Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Castrati Tradition

Castrati is a historical tradition where young boys were castrated before puberty, in order to not experience the hormonal changes and could keep their childlike voice. The operation was supposed to lower the male voice and the boy would grow up being able to sing with the same voice as a soprano. Unfortunately the choice had to be made when the boy would not be able to choose this option by himself, and many kids were tricked later on by their parents with stories like a pig had eaten their testicles; The boys once castrated, were sent to conservatories were they would have an extensive and overwhelming training. Fortunately this horrendous practice was banned from the papal chapel by Pius X in 1903.

Que crueldad!
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 6, 2011 at 7:08 PM

    "The operation was supposed to lower the male voice and the boy would grow up being able to sing with the same voice as a soprano." No, on the contrary, the operation was performed in order to keep the HIGH range of the voice of the boys into adulthood.

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  2. NohraCeciliaJune 19, 2012 at 10:49 AM

    Thank you for your message. I left the article the way it is since I'm not sure which is really the truth. I'm no an expert on the subject, I just wrote about what I read in another article, but thank you for sharing!

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