[audiobook] The Book of Hit Singles: Top 20 Charts from 1954 to the Present Day by Dave McAleer at Arts-Photography

Description

The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing; culminating in bel canto; was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires; public and private; aesthetic; economic; and political. In Italy; castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and; paradoxically; in satire; verbal abuse; and even the symbolism of the castratorsquo;s comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchymdash;involving teachers; patrons; colleagues; and relativesmdash;whereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen; as often thought nowadays; but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composersmdash;from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel; Mozart; and Rossinimdash;were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices; a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive; their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their literal demise.