertake the enterprise, and patronage all but ceased. By the second half of the 19th century, only the Papal States employed castrati, and the founding of the Kingdom of Italy in 1870 relegated them to the Vatican. By then, 46 years had passed since the last operatic role had been written for a castrato. A final blow was the spread of the Cecilian movement, a movement founded by German Catholics in the 18th-century which eventually spread throughout Europe.

Seeking to “reform” musical extravagances in the music of the Church, its consequences were not unlike that of the Council of Trent, though this time there was no Palestrina to “save” polyphony and ornament. Music was taken back to a more fundamental level, with renewed interest in plainchant (“Gregorian” and “Ambrosian”). Of course, the remaining castrati understood that they were the last of their line. To many they were but a shadow of the 18th century, to others, an abomination. There were no longer composers writing for them, surgeons (quack or otherwise) making them, and conservatories to train them. Those employed by the Papal Choir were tolerated until the final ban by Pius X in 1903, although Moreschi was allowed to remain, his repertoire and outside activities undoubtedly curtailed. With his death in Rome on April 21, 1922, a vocal sound, quality, and mystique that was part of a 350-year old European musical heritage was lost forever.