There are several essential, and probably insoluble, mysteries about the now-defunct practice of castrating boys at puberty in order to preserve their soprano voices for cathedral choirs and the operatic stage, namely, whose idea was it in the first place, and what did these extraordinary voices actually sound like? Patrick Barbier, a professor at the West Catholic University in Angers, speculates on the former - "the Persians may well have been the first people to use emasculation" - and, controversially, holds out hope for the latter.
Referring to pre-adolescent boys who have been castrated for strictly non-musical reasons he asks, with typically French insouciance, whether some day "when certain taboos have been lifted, they will dare to make public their different condition and develop their voices in order to tackle the repertoire of the great virtuosi of the past . . ." In this dazzlingly informative book Barbier examines his subject from every possible angle; the social origins of the castrati, the rigorous musical training they underwent, the sometimes surprising role they played in polite society, the brilliant careers that made them the 18th-century equivalents of today's supermodels and soccer players, and, of course, in enough technical detail to satisfy even the most grisly-minded reader, the operation itself. A vibrant and engrossing study.
