Hate Mail On Male Sopranos

You can count on one thing if you raise the topic of men who sing in the alto and mezzo-soprano range,  snarky comments mocking the practice.  But the very same people who give full vent to their inner-12-year-old-boy on the topic are the very same people who grooved to some Frankie Valli, Roy Orbison, Neil Young, or some other rock singer who sang in the same range, only, perhaps Orbison excluded, no where near as competently, vocally, certainly not as interestingly, musically.   The difference is that you have to pay attention to someone singing Handel (I mean the pieces you haven't heard a zillion times and stop hearing due to over familiarity) or Marcello or Monteverdi, or the other composers who I've been posting.   The need to pay attention is the real issue dividing pop music and classical music of any complexity, they don't want to pay attention at that mental age anymore than they wanted to do their homework in any subject they didn't like or find easy.


Benedetto Marcello - Chiaro e Limpido Fonte

Philippe Jaroussky & Max Emanuel Cencic, voices
Les Arts Flourissantes, William Christie, director

That this began with me finding Philippe Jaroussky singing music outside of his specialty, something any musician with the technique and curiosity to do it does, including those who do rock music, should tell you something about the difference between an intelligent, curious musician and an mindless pop guzzler.  And, it being a bit on the forbidden side, raising it was irresistible to a thought criminal like me.  I knew the reaction it would get with the usual flyspecks as I decided to go there. They never, ever, say anything new or slightly interesting.

By the way, the biggest motive in the horrible industry in castrating boys wasn't the church, it was the very secular opera industry, the musical comedy - Hollywood type spectacle media of the 17th and 18th centuries.   The opera was generally more in danger of being shunned and banned by religious authorities than supported by it, at least before the 19th century.  The church use of castratos, mostly in Rome and other Italian cities, grew out of the secular creation of castrati.   It was, of course, a bad idea, it was grotesquely immoral - many young boys died of the operation and very few, perhaps one percent of those who were castrated, went on to have significant careers as opera stars.

Less significantly, it led to some really awful church and religious music, as heard in the few recordings that Allesandro Moreschi* left.  That is especially true in 19th century Italy where the remnants of the practice persisted into the 20th century.   Religion and theater music is most often a recipe for bad music and bad religion, the theater will tend to win out over religion in that contest.  It takes a real musical genius to make that reconciliation and they aren't in any more abundance than vocal genius among castrated boys.

Instead of using the issue in some brainless and historically uninformed Christian bashing it would be useful to point out that the international sex industry that all right-thinking sex-positive folk are supposed to support carries out a trade in boys who are abducted, castrated and prostituted, quite often to western men in sex tourism.   And, I'll point out that bashing Jews for it is especially stupid because, almost uniquely among people in the ancient Mediterranean basin, Jews forbade the practice for humans and even for animals.   Most of the enormous numbers of males who were castrated were slaves kept to labor of for sex with men, not to sing.  But concentrating on the real and present evil of the prostitution and porn industries isn't kewl, the uselessness of snarking over things done three or four centuries ago is a lot less work.

*  I made an error in my post the other day, Moreschi wasn't an old man when he made those recordings, he was in his 40s, which should be a competent singer's prime.   I'm prepared to believe he never sang any better than that.   One of the contemporary descriptions of his singing when he was in his 20s mentioned there being " a tear in every note", which describes his recorded sound.  I also read there is some indication that he was castrated as a result of medical practice, to treat a particular type of hernia for which, I also read, castration was the only scientifically recognized treatment.  All I can say is that if it were me, I'd have tried to do more with my voice than produce those tacky, melo-dramatic effects.   He clearly had a voice, he clearly lacked the training to do more with it.  Too bad he didn't study with Pauline Viardot who could have steered him in a better direction.