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London is hosting a new exhibition which pays tribute to the castrati, superstars of a bygone era whose sublime voices were produced by castrating the singers before they reached puberty.
With women forbidden by the Catholic church from appearing on stage, some 70 percent of all opera singers in the Italian baroque period from 1600 to 1750 were castrati, the show's curator Nicholas Clapton said.
They were male sopranos, mezzo-sopranos or contraltos.
"The castrati were the 18th century's superstars," said Sarah Bardwell, director of the Handel House Museum which is hosting the exhibition that opened last week and ends October 1.
"They were celebrities, surrounded by money, fame," she added.
Entitled "Handel and the Castrati", the show displays some of the surgical instruments used to obtain these tender, agile and magnificent voices that were the most applauded in their time.
"Castration was performed by cutting the blood supply to the testicles, or by amputating them altogether," Clapton said.
And the show includes paintings and prints of castrati.
However, it is above all a tribute to the voices and stories behind the castrated singers for whom Georg Friederich Handel (1685-1759) composed works.
It presents the original scores of pieces performed by Senesino, Nicolini, Bernacchi, Carestini, Caffarelli, Conti and Guadagni.
A descendant of Francesco Bernardi Senesino, who lived from 1685 to 1759, travelled from Italy to London to see the tribute.
Clapton, a counter-tenor, said most of the singers were castrated at eight years old and they then devoted their lives to art, with "very intensive training" of six to eight hours a day.
"The finest of the boy sopranos were picked by music masters for castration," he said.
"As many as 4,000 boys were castrated annually in the service of art ... and, as pope Clement VIII said, 'to the honour of God'," according to Clapton.
"The castrati would have the high voice of a boy soprano, but the lung power of a full-grown man," Clapton said.
"They had amazingly powerful and high voices. They were neither man nor woman, but something in between. They were stars, they were admired, had adoring fans... but also taunted," he said.
The last of the castrati was Alessandro Moreschi who lived from 1858 to 1922 -- Clapton has written a book about him -- and the exhibition includes a recording of his done in 1902, the only surviving recording of a castrato.
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AFPEntertainment-Britain-music-museum
AFP 021210 GMT 04 06
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