Thursday, March 17, 2011

Thu-I. Welcome to Tenor Thursday!

Young Werther - A painting capturing the spirit of the Romantic era in Europe, a period whose heyday roughly started around the French Revolution and died down at the beginning of World War I. This is the period that saw the Tenor take center stage in the operatic male hero, replacing the Castrati sopranos and counter-tenors of the Baroque period.

Hello everybody! Today is Tenor Thursday and I feel like this is too big of a topic to chew after having tackled the unit exams, the report cards and the end of the quarter all in one day. I am exhausted this evening, even after my afternoon siesta! Nevertheless, I will attempt to at least give you some interesting tidbits. Who knows, I just may be able to catch a second wind. Such is the beauty of having a strong passion like opera!

Now for a little history... During the seventeenth and eighteenth century, opera was dominated by divas with songbird voices and a strange group of fellows called the castrati, who often outdid these divas with their songbird techniques. Although they say that the whole castrati phenomenon originated in exotic Spain, it most definitely flourished in Italy, where opera was born! Somehow it was discovered that by removing the testicles of young choirboys, their beautiful high-ranged voices would not only remain, they would blossom into an even more divine sound. The operation was highly illegal in all of Europe, but the church more than often turned a blind eye as they would collect baskets full of coins from the crowds who would pack the cathedrals on Sunday to hear these angels sing! Often the story was told that the castrato fell off a horse. This is what they said about Farinelli, who in his day, was the equivalent of a modern rock star!

This is a painting of Farinelli, the most famous castrato of all time.
 It is no myth that the castrato had a more powerful voice than a female soprano. Hard scientific fact proves it. Without getting into all the details here, I recommend you go to YouTube and see the six-part BBC documentary on the subject. It is a fascinating story. In a nutshell, male bodies are able to hold more air and their voice cavities are larger and stronger than a female, but at puberty, their vocal chords lose their high range. The castrato, thus, is able to sing at high range in the body of a full-grown man. And full grown they were! Castratos were unusually tall, because the glands at puberty that were removed also removed the inhibitor that signals that the body had reached adulthood and it was time to stop growing!

There are tons of literature that describe how wonderful these castrati voices were, but nothing is like hearing the real thing. The last castrato died at the turn of the 20th century. The recording itself is poor and scratched up and no amount of remastering has ever been able to resuscitate it. Listen to Alessandro Moreschi sing the Ave Maria on the YouTube. You can almost imagine how the castrato might have sounded like in full HD quality stereo. Then the movie Farinelli came!

Let's go to Wikipedia here:

"Farinelli is a 1994 biographical film about the life and career of the Italian opera singer Farinelli, considered one of the greatest castrato singers of all time. It stars Stefano Dionisi as Farinelli and was directed by the Belgian director Gérard Corbiau.

Although Dionisi provided the speaking voice, Farinelli's singing voice was provided by a soprano, Ewa Malas-Godlewska and a countertenor, Derek Lee Ragin, who were recorded separately then digitally merged to recreate the sound of a castrato."

Read more by following this LINK.

Here are posted two of my favorite scenes from the movie: Go to my next posting by clicking HERE.

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