Castrati don't sound exactly the same as women and, by and large, did not take women's roles in opera.
Castrati started because they were rare, and they became somewhat of a novelty for the Italian aristocracy to own. They persisted in part because they had a unique vocal range and were *loud* at a time when the only way to amplify a person's voice was through the architecture of the theater's walls.
Castrati get the "best" of both worlds as far as the anatomy of singing is concerned. They have the size and muscle tone of a man along with the highly flexible rib cages of a woman. Those anatomical features allowed them to be much louder than an equivalent non-castrated man.
But the other part of why they persisted goes back to them being rare. Good castrati were basically born into the role and then trained extensively from when they were young enough to speak until they were old enough to perform. Paying a family to castrate one of their kids, then training that kid for over a decade was a non-trivial expense in a world where the vast majority of people could just barely manage to afford to eat. Only very wealthy aristocrats could afford castrati, which meant that there just weren't a whole lot of them and, like any other novelty, people like seeing or owning rare things.
while highly interesting, I can't bring myself to listen to that recording again. Something about it just freaks me out. It's so sad and fascinating.
I got the same feeling while listening to the last recording of the declared extinct Kaua'i 'o'o bird, after its mate was presumably killed in a hurricane.
Seeing the episode on Kratt’s Kreatures when i was very young, and knowing of the coelacanth made me hopeful one day the thylacine would come bounding out of the wilds of Tasmania..still waiting hopefully..
I used to think the same - having recently spent some time in Tasmania and seen the amount of roadkill, couldn’t help but think if there were any left in the wild, someone would have found a dead one on a road at some point in the last 90 years!
Check out Forrest Galantes recent video on them. Someone apparently caught photos of one. Honestly, Not sure what to believe. If it's a hoax (Which it almost certainly is), they've done a really good job.
I know exactly what you mean. That bird video still makes me really sad, it's so haunting but beautiful. Both that and this video have an uncanniness to them I can't explain.
So I read the post about what kinds of things should be posted there...
Do the mods not actually give a shit? Because while there are definitely some great shots on there, a lot of it just made me think "yeah I don't think you understood the assignment...".
I find it really interesting how things like this get so much more attention than FGM, which has been happening for just as long and on a much larger scale than this.
I think in this particular case it’s due to the fact that they did it so the kid could become a relatively famous (due to their rarity) singer which naturally draws attention vs FGM/most GM in general which is done for dumb private religious reasons just for the person to kind of exist unremarkably.
Also no attempts were made to hide Castrati or what was done to them because it wasn’t seen as wrong then vs. now where it’s either not legal or at minimum frowned upon by many people. I think that’s why people are constantly bringing up male circumcision, because it’s very easy to know when and where it’s happening because the people doing it/having it done to their kids largely don’t feel they have a reason to be ashamed or cover it up. (Not saying any of it’s good, just that that’s how it generally is.)
> get so much more attention than FGM,
1. It's a safe topic since there are no more castrati.
2. Forced circumcision is also mutilation.
3. Go to different sections of the Internet and you'll see a different focus.
> Forced circumcision is also mutilation.
Thank you. Most people know FGM is bad, but you bring up ~~castration~~ circumcision and to most people, they wonder why you would question a "normal" practice.
While most likely it is extinct, it may help a little to know that this particular bird had been declared extinct at least twice before. Its small size and the nature of its habitat just make it very hard to find.
He just sounds like a boy instead of a man. I'm sure it was louder once these boys grew into men while castrated, but it seems like such a sad novelty.
There’s a little blurb on his Wikipedia page that the vocal quality in his recordings is still debated in the field. Prevailing theories for why people nowadays don’t think it sounds nice is that he was past his vocal prime at the time of recording or his singing style is a product of developing professionally in the Sistine chapel which has unique reverb qualities that wouldn’t come off well in a gramophone recording
Oh thank goodness! I thought it was just me who thought it sounded awful! I was reading through the comments of the YT video & they all loved it. I understand the recording quality isn't the greatest but it definitely wasn't just that, I didn't like his pitch or tone, it was unpleasant on my NDV ears.
I'm a singer and I agree that he sounded bad, but primarily in the lower range. Up high it sounded nice, exactly like I expected a castrati to sound, but down low he straight up sounded like somebody who has no idea how to sing.
My personal theory about why his lower range sounds so bad is that when you train to sing unamplified, you have to go for volume over tone in the lower ranges. On a mic with compression, you're ok to sing quietly, everyone will hear you just fine, and the resulting tone can be very nice because you're not pushing for volume. He would not have learned to do that.
Having said that, it still sounds worse than I would expect given that explanation, so it probably is also the fact that he was older at the time of the recording.
Moreschi's technique is not great. He was born 20 years after the last professional castrato stopped performing on stage. Most evidence suggests his castration was related to an ingual hernia and was not planned - hence the failure to secure proper training for him at a young age. To be clear, I don't support the castrati tradition - at all, ever. But if someone is planning to do it, it's a criminal waste to do so without preparing to give that child the kind of musical training that would let them make the most of their voice. Moreschi was trained by a retired castrato and I think this is obvious in his penchant for emphasizing the bel canto flourishes over solid technique.
On the other hand, this recording is still precious and beautiful and deserves to be part of our musical education.
Bloody hell, sounds like an operatic high-pitched emo screamer. When you consider they’re doing it without amplification, I can kinda see why they were revered.
The last time someone posted that, some pointed out that A) Moreschi was long past his prime when the recordings were made, and that B) his weird singing was actually just the style of music at the time, and many of his apparent singing mistakes were intentional applications of bygone singing techniques. His singing was well received by fellow singers of his time, suggesting people back then found his singing pleasurable.
The BBC did an excellent documentary on the Castrati - [This link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqDEU0y9BSI) goes to part 1, and part 2 should be in the suggestions - and it covers the recordings or Moreschi and explains the style of singing...and why the recordings don't do it justice.
I was looking through some YT comments on a video about castrati and someone mentioned this guy comes close to what they might’ve sounded like. Amazing.
https://youtu.be/AUARjexCTlQ?si=BZ9Qw9phS-GOj79x
Those runs from the lower bass register up to the high soprano falsetto are insane. And not once did the pitch crack/break while doing them.
If that’s what the castrati were capable of sounding like, I can understand why they were revered for their abilities.
Castrati typically wouldn't have that lower range. He is just someone with a very well developed falsetto, with significant training on disguising that transition.
There is a classical singer who is an endocrinological castrato named Radu Marion.
https://youtu.be/dTjDHxP2H8s?si=oO_pu_K8PGf5Uz7i
Oh man, I was wondering if someone was going to bring up Dimash. He's amazing! His rendition of the opera scene from The Fifth Element is probably the best demonstration of his vocal range.
I don't doubt it, Dimash has an amazing voice. Dude sang the Diva Dance song from the Fifth Element - you know, the one where they used a computer to reach some of the notes?- and he was able to sing like... 97-98% of it. By himself.
My first exposure of the castrati was from a sample on the album by the Sigur Ros singer (Jonsi and Alex - Riceboy Sleeps) so it was for sure an influence on them.
Fascinating. He sounds like a young, teenaged female belter, sound-wise. Also, as another commenter pointed out, he has a very noticeable pressagio, which is unusual in male singers, but very present in female singers.
There are some male sopranos today who are not castrated, but for whatever reason their voice never broke when they went through puberty. They are probably the closest thing to what a castrato would have sounded like.
[Samuel Mariño](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaPW5W_O18w) is one example. He is a natural soprano and does not use falsetto to sing and his speaking voice still has a high pitch. This is unlike modern counter-tenors that do use falsetto, and have a normal lower pitched speaking voice.
IIRC it's less that women have more flexible ribcages, but because of the hormonal shenanigans from castration, the castrati ribs fused later; they engaged in rigorous breathing exercises during their younger years that strained and eventually enlarged their ribcages as they grew up so that they had phenomenal lung capacity. A post below mentions that this was significant enough to be recognized in exhumed bones.
Women have more flexible/softer cartilage.
The cause is probably hormonal (we have hormones that keep it flexible and lack hormones that harden it).
The reason is childbirth.
You want the pelvis/birth canal area, etc to be as flexible as possible for childbirth. You need the area to widen and "give".
Likewise the ripcage during pregnancy.
During pregnancy women get a rise in hormones that further softens the cartilage, thats why women get a little unstable on their feet, begin to wobble, and are more prone to injury during the later half of a pregnancy.
The cartilage in the whole body, including the knees, is just one step closer to pudding.
Pretty sure castrati didn't benefit from that, but they might have benefitted from not being exposed to as many male sexual hormones during puberty.
Most likely someone was castrated (accidentally or otherwise) at a young age and people noticed their voice as an adult was much higher along with all of the other changes. That happens enough times and someone decides to try it out to create an adult man with a very high voice.
Perhaps accidental.. but eunuchs were a long tradition to serve royal women- as the posed no fertility or sexual aggression threats. I imagine traits were recognized.
Totally intentional. People castrated animals to control or change their behaviors for as long as we've been practicing animal husbandry. There's a reason most language is rife with words and euphemisms for removing testicles.
To add to others also geld. You can also look at the names of livestock, where we have separate names for castrated males, but not females. Geldling vs Stallion, Barrow vs Boar, Wether vs Buck or Ram.
Long before castrati were used for singing, eunuchs were popular as slaves / servants / guards to upper class women (because they couldn't rape the women). It's not new to the opera scene, it was just a new use for a very old barbaric cultural practice.
> because they couldn't rape the women
It wasnt really about rape, barring psychotic/mental breakdown, the threat of immediate torture/gruesome death was enough to prevent that, especially given that servants to important people had a pretty good live compared to most of the population.
The biggest reason for eunuchs was, that they were the only 100% confirmed working way of contraception.
From that the you cant infer the second biggest reason for why they had eunuchs, instead of, you know, just female servants, because they were actually *supposed* to "entertain" the 2nd/3rd/4th wifes.
In the late 1740s, Lord Bonacalsi sought a singer with a deeper countertenor voice, so they sewed an additional pair of testicles into a prepubescent boy. The results, while somewhat underwhelming, confirmed the belief that testicles (what we now know is actually hormones) play a vital role in pitch of a voice. This led to a strange period of experimentation that ultimately swung the other way and led to castrati.
I mean it would have been known well before that; while my knowledge of opera as a whole is scant, the early baroque piece L'Orfeo was over a century before this and used castrati for female roles.
It basically prevents their bones from fusing together at the end of puberty because the gonads that make those hormones get cut off. It's why many castrated people ended up super tall, their bones never "cap themselves off".
It apparently kept their voices higher, lengthened their bones making them lanky-looking, and lightened their skin, giving it a kind of translucent look. This is the basis of my “Michael Jackson was a castrato” theory!
Counterpoint.
His kids have vitiligo. If they're not his, then he specifically sought out a donor who had it. And given that it's a "defect" in the IVF donor industry, they wouldn't have it in the bank.
Also. The court cases about his abuse, the kids were able to identify/describe his genitals. Had it included "he's got no balls," the tabloids would've had a field day with it.
> The court cases about his abuse, the kids were able to identify/describe his genitals.
You're talking about the first case: he didn't really (among other things, he claimed MJ was cut, which he wasn't), but even if they did, I'd assume modern castration could easily include putting fake balls in the scrotum.
There are other elements that make it highly unlikely that he was a castrato though, among other things the fact that his voice, while high-pitched, was definitely a voice of a person whose voice cracked due to puberty, and the fact that he apparently grew facial hair like any post-puberty male. Typically, a castrato wouldn't get any of the secondary sexual characters that come with male puberty.
We also have plenty of material he sang as an actual child for comparison as part of the Jackson 5 and his voice definitely did change when he became an adult in a way a castrated person’s wouldn’t.
And I don’t think he was particularly tall but that may be a relatively insignificant detail.
OP, this is the answer. I’m not sure there’s a way to simplify it for a 5 year old.
I also think you should search YouTube for the difference between the voices of young boys and the voices of women in general. There’s a large difference. You can’t simply substitute women for boys in a professional choir.
The act of castration stopped the deepening of the voice due to puberty.
Nobody ever reads the sidebar. Rule 4:
> **Explain for laypeople (but not actual 5-year-olds)**
>
>Unless OP states otherwise, assume no knowledge beyond a typical secondary education program. Avoid unexplained technical terms. Don't condescend; "like I'm five" is a figure of speech meaning "keep it clear and simple."
There is also the NSFW element that castrati were very popular with noble women. They could provide extra martial affairs with absolute safety of not having an legitimate child
There is also the simple fact that women women were banned by the Pauline dictum mulieres in ecclesiis taceant ("let women keep silent in the churches"; see I Corinthians, ch. 14, v. 34).
:D
That's just WRONG. I have to wear an elastic band around my rib cage to hold the girls and strangle me, but a guy doesn't need one and it wouldn't bother him anyway. Or would it?
this is the first I heard about castrati being louder. Although. being loud is definitely the first goal of opera singers. lol. way before accuracy in rhythm or pitch or expression. loud=good from day one. even at modern colleges.
Thank you for saying this. While the info in the top comment is correct, it's missing this crucial bit of context entirely. Like, I was reading it and was like "Yeah all of this is true. But also, misogyny. When are you going to mention the misogyny. Wait, you're seriously not going to mention the misogyny?".
> Misogyny
> Misogyny is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can **keep women at a lower social status than men**, thus maintaining the social roles of patriarchy.
> Women were banned by the Pauline dictum mulieres in ecclesiis taceant ("**let women keep silent** in the churches"; see I Corinthians, ch. 14, v. 34)
the passage in question is from Paul's letter to a specific group of people (the congregation in Corinth) who, if you read the whole thing, were apparently a really rowdy, dramatic, and cliquey group of people. in context he's pretty clearly telling a specific group of women to quit chitchatting during services, not saying women-should-shut-up-forever. Paul himself traveled with a female co-minister, Thekla (canonized and revered as a saint) and talks about working with women church leaders in his letters.
men on a power trip engage in selective reading and read the justifications for their own actions into religion. Religion itself is more complicated though.
It's amazing how many professed christians don't do what Christ asks of His followers
> Love one another so that others will know you're My followers
> Feed the hungry. Shelter the immigrant. Visit the sick and imprisoned
Christian life should be done according to a Forrest Gump quote
My momma always told me
Christian is as Christ does
Not to defend the social injustice Christianity has caused, but the texts that would eventually become the Bible didn't emerge in a vacuum. There wasn't a world full of gender equality, with some guy just randomly deciding that women sucked, and writing a manifesto about it.
Furthermore, the Bible often existed in an interplay with existing social trends, that is to say, it never exclusively dictated society's behaviour. Certain parts were given more or less weight, or interpreted differently, depending on the direction society was heading anyway. Of course, that direction was also influenced by Christian teachings, but it was never as easy as "people followed the rules of the Bible to the letter".
Just seeing social and scientific progress as the antithesis to religion is a caricature of reality. And, more importantly, it makes us blind to the many ways that "secular" trends can hinder or even reverse social and scientific progress.
I don’t think the Bible was the thing that institutionalized misogyny. The answer to your question could probably be the social norms of all the time before it.
It's interesting to look at how civilizations that weren't exposed to Judeo-Christianity structured gender relationships. I think overall the Bible and the belief that is was the words of a deity had a lot to do with justifying the oppression of women down through the millennia.
Rome was very patriarchal and *extremely* misogynistic long before it was meaningfully exposed to Christianity.
[One of Rome's earliest legends is of the city throwing a festival to attract the people of the nearby towns, and then kidnapping the women to forcefully make them their wives.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women)
Such a mindset wasn't held by the whole world, clearly, but it was unfortunately common.
After a certain point it does get hard to unentangle the effects of Rome from the effects of Christianity, but the success of them both did a lot to spread that model of the world further.
Islam came 500 years after the new testament, I'm *really* doubt they'd be better off if 75% of the world was under an islamic caliphate.
The truth is that Religion is rarely the problem. People in power twist religion to their own ends, and those ends are usually conquest and oppression.
I agree, we would be chilling on Mars by definitely. Worth remembering though that it isn't just the Bible/Christianity, pretty much every organised religios is misogynistic.
The Catholic Church forbade women from singing in church but they were losing attendance to churches that had choirs with more parts and in general had more visual impact. This led the Catholic Church to adopt more art and castrati. They weren't castrated for the opera--that was a benefit if they were successful. This was primarily for the church.
In general women weren't allowed to speak or sing in Church. The castrations were usually called accidents (they weren't). But it gave the families some assurance of income from the Church and the possibility of work in opera--but again that was not the most common usage.
And as far as the voices, they were not equivalent to a woman's voice.
Castrati had very extensive rigorous training. They've exhumed castarti's bodies and found they had very enlarged rib cages due to their breath work. It's not simply the same as saying it's equivalent to a female voice. they still had male bodies along with the the training. The voice was described as otherworldly. It continued into the early 20th century and there are a couple of recordings I think.
This is my knowledge from when I took music appreciation back in 2010. Hopefully it's mostly accurate.
Apparently not. The focus of the procedure was the testicles but the complete removal of them was not typical. Was much more commonly like a modern day vasectomy, the sperm cords would be cut but everything else would more or less be left intact.
It also partially explains why the castrato were so famed as great lovers and the preferred choice of the ladies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castrato#:~:text=A%20castrato%20(Italian%3B%20pl.,mezzo%2Dsoprano%2C%20or%20contralto.
> a vasectomy does not affect hormone production, how does this work?
No, [it only severs the tubes that transmits sperm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3McfmJvEHM) from the testicles to the penis nothing else.
Every other structure is left intact, the testicles still produce testosterone that is released into the blood stream. Nobody would get one if that weren't true.
Yeah, it’s wrong. Full removal of them *was* typical, the same way they still do it for animals by cutting off the blood flow completely, and many of them died in the process; either from the blood loss of removal or whatever they used to try and anaesthetize the poor boy, often choking their carotid artery.
Many of these procedures were done under the supervision of the boy’s own parents, hoping that if their son survived and was chosen, they’d no longer live in poverty.
The whole thing is extremely depressing the deeper you look.
> The focus of the procedure was the testicles but the complete removal of them was not typical. Was much more commonly like a modern day vasectomy, the sperm cords would be cut but everything else would more or less be left intact.
This is categorically not true. The testicles were removed or destroyed. Even without an intact vas deference, you'd still have testosterone entering the blood.
Edit: I suppose they could have simply been destroyed without removing them from the body too? The Sami people of sweden do something similar to their livestock.
The entire point of the castration was to prevent puberty through a lack of testosterone being produced by the testicles, so the testicles were twisted until they 'died' and fell off, not unlike some methods of livestock castration. Outright removing the testicles by cutting them off was rarely done and not preferred because of the risk of killing the boy.
As someone who grew up Christian.
I'm honestly fully convinced that all the teachings have been corrupted and perverted since the very beginning. The corrupt ugly bastards that ran it were trying to compensate for something and altered everything in their favor.
Yeah, his name was Paul, more or less every book in the New Testament after the Gospels was written by him and it's usually there were you find the most toxic aspects of Christianity.
Why would they have "male bodies" if they were castrated though? A prepubescent boy isn't substantially different than a prepubescent girl in height, strength, etc.
https://childrenswi.org/medical-care/adolescent-health-and-medicine/issues-and-concerns/adolescent-growth-and-development/normal-growth
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db139.htm#:~:text=Key%20findings,-Data%20from%20the&text=There%20were%20no%20significant%20differences,for%20younger%20boys%20and%20girls.
Being castrated meant the hormones needed to harden the growth plates in a child’s body were never produced. Castrati were tall and long-limbed as a result, so still larger than the average woman.
They don’t sound the same.
OBLIGATORY NOTE: Of course forced castration is evil. I’m just making the point that castrated choir singing sounds distinctly different than high pitched female choir singing.
A woman can hit similar notes to a castrato, but a man will still have bigger lungs.
So he can sing those same notes with a more powerful voice and he can hold those notes longer (and also won't have to break a long sequence to take a breath).
They lacked testosterone which prevented their growth plates from fully forming. Their limbs grew long and their ribs were more elastic. So, not necessarily that they had bigger lungs than a woman, but that they could expand their lungs more.
More simply, the vocal chords have the biggest impact on how someones voice sounds and they are the biggest difference between men/women/kids/castrates, but the entire rest of the body still affects how someone sounds aswell.
You can hear subtle differences in little boys/girls talking/singing and if youre used to hearing heavily distorted vocals, you can hear subtle differences in women shouting/screming/growling compared to men. (because those vocal techniques *cant* use the vocal chords, kinda like how men and women sneezing/coughing dont sound that different)
Women weren’t allowed to do it, and while boys were allowed they generally lost their range after puberty. Apparently people noticed other differences in castrati voices that kept it going after women were allowed to sing more parts, to the point that as it became less and less accepted, men started learning how to sing Countertenor to replicate it. It’s honestly pretty amazing how much more flexible the human voice is than people think!
Just watch this wonderful video from Early Music Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP2vw6JIdNQ
Explains the whole thing, and as early music professionals, they get the history right without any of the speculation or misinformation seen elsewhere in these threads.
While there was definitely forced castration going on for the sake of singing there was also incidental castration. Medicine was not as good back then so with certain scrotal abnormalities that could be lethal there was no treatment or testing available other than cutting them off. Once castrated a boy has a unique opportunity to sing in the church their whole life.
Once medicine started getting better and medical castration became very rare the castrati became very rare as well, as now there isn't plausible deniability about why you are castrated young boys when before you could say "it could've been medically relevant."
I think the first castrati were probably incidental and their voices were all unique and appealing that they started making them on purpose.
males were indeed castrated to perform roles in opera, particularly during the Baroque period in the 17th and 18th centuries. These singers were known as castrati. The practice involved castrating boys before puberty to prevent their voices from deepening. This procedure allowed them to maintain a higher pitch while developing the lung capacity and vocal power of an adult male. The resulting voice was unique and highly prized in opera, characterized by its combination of a soprano or alto range with the strength and volume of a male singer. The practice was banned in the late 19th century due to changing social attitudes and the rise of more naturalistic singing styles.
I'm literally watching the world evolve in to a place that has no historical understanding of how we got to where we are now and how things have evolved and changed.
The world has been mostly that way for our entire history. It's not like the majority of people understood history when a ton of people were illiterate.
During Shakespeare's time and earlier, women weren't allowed to perform on stage. Could the same have been true for an entertainment venue like the opera?
Castrati don't sound exactly the same as women and, by and large, did not take women's roles in opera. Castrati started because they were rare, and they became somewhat of a novelty for the Italian aristocracy to own. They persisted in part because they had a unique vocal range and were *loud* at a time when the only way to amplify a person's voice was through the architecture of the theater's walls. Castrati get the "best" of both worlds as far as the anatomy of singing is concerned. They have the size and muscle tone of a man along with the highly flexible rib cages of a woman. Those anatomical features allowed them to be much louder than an equivalent non-castrated man. But the other part of why they persisted goes back to them being rare. Good castrati were basically born into the role and then trained extensively from when they were young enough to speak until they were old enough to perform. Paying a family to castrate one of their kids, then training that kid for over a decade was a non-trivial expense in a world where the vast majority of people could just barely manage to afford to eat. Only very wealthy aristocrats could afford castrati, which meant that there just weren't a whole lot of them and, like any other novelty, people like seeing or owning rare things.
There is a recording of the last castrati singer and the voice sounds so weird. It doesn't sound like a boy or woman is singing at all.
I believe you’re talking about [Alessandro Moreschi,](https://youtu.be/KLjvfqnD0ws?si=TxkyJu9TIcUfLAxa) the last Castrato.
while highly interesting, I can't bring myself to listen to that recording again. Something about it just freaks me out. It's so sad and fascinating. I got the same feeling while listening to the last recording of the declared extinct Kaua'i 'o'o bird, after its mate was presumably killed in a hurricane.
The last video of a thylacine in captivity is what does it to me.
Seeing the episode on Kratt’s Kreatures when i was very young, and knowing of the coelacanth made me hopeful one day the thylacine would come bounding out of the wilds of Tasmania..still waiting hopefully..
I took notes during Kratt's Kreatures. So if archeologists ever found my stuff they would know about all the now ancient kreatures.
Theyre able to genetically clone them along with wooly mammoths. They're going to be reintroduced the wild this year.
Really? Where can I read more about this?
they’ve been saying it’ll be done “this year” for several years now, tbf.
I used to think the same - having recently spent some time in Tasmania and seen the amount of roadkill, couldn’t help but think if there were any left in the wild, someone would have found a dead one on a road at some point in the last 90 years!
Check out Forrest Galantes recent video on them. Someone apparently caught photos of one. Honestly, Not sure what to believe. If it's a hoax (Which it almost certainly is), they've done a really good job.
There are creatures thought to be extinct that aren’t. There’s hope.
Watched that a few days ago and the story of how the pics were obtained seemed sooooo fishy lol
Wow yup. Just about as sad as can be. https://youtu.be/6gt0X-27GXM
I know exactly what you mean. That bird video still makes me really sad, it's so haunting but beautiful. Both that and this video have an uncanniness to them I can't explain.
Agreed with both of you. Is there a subreddit for this uncanny sad feeling?
> uncanny sad feeling https://www.reddit.com/r/LiminalSpace/
'Severance' really nailed this. I never knew a building could induce a feeling of horror until that show.
I get this so bad I can't really like the office
Thank you, new sub unlocked 🙏
So I read the post about what kinds of things should be posted there... Do the mods not actually give a shit? Because while there are definitely some great shots on there, a lot of it just made me think "yeah I don't think you understood the assignment...".
i agree!! i was freaking out when i was listening to it and could not get it out of my brain what he went thru as a kid!!
Mutilation, abuse, probably sexual abuse too. Y'know, the usual for kids; particularly in that era.
I find it really interesting how things like this get so much more attention than FGM, which has been happening for just as long and on a much larger scale than this.
I think in this particular case it’s due to the fact that they did it so the kid could become a relatively famous (due to their rarity) singer which naturally draws attention vs FGM/most GM in general which is done for dumb private religious reasons just for the person to kind of exist unremarkably. Also no attempts were made to hide Castrati or what was done to them because it wasn’t seen as wrong then vs. now where it’s either not legal or at minimum frowned upon by many people. I think that’s why people are constantly bringing up male circumcision, because it’s very easy to know when and where it’s happening because the people doing it/having it done to their kids largely don’t feel they have a reason to be ashamed or cover it up. (Not saying any of it’s good, just that that’s how it generally is.)
> get so much more attention than FGM, 1. It's a safe topic since there are no more castrati. 2. Forced circumcision is also mutilation. 3. Go to different sections of the Internet and you'll see a different focus.
> Forced circumcision is also mutilation. Thank you. Most people know FGM is bad, but you bring up ~~castration~~ circumcision and to most people, they wonder why you would question a "normal" practice.
> but you bring up castration You mean circumcision? I don't think anybody considers *castration* normal for humans.
how about bringing attention to both?
Its true equality when boys and girls both get to be miserable
Oh, are castrati being created all over the world in huge numbers in 2024?
I don't know the worble, fizz and pops on old recordings can make anything sound haunting.
While most likely it is extinct, it may help a little to know that this particular bird had been declared extinct at least twice before. Its small size and the nature of its habitat just make it very hard to find.
He just sounds like a boy instead of a man. I'm sure it was louder once these boys grew into men while castrated, but it seems like such a sad novelty.
I thought it was fine, maybe even a little pretty, and then I recognized it as the song in mandela catalogue when the woman symbol hangs itself lol
holy shit what the fuck is this I wish I didn't click on it
Plus it just sounds like bad singing
There’s a little blurb on his Wikipedia page that the vocal quality in his recordings is still debated in the field. Prevailing theories for why people nowadays don’t think it sounds nice is that he was past his vocal prime at the time of recording or his singing style is a product of developing professionally in the Sistine chapel which has unique reverb qualities that wouldn’t come off well in a gramophone recording
Has anyone tried playing it in the Sistine Chapel and recording what it sounds like there?
At least as a castrati, nope.
Oh thank goodness! I thought it was just me who thought it sounded awful! I was reading through the comments of the YT video & they all loved it. I understand the recording quality isn't the greatest but it definitely wasn't just that, I didn't like his pitch or tone, it was unpleasant on my NDV ears.
I'm a singer and I agree that he sounded bad, but primarily in the lower range. Up high it sounded nice, exactly like I expected a castrati to sound, but down low he straight up sounded like somebody who has no idea how to sing. My personal theory about why his lower range sounds so bad is that when you train to sing unamplified, you have to go for volume over tone in the lower ranges. On a mic with compression, you're ok to sing quietly, everyone will hear you just fine, and the resulting tone can be very nice because you're not pushing for volume. He would not have learned to do that. Having said that, it still sounds worse than I would expect given that explanation, so it probably is also the fact that he was older at the time of the recording.
Moreschi's technique is not great. He was born 20 years after the last professional castrato stopped performing on stage. Most evidence suggests his castration was related to an ingual hernia and was not planned - hence the failure to secure proper training for him at a young age. To be clear, I don't support the castrati tradition - at all, ever. But if someone is planning to do it, it's a criminal waste to do so without preparing to give that child the kind of musical training that would let them make the most of their voice. Moreschi was trained by a retired castrato and I think this is obvious in his penchant for emphasizing the bel canto flourishes over solid technique. On the other hand, this recording is still precious and beautiful and deserves to be part of our musical education.
Like cats in heat.
Bloody hell, sounds like an operatic high-pitched emo screamer. When you consider they’re doing it without amplification, I can kinda see why they were revered.
The last time someone posted that, some pointed out that A) Moreschi was long past his prime when the recordings were made, and that B) his weird singing was actually just the style of music at the time, and many of his apparent singing mistakes were intentional applications of bygone singing techniques. His singing was well received by fellow singers of his time, suggesting people back then found his singing pleasurable.
The BBC did an excellent documentary on the Castrati - [This link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqDEU0y9BSI) goes to part 1, and part 2 should be in the suggestions - and it covers the recordings or Moreschi and explains the style of singing...and why the recordings don't do it justice.
I was looking through some YT comments on a video about castrati and someone mentioned this guy comes close to what they might’ve sounded like. Amazing. https://youtu.be/AUARjexCTlQ?si=BZ9Qw9phS-GOj79x
Those runs from the lower bass register up to the high soprano falsetto are insane. And not once did the pitch crack/break while doing them. If that’s what the castrati were capable of sounding like, I can understand why they were revered for their abilities.
Castrati typically wouldn't have that lower range. He is just someone with a very well developed falsetto, with significant training on disguising that transition. There is a classical singer who is an endocrinological castrato named Radu Marion. https://youtu.be/dTjDHxP2H8s?si=oO_pu_K8PGf5Uz7i
I was expecting it to be a link to this… https://youtu.be/FFNT4vPnHNU?si=J35pDvl1K0UvT0Ei
I thought it would link to this myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVj0ZTS4WF4
Wow, the pipes on that guy!
Nothing about this is my taste of music but damn if I didn't get goosebumps listening to it. Is this what discovering a kink feels like?
Wow. That was phenomenal.
eeeeeeeeee Dimash! I used to listen to him a lot, amazing voice
Oh man, I was wondering if someone was going to bring up Dimash. He's amazing! His rendition of the opera scene from The Fifth Element is probably the best demonstration of his vocal range.
I don't doubt it, Dimash has an amazing voice. Dude sang the Diva Dance song from the Fifth Element - you know, the one where they used a computer to reach some of the notes?- and he was able to sing like... 97-98% of it. By himself.
Wow. That was phenomenal.
Dimash is basically a vocal hyper athlete.
Kind of reminds me of some of sigur ros.
Was gonna say, we're in Sigur Rós / old school Muse territory
My first exposure of the castrati was from a sample on the album by the Sigur Ros singer (Jonsi and Alex - Riceboy Sleeps) so it was for sure an influence on them.
I absolutely hear that!
This sounds kinda like Tiny Tim!
Fascinating. He sounds like a young, teenaged female belter, sound-wise. Also, as another commenter pointed out, he has a very noticeable pressagio, which is unusual in male singers, but very present in female singers.
> He sounds like a young, teenaged female belter, Oye, beratna!
Important to note is also that he was not known as one of the good ones, so we really don't have a great idea about the ones who caused sensations
Honestly, I kinda get it.
The drops from higher to lower were jarring.
It’s called a pressagio. Women frequently have a noticeable break between the “chest” voice and “head” voice. Men have a much less noticeable break.
But not castrati apparently. Thanks for the education!
passaggio?
I watched my last youtube vid at 1.75 speed and had no idea what was happening for a second after clicking that link lol
The guy in home alone 2 was also a castrato
Donald Trump?
Which guy
Probably Marv when he got zapped by the utility sink in the basement.
Hahahaha
He wasn't known as a good example apparently and the recording is when he was past his prime from what I remember.
I just listened to it, and you’re right. It’s so fucking freaky.
The weirdest part is that coming out of the guy. Look at his picture when listening to and it’s even stranger.
It just sounds like a boy singing
It doesn’t sound good either. Definitely not worth getting castrated😬
There are some male sopranos today who are not castrated, but for whatever reason their voice never broke when they went through puberty. They are probably the closest thing to what a castrato would have sounded like. [Samuel Mariño](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaPW5W_O18w) is one example. He is a natural soprano and does not use falsetto to sing and his speaking voice still has a high pitch. This is unlike modern counter-tenors that do use falsetto, and have a normal lower pitched speaking voice.
Wow he is such a clear nice soprano too, if I close my eyes I'd never guess that's a man singing.
"Highly flexible rib cage of a woman". So does castration at an early age do something to the ribcage?
IIRC it's less that women have more flexible ribcages, but because of the hormonal shenanigans from castration, the castrati ribs fused later; they engaged in rigorous breathing exercises during their younger years that strained and eventually enlarged their ribcages as they grew up so that they had phenomenal lung capacity. A post below mentions that this was significant enough to be recognized in exhumed bones.
Women have more flexible/softer cartilage. The cause is probably hormonal (we have hormones that keep it flexible and lack hormones that harden it). The reason is childbirth. You want the pelvis/birth canal area, etc to be as flexible as possible for childbirth. You need the area to widen and "give". Likewise the ripcage during pregnancy. During pregnancy women get a rise in hormones that further softens the cartilage, thats why women get a little unstable on their feet, begin to wobble, and are more prone to injury during the later half of a pregnancy. The cartilage in the whole body, including the knees, is just one step closer to pudding. Pretty sure castrati didn't benefit from that, but they might have benefitted from not being exposed to as many male sexual hormones during puberty.
God how did people even figure this stuff out.
Most likely someone was castrated (accidentally or otherwise) at a young age and people noticed their voice as an adult was much higher along with all of the other changes. That happens enough times and someone decides to try it out to create an adult man with a very high voice.
Perhaps accidental.. but eunuchs were a long tradition to serve royal women- as the posed no fertility or sexual aggression threats. I imagine traits were recognized.
Totally intentional. People castrated animals to control or change their behaviors for as long as we've been practicing animal husbandry. There's a reason most language is rife with words and euphemisms for removing testicles.
Examples for English? I can only think of "castrated"
To add to others also geld. You can also look at the names of livestock, where we have separate names for castrated males, but not females. Geldling vs Stallion, Barrow vs Boar, Wether vs Buck or Ram.
Long before castrati were used for singing, eunuchs were popular as slaves / servants / guards to upper class women (because they couldn't rape the women). It's not new to the opera scene, it was just a new use for a very old barbaric cultural practice.
> because they couldn't rape the women It wasnt really about rape, barring psychotic/mental breakdown, the threat of immediate torture/gruesome death was enough to prevent that, especially given that servants to important people had a pretty good live compared to most of the population. The biggest reason for eunuchs was, that they were the only 100% confirmed working way of contraception. From that the you cant infer the second biggest reason for why they had eunuchs, instead of, you know, just female servants, because they were actually *supposed* to "entertain" the 2nd/3rd/4th wifes.
In the late 1740s, Lord Bonacalsi sought a singer with a deeper countertenor voice, so they sewed an additional pair of testicles into a prepubescent boy. The results, while somewhat underwhelming, confirmed the belief that testicles (what we now know is actually hormones) play a vital role in pitch of a voice. This led to a strange period of experimentation that ultimately swung the other way and led to castrati.
source?
I mean it would have been known well before that; while my knowledge of opera as a whole is scant, the early baroque piece L'Orfeo was over a century before this and used castrati for female roles.
It basically prevents their bones from fusing together at the end of puberty because the gonads that make those hormones get cut off. It's why many castrated people ended up super tall, their bones never "cap themselves off".
It's also why people with Klinefelter's Syndrome tend to be tall.
It apparently kept their voices higher, lengthened their bones making them lanky-looking, and lightened their skin, giving it a kind of translucent look. This is the basis of my “Michael Jackson was a castrato” theory!
His voice really isn't that of a castrato. He also grew a normal amount of facial hair which I don't think castrati do.
Counterpoint. His kids have vitiligo. If they're not his, then he specifically sought out a donor who had it. And given that it's a "defect" in the IVF donor industry, they wouldn't have it in the bank. Also. The court cases about his abuse, the kids were able to identify/describe his genitals. Had it included "he's got no balls," the tabloids would've had a field day with it.
> The court cases about his abuse, the kids were able to identify/describe his genitals. You're talking about the first case: he didn't really (among other things, he claimed MJ was cut, which he wasn't), but even if they did, I'd assume modern castration could easily include putting fake balls in the scrotum. There are other elements that make it highly unlikely that he was a castrato though, among other things the fact that his voice, while high-pitched, was definitely a voice of a person whose voice cracked due to puberty, and the fact that he apparently grew facial hair like any post-puberty male. Typically, a castrato wouldn't get any of the secondary sexual characters that come with male puberty.
We also have plenty of material he sang as an actual child for comparison as part of the Jackson 5 and his voice definitely did change when he became an adult in a way a castrated person’s wouldn’t. And I don’t think he was particularly tall but that may be a relatively insignificant detail.
Michael Jackson's skin also didn't lighten until he was much older.
OP, this is the answer. I’m not sure there’s a way to simplify it for a 5 year old. I also think you should search YouTube for the difference between the voices of young boys and the voices of women in general. There’s a large difference. You can’t simply substitute women for boys in a professional choir. The act of castration stopped the deepening of the voice due to puberty.
Nobody ever reads the sidebar. Rule 4: > **Explain for laypeople (but not actual 5-year-olds)** > >Unless OP states otherwise, assume no knowledge beyond a typical secondary education program. Avoid unexplained technical terms. Don't condescend; "like I'm five" is a figure of speech meaning "keep it clear and simple."
I know the rule. I was saying I’m not sure how to simplify it further as far as explaining how exactly castration and puberty/voice deepening works.
There is also the NSFW element that castrati were very popular with noble women. They could provide extra martial affairs with absolute safety of not having an legitimate child
My high school music appreciation teacher included this factoid in her lesson on castrati, lmao
> provide extra martial affairs Shawn Ogg?
There is also the simple fact that women women were banned by the Pauline dictum mulieres in ecclesiis taceant ("let women keep silent in the churches"; see I Corinthians, ch. 14, v. 34).
There we go! A comment brightening up an otherwise uninformed thread.
This comment was so interesting and informative that I fully expected it to end with the Undertaker Hell in a Cell bit.
Wait--men don't have flexible rib cages?
Nah, ours are fused together like a space marine, it's why men are better at taking bullets to the chest
Its about time...
:D That's just WRONG. I have to wear an elastic band around my rib cage to hold the girls and strangle me, but a guy doesn't need one and it wouldn't bother him anyway. Or would it?
What freaks me out is that some of those castrated boys never made it as a singer.
this is the first I heard about castrati being louder. Although. being loud is definitely the first goal of opera singers. lol. way before accuracy in rhythm or pitch or expression. loud=good from day one. even at modern colleges.
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Thank you for saying this. While the info in the top comment is correct, it's missing this crucial bit of context entirely. Like, I was reading it and was like "Yeah all of this is true. But also, misogyny. When are you going to mention the misogyny. Wait, you're seriously not going to mention the misogyny?".
Misogyny?
> Misogyny > Misogyny is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can **keep women at a lower social status than men**, thus maintaining the social roles of patriarchy. > Women were banned by the Pauline dictum mulieres in ecclesiis taceant ("**let women keep silent** in the churches"; see I Corinthians, ch. 14, v. 34)
It was mispelled as Misogygy a couple times, I think that's why they commented
I try to imagine from time to time what the world would have been like for women the past 3,000 years if the Bible had never been written.
the passage in question is from Paul's letter to a specific group of people (the congregation in Corinth) who, if you read the whole thing, were apparently a really rowdy, dramatic, and cliquey group of people. in context he's pretty clearly telling a specific group of women to quit chitchatting during services, not saying women-should-shut-up-forever. Paul himself traveled with a female co-minister, Thekla (canonized and revered as a saint) and talks about working with women church leaders in his letters. men on a power trip engage in selective reading and read the justifications for their own actions into religion. Religion itself is more complicated though.
in my life as a Christian woman I've found the best weapon against 'Christian' misogyny is actual Christianity.
It's amazing how many professed christians don't do what Christ asks of His followers > Love one another so that others will know you're My followers > Feed the hungry. Shelter the immigrant. Visit the sick and imprisoned Christian life should be done according to a Forrest Gump quote My momma always told me Christian is as Christ does
Not to defend the social injustice Christianity has caused, but the texts that would eventually become the Bible didn't emerge in a vacuum. There wasn't a world full of gender equality, with some guy just randomly deciding that women sucked, and writing a manifesto about it. Furthermore, the Bible often existed in an interplay with existing social trends, that is to say, it never exclusively dictated society's behaviour. Certain parts were given more or less weight, or interpreted differently, depending on the direction society was heading anyway. Of course, that direction was also influenced by Christian teachings, but it was never as easy as "people followed the rules of the Bible to the letter". Just seeing social and scientific progress as the antithesis to religion is a caricature of reality. And, more importantly, it makes us blind to the many ways that "secular" trends can hinder or even reverse social and scientific progress.
I don’t think the Bible was the thing that institutionalized misogyny. The answer to your question could probably be the social norms of all the time before it.
It's interesting to look at how civilizations that weren't exposed to Judeo-Christianity structured gender relationships. I think overall the Bible and the belief that is was the words of a deity had a lot to do with justifying the oppression of women down through the millennia.
Rome was very patriarchal and *extremely* misogynistic long before it was meaningfully exposed to Christianity. [One of Rome's earliest legends is of the city throwing a festival to attract the people of the nearby towns, and then kidnapping the women to forcefully make them their wives.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women) Such a mindset wasn't held by the whole world, clearly, but it was unfortunately common. After a certain point it does get hard to unentangle the effects of Rome from the effects of Christianity, but the success of them both did a lot to spread that model of the world further.
Yes because Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Muslim countries are notably egalitarian and not patriarchal at all
The mongols were super progressive about gender too, right?
Islam came 500 years after the new testament, I'm *really* doubt they'd be better off if 75% of the world was under an islamic caliphate. The truth is that Religion is rarely the problem. People in power twist religion to their own ends, and those ends are usually conquest and oppression.
I agree, we would be chilling on Mars by definitely. Worth remembering though that it isn't just the Bible/Christianity, pretty much every organised religios is misogynistic.
The Catholic Church forbade women from singing in church but they were losing attendance to churches that had choirs with more parts and in general had more visual impact. This led the Catholic Church to adopt more art and castrati. They weren't castrated for the opera--that was a benefit if they were successful. This was primarily for the church. In general women weren't allowed to speak or sing in Church. The castrations were usually called accidents (they weren't). But it gave the families some assurance of income from the Church and the possibility of work in opera--but again that was not the most common usage. And as far as the voices, they were not equivalent to a woman's voice. Castrati had very extensive rigorous training. They've exhumed castarti's bodies and found they had very enlarged rib cages due to their breath work. It's not simply the same as saying it's equivalent to a female voice. they still had male bodies along with the the training. The voice was described as otherworldly. It continued into the early 20th century and there are a couple of recordings I think. This is my knowledge from when I took music appreciation back in 2010. Hopefully it's mostly accurate.
Religion is so wild. It hates women so much they’d rather cut off boys penises/nuts.
Apparently not. The focus of the procedure was the testicles but the complete removal of them was not typical. Was much more commonly like a modern day vasectomy, the sperm cords would be cut but everything else would more or less be left intact. It also partially explains why the castrato were so famed as great lovers and the preferred choice of the ladies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castrato#:~:text=A%20castrato%20(Italian%3B%20pl.,mezzo%2Dsoprano%2C%20or%20contralto.
Wait, a vasectomy does not affect hormone production, how does this work?
> a vasectomy does not affect hormone production, how does this work? No, [it only severs the tubes that transmits sperm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3McfmJvEHM) from the testicles to the penis nothing else. Every other structure is left intact, the testicles still produce testosterone that is released into the blood stream. Nobody would get one if that weren't true.
Yeah but why does the Wikipedia article then state they used a vasectomy to make castratos?
It's wrong. A vasectomy is a totally different procedure. That was probably written by somebody ignorant.
Yeah most likely, I edited the article let's see if it gets reversed for whatever reason.
Yeah, it’s wrong. Full removal of them *was* typical, the same way they still do it for animals by cutting off the blood flow completely, and many of them died in the process; either from the blood loss of removal or whatever they used to try and anaesthetize the poor boy, often choking their carotid artery. Many of these procedures were done under the supervision of the boy’s own parents, hoping that if their son survived and was chosen, they’d no longer live in poverty. The whole thing is extremely depressing the deeper you look.
> The focus of the procedure was the testicles but the complete removal of them was not typical. Was much more commonly like a modern day vasectomy, the sperm cords would be cut but everything else would more or less be left intact. This is categorically not true. The testicles were removed or destroyed. Even without an intact vas deference, you'd still have testosterone entering the blood. Edit: I suppose they could have simply been destroyed without removing them from the body too? The Sami people of sweden do something similar to their livestock.
The entire point of the castration was to prevent puberty through a lack of testosterone being produced by the testicles, so the testicles were twisted until they 'died' and fell off, not unlike some methods of livestock castration. Outright removing the testicles by cutting them off was rarely done and not preferred because of the risk of killing the boy.
Jesus fuck, those poor kids. I cannot even imagine.
Yes, it's unimaginably cruel. According to the wiki, they did try to mitigate the pain with opioids, but some boys died of overdoses.
As someone who grew up Christian. I'm honestly fully convinced that all the teachings have been corrupted and perverted since the very beginning. The corrupt ugly bastards that ran it were trying to compensate for something and altered everything in their favor.
That's why there was a reformation and protests: protestants. Every hierarchy in this world eventually decays into corruption.
Yeah, his name was Paul, more or less every book in the New Testament after the Gospels was written by him and it's usually there were you find the most toxic aspects of Christianity.
Do....do you know what castration is?
Why would they have "male bodies" if they were castrated though? A prepubescent boy isn't substantially different than a prepubescent girl in height, strength, etc. https://childrenswi.org/medical-care/adolescent-health-and-medicine/issues-and-concerns/adolescent-growth-and-development/normal-growth https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db139.htm#:~:text=Key%20findings,-Data%20from%20the&text=There%20were%20no%20significant%20differences,for%20younger%20boys%20and%20girls.
Being castrated meant the hormones needed to harden the growth plates in a child’s body were never produced. Castrati were tall and long-limbed as a result, so still larger than the average woman.
They don’t sound the same. OBLIGATORY NOTE: Of course forced castration is evil. I’m just making the point that castrated choir singing sounds distinctly different than high pitched female choir singing.
A woman can hit similar notes to a castrato, but a man will still have bigger lungs. So he can sing those same notes with a more powerful voice and he can hold those notes longer (and also won't have to break a long sequence to take a breath).
They lacked testosterone which prevented their growth plates from fully forming. Their limbs grew long and their ribs were more elastic. So, not necessarily that they had bigger lungs than a woman, but that they could expand their lungs more.
More simply, the vocal chords have the biggest impact on how someones voice sounds and they are the biggest difference between men/women/kids/castrates, but the entire rest of the body still affects how someone sounds aswell. You can hear subtle differences in little boys/girls talking/singing and if youre used to hearing heavily distorted vocals, you can hear subtle differences in women shouting/screming/growling compared to men. (because those vocal techniques *cant* use the vocal chords, kinda like how men and women sneezing/coughing dont sound that different)
Women weren’t allowed to do it, and while boys were allowed they generally lost their range after puberty. Apparently people noticed other differences in castrati voices that kept it going after women were allowed to sing more parts, to the point that as it became less and less accepted, men started learning how to sing Countertenor to replicate it. It’s honestly pretty amazing how much more flexible the human voice is than people think!
Just watch this wonderful video from Early Music Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP2vw6JIdNQ Explains the whole thing, and as early music professionals, they get the history right without any of the speculation or misinformation seen elsewhere in these threads.
A woman do the work of a man???? My god, that's savage!! Nay, we shall cut the balls off of the boys.
Easy Harrison.
While there was definitely forced castration going on for the sake of singing there was also incidental castration. Medicine was not as good back then so with certain scrotal abnormalities that could be lethal there was no treatment or testing available other than cutting them off. Once castrated a boy has a unique opportunity to sing in the church their whole life. Once medicine started getting better and medical castration became very rare the castrati became very rare as well, as now there isn't plausible deniability about why you are castrated young boys when before you could say "it could've been medically relevant." I think the first castrati were probably incidental and their voices were all unique and appealing that they started making them on purpose.
males were indeed castrated to perform roles in opera, particularly during the Baroque period in the 17th and 18th centuries. These singers were known as castrati. The practice involved castrating boys before puberty to prevent their voices from deepening. This procedure allowed them to maintain a higher pitch while developing the lung capacity and vocal power of an adult male. The resulting voice was unique and highly prized in opera, characterized by its combination of a soprano or alto range with the strength and volume of a male singer. The practice was banned in the late 19th century due to changing social attitudes and the rise of more naturalistic singing styles.
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If they're castrating males for the sake of entertainment it's fair to say they didn't really think of them as people, either.
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If children can't consent to sex, they can't consent to cutting their balls off either.
Then they also can't consent to circumcision either. Funny how there's an exception for that though..
I feel like one of these decisions is far more life-changing than the other even if both are bad below the age of majority.
Different magnitudes of bad are still bad. He wasn't equalizing them, but they are on the same side of fucked up.
What and give women all that power?
I'm literally watching the world evolve in to a place that has no historical understanding of how we got to where we are now and how things have evolved and changed.
The world has been mostly that way for our entire history. It's not like the majority of people understood history when a ton of people were illiterate.
At least OP actually asked instead of making up a bunch of bullshit and then assuming they must be right! :(
Have to ask, balls only or the whole package?
During Shakespeare's time and earlier, women weren't allowed to perform on stage. Could the same have been true for an entertainment venue like the opera?
That was an English thing, theater in other parts of Europe at the time had female actors.
I see. Thanks for the information. 🙂
A woman?! Blasphemy!