Word: castrati
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...others when the clarinet or trombone soars off on the lead, Louis has wrung raves even from longer-haired critics. The New York Herald Tribune's Virgil Thomson once said that Louis' style of improvisation made him "a master of musical art comparable only to the great castrati of the 18th Century...
...allusion to the custom, especially prevalent in 17th-and 18th-Century Italy, of castrating boys with beautiful sopranos so that their voices would not change. At that time the best castrati were the most feted and prosperous singers of the period. Many connoisseurs preferred the castrati to the finest female sopranos, although a critic in London's famed Spectator once complained of "the shrill celestial whine of eunuchs...