.... The effects of castration, some known from antiquity, were placed on a modern scientific basis with studies of the Skoptzy, a self-castrating sect from Russia and the castrati opera singers. Details of hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis function as well as the embryology of male sexual differentiation...

...The Marqués, the Divas, and the Castrati. Louise K. Stein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197681848.003.0005 This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-Non...

...This chapter discusses the castrati: castrated men with powerful high voices who sang in courts and chapels, and on public and commercial stages in Italy. According to Pietro Stella, castration from the seventeenth century onward was regarded as a particular form of celibacy. The chapter describes...

...By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the castrato had become the overwhelming favorite to portray young, amorous men in the operatic stage. This chapter focuses on the observed effeminate characteristics of the castrati and examines how their evident effeminacy was linked to eroticism...

... was not only an honourable and lucrative profession but an enjoyable one. artists as musicians portraits of musicians gentlemen musicians musical careers improvisers music schools castrati Reading  Vasari’s  Lives of the Most Illustrious Painters, Sculptors, and Architects...

... as well as castrati, both perceived as highly erotic and also at times, threatening. A juxtaposition of contemporary testimonies of these performances with the medical theory of the humors shows that both are based on the idea of a perfect male body, a less perfect and womanish body of the castrato...

...The Introduction presents the concept of the mismatched woman through a discussion of the history of sound technology and its relationship to male and female bodies, mythical figures like sirens, and historical figures like castrati. Although their roles in the novel, cinema, television...

... books point forward to an era where phonography can preserve the voice, while using terminology reminiscent of critical discourse on the castrati. Far from enabling these women to sing, then, the monsters in these stories are surrogates for the phonograph and exist as a guarantee that the operatic voice...

... in the Medici court and elsewhere. It then turns to the most puzzling descendents of these women: the castrati, who challenged the apparent female monopoly on singing in the higher ranges. The chapter also examines the impact of virtuoso sopranos and their style of ornamentation on the emerging violin sonata...

...The Marqués, the Divas, and the Castrati. Louise K. Stein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197681848.003.0001 This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-Non...

... agents as well as diplomats in cities such as Rome, Turin, and Vienna were also called into service. During the mid-17th century, singers of many types looked towards opera as a way of earning extra income. Most of the male singers, whether castrati or not, were also active as church or court singers...

... castrati, on the other. Charles of Lorraine at siege of Vienna Jan Sobieski King of Poland Joseph II Emperor Kara Mustafa Grand Vizier Leopold I Emperor Pezzl Johann Poland Vienna siege of 1683 The Abduction from the Seraglio Mozart Catherine the Great Empress Emotions Habsburg monarchy Hunter...

...In the age of the Grand Tour, foreigners flocked to Italy to gawk at its ruins and paintings, enjoy its salons and cafés, attend the opera, and revel in their own discovery of its past, but they also marveled at the people they saw, both male and female. In an era in which castrati were “rock stars...

... Navona Rome Lerdau Eli statue castrati human concept of assemblage Deleuze Gilles early modern period humanism machines and mechanism Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus posthumanism queerness timbre Casanova Giacomo Catholicism Enlightenment Global South Grand Tour gun powder Handel George...

... that they commanded the authority exercised by their equally high-earning male counterparts. This gender discrepancy extends back to eighteenth-century Italy, where fully 70 percent of male singers on the stage were castrati ⁶⁵ and were paid far better than were tenors and basses. ⁶⁶ Yet...

... by Handel for castrati, early music singing in Handel, improvisation with Baroque orchestras, ornamentation in Handel’s works, harmony, rubato, Handel’s rhythmic notation, technical perfection, period pronunciation in English-language oratorios, and overdotting. Beethoven Ludwig van Gluck Christoph...