For a solid portion of musical history, castrato singers or ‘castrati’ had a prominent role in operas, churches and courts across Europe. But why were young boys forced to undergo the gruesome ...

If ever there was a class of artists that attained all the glories of mega success through unimaginable suffering, it was the castrati. These unique singers were castrated at a young age, and then ...

1562 The Sistine Chapel choir accepts its first castrato member. 1607 Claudio Monteverdi writes Orfeo, the first major opera, with several roles for castrati. 1737 Farinelli, the most celebrated of ...

We may think of the Taliban as a current example of the irrational and cruel application of fundamentalist religious ideas, but back in the 17th and 18th century, the Vatican banned the use of woman ...

Monsters and Prodigies: A History of the Castrati: By Jorge Kuri. Directed by Claudio Valdés Kuri. With Javier Medina, Kaveh Parmas, Raúl Román, Gastón Yanes, Miguel Ángel López et al. (Through Sun.

When Alessandro Moreschi died on 21 April, 1922, the world thought it had felt the last stubbleless kiss of the voice of an angel on Earth — the boy castrato. The castrato tradition dictated that the ...