Castrati - Händel - "Lascia ch'io pianga"

The famous castrati began their peculiar history by joining church choirs because women were no longer allowed to sing there. St. Augustine had forbidden them. Later, in the 18th century, I castrati became outstanding opera singers who amazed Europe with their talent. Most of them had been "transferred" to singing schools by their needy parents, hoping they would develop a superb voice that would make them rich and famous. The children were castrated and then sent to these schools, where they received musical and vocal education. A few went down in history as the greatest singers of all time, the famous Farinelli among them.

Castrati had the voice of a woman but the lungs of a man, capable of true vocal feats that to this day have been imitated but not surpassed. Just look at the vocal parts that Händel, Gluck, or Rossini wrote for them, full of technical difficulties of all kinds that make one think that the composers were writing for a special class of singers who, actually, were voice machines or vocal mechanisms more efficient than anything we have ever seen before.

Superstars
So it's no wonder that the castrati were the first superstars of music. Rich, vain, and handsome, they took Europe by storm, spending time with the nobles on equal terms. With the noble ladies, mainly highborn girls in search of exotic and stimulating experiences, they could become lovers without worrying about unexpected pregnancies.

Their love affairs were the talk of Europe. Some took the gay option. But the vast majority, Italians all of them, were recognized as "heart stealers", and one mistress after another fell at their feet:

Caffarelli, famous, almost died at the hands of a jealous husband. No less prominent Senesino eloped with a girl from a good family but ended up in prison. Luigi Marchesi was involved in a big scandal in London when a lady left her husband and children to live with him. Pacchierotti had a thorny affair in Naples that led the lady's lover (ex-lover) to plan to assassinate him. Velluti, in turn, devoted himself to chasing damsels all over Europe until he ended up in Russia living with a Grand Duchess.

There was one last castrato, Alessandro Moreschi, who was a member of the Vatican Choir in the second half of the 19th century. He died in 1922. A few years earlier, in 1906, Pius X had eliminated them by means of a papal bull issued motu proprio.

Lascia ch'io pianga
We salute them all from this modest tribune with the French countertenor Philippe Jarousky performing the "workhorse" of modern countertenors, the aria Lascia ch'io pianga ("Let me weep") from Act II of Händel's opera Rinaldo, premiered in London in 1771.
[Historical data taken from a 1984 New York Times article].