Word: castrati
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...recordings of Orpheus and Eurydice break with tradition by casting a male singer as Orpheus, normally sung by a contralto. (Gluck himself wrote the role for a male contralto, later rearranged it for tenor in Paris, where castrati singers were frowned upon.) Of the two versions, Epic's (in French) is more authentic historically, but less effective, chiefly because Canadian Tenor Leopold Simoneau's silver-hued voice seems less moving in the role of the suffering Orpheus than the lyric baritone of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, imaginatively cast by Decca in its German-language version. The supporting casts...
...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...
...late as the early iQth Century it was an Italian custom to produce artificial "male sopranos" by castration. These castrati often developed into world-famed opera singers...
...Castrati were employed not only in the papal choir, but also in the Italian theatre, because the Church forbade appearance of women in both places. Force of public opinion drove the castrati from the Italian stage about 1800. But, in the indignant words of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th Edition), "they remained the musical glory and moral shame of the papal choir till the accession of Pope Leo XIII." Last great castrato was Professor Alessandro Moreschi, who entered the papal choir in 1883 at the age of 25, remained 30 years...