Echos of Bel Canto: Understanding the Castrati Through Early Sound Recording
May 8, 2024
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Introduction:
For as much attention that the “Historically Informed Performance Practice” movement has garnered in the 20th and 21st centuries, the musical community has not done enough to seriously investigate the technical implications of the teachings espoused by the generation of vocal pedagogues whose writings are some of the most germane to the subject: the castrati. As Martha Feldman (2015) states in the opening of her landmark book on these musicians, The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds, castrati “were Italians whose testes had been removed before puberty to retain their vocal range into adulthood” (p. 5). These singers would go on to dominate the operatic stage for the whole of the 18th century, and, in the process, composers wrote for them some of the most beautiful music ever written for the human voice. Their writings also constitute one of the earliest codifications of vocal technique in the West, providing inestimable value from a historiographical perspective. By primarily referencing the two most extensive texts written by them, namely, Pier Francesco Tosi’s Observations on the Florid Song and Giovanni Battista Mancini’s Practical Reflections on the Figurative Art of Singing, this paper will attempt to extract the key takeaways of how the castrati understood, analyzed, and taught the act of singing in an attempt to build a theoretical foundation upon which further materialist and musico-literary studies of the voice can be undertaken in the future.
Upon consulting the aforementioned texts, among others such as Nicola Porpora’s Elements of Singing, the core tenets of the castrati’s teachings can best be summarized as follows: 1. Perhaps above all, the entrainment of perfect intonation; 2. To attain this, one must unify the two pure registers of the human voice – the voce di petto and voce di testa (or chest and head voices, respectively); 3. To affect this unity, the student must strengthen both registers to the utmost in isolation before blending them so that the voice has total dynamic control – something best exemplified by a facility with the messa di voce; 4. A mastery of ornamentation, including but not limited to the trill and its various iterations, keeping and stealing time through rubato, and the extemporaneous invention of cadenzas and variations; 5. Perfect pronunciation, achieved through performing copious vocalezzi on the five Italian pure vowels: “Ah,” “Eh,” “Ee,” “Oh,” and “Oo” before ever attempting to sing repertoire; 6. Reduction of extrinsic tension through empirical observation and the correction derived thereof; and 7. The cultivation of vocal agility and the ability to sing sustained over long phrases, achieved through various progressively challenging vocalezzi and not through controlling methods of inspiration or expiration.
This paper will address the definitions of the terms just introduced and both the acoustic and physiological phenomena they would have signified at the time of the castrati in due course. In doing so, relevant entreaties on the part of Tosi and Mancini and their contemporaneous accounts of singers who they believed best embodied these various qualities will be analyzed. When appropriate, singers from the recorded era who both exemplified and transgressed upon these techniques will also be discussed to more explicitly tie these signifiers to their relevant auditory phenomena and hopefully begin to invert the paradigm that Jessica Gabriel Peritz (2022) describes as the musical community's tendency to "(read) between the lines for clues to embodied sonic-vocal practices like ornamentation and expressive inflection" only through an analysis of "notated music and words" (p. 10). In other words, this paper will perform a hermeneutical analysis the castrati’s writings, largely by recourse to recorded sound, and endeavor to bring the musical community a little bit closer to understanding the centuries-long goal of, again, to quote Feldman (2015), more accurately "imagin(ing) the castrato's voice in the mind's ear from mere palimpsests" (p. 132).
Summary of Tosi’s Observations…:
Pier Francesco Tosi’s treatise, Observations on the Florid Song, is the first text under discussion, primarily because it holds the distinction of being the earliest written by a castrato (Feldman, 2015, pp. 90-91). As promised, he begins the text by highlighting the importance of intonation. In his introductory chapter, he notes that the pedagogue must “teach the scholar to hit the Intonation of any Interval in the Scale perfectly and readily” (Tosi, 1743, p. 10). Simultaneously, though, he says that the key to singing, which necessarily entails doing this, is to merge the chest and head registers so that the singer has one unified tone throughout their range. To this effect, he says that “A diligent Master (must) unite the feigned and the natural Voice, that they may not be distinguished; for if they do not perfectly unite, the Voice will be of divers Registers, and must consequently loose its Beauty” (Tosi, 1743, p. 11). Aside from articulating what he believes to be the central goal of singing in this quote, Tosi brings up that, in the castrati’s pedagogy, all human voices are comprised of two pure registers.
The two registers and their various permutations have been called many things throughout the centuries, but it is perhaps most helpful to call them the “chest” and “head” registers here for linguistic simplicity. As Feldman (2015) notes, the chest voice can be described as “’strong,’ ‘rich,’ ‘buzzy,’ or ‘heavy’ compared with the head, which sounds ‘light’ and ‘clear’” (p. 86). Some male and female classical singers on record who most starkly isolated their chest voices in performance were the basso profundo, Wilhelm Hesch, and the “female tenor,” Ruby Helder. That they did this is partly attributable to their voices lying particularly low, which meant that the compasses of their chest registers were wide enough not to necessitate singing in their head ranges frequently. In both of their singing styles, one can hear a very robust, “thick,” “bright,” or “brassy” sound that is occasionally reminiscent of a bark or shout, whether that be in the former’s recording of “O wie will ich triumphieren” or the latter’s of Benjamin Godard’s “Berceuse” (see appendices 1 and 2).
On the other hand, crooners such as Bill Kenny of The Ink Spots and musical theater star Gertrude Lawrence perhaps best demonstrate how the two sexes’ (relatively) isolated head registers sound (see appendices 3 & 4). Because the head register lacks the carrying power of the chest voice, it is rarely heard in its pure form in a classical setting, as classical musicians typically sing without artificial amplification. The pioneering 20th-century pedagogues Frederick Husler and Yvonne Rodd-Marling (1965) note in their book, Singing: The Physical Nature of the Vocal Organ, that this acoustic phenomenon is a consequence of the thyroarytenoid muscles adducting when singing in chest, resulting in a thicker mass of the folds vibrating than when singing in head voice, and therefore a greater amplitude (p. 19). However, as one can hear from the recordings of these two singers, the head voice produces a no less arresting effect than the chest and is essential in dynamic modulation and easiness of production in the upper range. It is also important to quickly note here that the castrati of the Baroque era did not have a conceptualization of a third register – something that was first promulgated in the mid-19th century with the writings and teachings of Manuel Garcia (Fledman, 2015, pp. 85-86).
Tosi believes that one of the best metrics for assessing well-unified registers is the “messa di voce.” He describes it as a “put(ting) forth (of) the Voice, which consists in letting it swell by Degrees from the softest Piano to the loudest Forte, and from thence with the same Art return from the Forte to the Piano” (Tosi, 1743, p. 13). One of the most easily discernable examples of this technique executed well on record is in Rosa Ponselle’s rendition of “Pace, Pace mio Dio” from Verdi’s La Forza del Destino. Not only does she open the aria with a messa di voce, but she goes on to color her phrasing with similar effects throughout the rest of the performance. In other words, she diminishes her dynamic on specific notes from a forte or vice versa, betraying similar technical capabilities to the messa di voce (see appendix 5). In doing so, a singer, by definition, must balance what Tosi (1743) described as the “Softness” (p. 9) of the head voice with the virility of the chest and control the extent to which one takes over for the other by very fine degrees, thereby demonstrating superior volitionary control of the registers.
Second only to the significance that Tosi places on registration and intonation is his emphasis on accurate vowel formation. When discussing this subject, he says, "Let the Scholar be obliged to pronounce the vowels distinctly, that they may be heard for such as they are" (Tosi, 1743, p. 12). When eventually the student begins singing words rather than just vowels, Tosi (1743) then says, "Let him take Care that the Words be uttered in such a Manner, without any Affectation that they be distinctly understood, and no one Syllable be lost" (p. 26). He then goes on say that, when singers either open their mouths too wide or too narrowly, it becomes "impossible to comprehend when they have said Balla or Bella, Sesso or Sasso, Mare or More," and that they are consequently "scarce… out of their first Lessons" (Tosi, 1743, p. 12).
The dichotomy between these types of pronunciation is particularly evident in two recordings of one of the most prolific songs in the English language: the "Star-Spangled Banner." Leontyne Price's rendition is, despite her artistry, a perfect example of the kind of delivery that Tosi bemoans here and what Richard Miller (1996) calls a "learned" laryngeal and vocal tract positioning," in which "the singer practices avoidance of the flexible postures of speech in favor of a pre-set "ideal" form of resonator coupling" (p. 49). Because the lyrics of this piece are so familiar, it is easy to hear how her vowels rarely conform to how one would actually speak the text (see appendix 6). Despite English being a notoriously difficult language in which to sing because of its dark vowels, consonant clustering, and ubiquity of diphthongs, John McCormack was one singer who managed its challenges effortlessly. One can hear this in his rendition of the same piece, as he demonstrates flawless diction such that every vowel is sung precisely how one would speak it, similar to how Tosi proscribes (see appendix 7).
Tosi furthermore believes teachers should confine their students to performing specific vocalezzi to improve the function of their voices so they can achieve the perfect pronunciation he outlines in the aforementioned passages. In expressing this, he writes, “Let the Master never be tired in making the Scholar Sol-Fa [perform vocalezzi], as long as he finds it necessary” (Tosi, 1743, p. 14). This instruction excellently encapsulates one of the central approaches of the castrati’s teachings: that for a student to progress, their teacher should break down the act of phonation into its smallest component parts, and the student should only progress once they have demonstrated the requisite facility in each level of difficulty.
Though she made her first recordings at a relatively young age, the spirit of this dictum was well understood by one of the great Wagnerian sopranos of the 20th century: Kirsten Flagstad. Flagstad was adamant about not unduly burdening her voice as a burgeoning singer, as she explains in the first two and a half minutes of her 1950 “Talk on Singing Wagner” for the BBC (see appendix 8). Consequently, she began singing as a soubrette, as evidenced by her 1914 recording of the simple Norwegian folk song “Aa Ola Ola Min Eigen Onge” (see appendix 9). It wasn’t until nearly two decades later that she began tackling more technically imposing repertoire. Flagstad’s 1935 recording of the “Ride of the Valkyries” is particularly demonstrative of the benefits of waiting until the voice has matured to introduce the near-superhuman levels of chest action in one’s head range for which she was known (see appendix 10).
The castrati were able to ascertain the most isolated component parts of the singing process through their rigorous empirical observation of students – something that, given its title, is not surprisingly a theme throughout the Observations... Because Manuel Garcia (1894) wouldn’t develop the laryngoscope until 1854, pedagogues had limited means to deduce the causes of specific effects in the voice during Tosi’s lifetime (Preface). Consequently, they were forced to rely solely on their observations in sound and sight. One of the ways this manifested was through their observed causal relationship to facial or bodily tension and poor vocal functionality. In calling this out, Tosi (1743) says, “Let him rigorously correct all Grimaces and Tricks of the Head, of the Body, and particularly of the Mouth, which ought to be composed in a Manner… rather inclined to a Smile” (p. 12). He furthermore instructs the student to use their own empirical observation to correct these faults by “sing(ing) before a Looking-glass, not to be enamoured with his own Person, but to avoid those convulsive Motions of the Body, or of the Face” (Tosi, 1743, p. 40).
The early history of film recording is replete with singers who followed Tosi’s advice regarding external manifestations of bodily tension. One such example is the short film that the French tenor Émile Cossira made circa 1900 of Romeo’s love song from Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet. In it, his relaxed, wistful expression is evident throughout, regardless of where a passage lies in his range (see appendix 11). Compare this with Vittorio Grigolo’s 2016 rendition of the same aria at the Metropolitan Opera. One will notice a comparatively somber and visibly affected countenance – one that results in, among other things, a much darker sound than that of Cossira, whose rendition of Daniel Auber’s “Du pauvre seul ami fidèle” gives posterity the closest approximation to what he would have sounded like in the film at hand, as it’s his only extant recording of an aria that lies in a similar tessitura (see appendices 12 and 13). Grigolo’s filmed performance is also a perfect visual example of the “distended perpendicular posture of the mouth, or the rounded “pout” of the lips” that Miller (1996) says was so anachronistic to earlier singing techniques (p. 49).
Tosi additionally saw the cultivation of vocal agility as being essential. He writes, "Whosoever has not the Agility of Voice… becomes odiously tiresome" (Tosi, 1743, p. 23). However, he also spends a large swath of his treatise lambasting the contemporary style that entailed singing everything fast – a tendency that Peritz (2022) notes a subsequent generation of writers, such as Francesco Algarotti and Antonio Planelli, associated with the decline of opera (p. 4). Instead, Tosi (1743) believes that both slow and fast singing were integral to cultivating the voice and wrote, "Were I young, I would imitate as much as possibly I could the Cantabile of… (the) Ancients; and the Allegro of… (the) Moderns" (p. 39).
To clarify, when Tosi uses the signifiers “agility” or “allegro,” he’s refering to a singer’s ability to sing coloratura, in contrast to “cantabile,” which roughly means “lyrical” in this context. Adelina Patti and Emma Albani were perhaps the two singers on record who best exemplified brilliance in these fast and slow singing styles, respectively. To quote Roger Freitas (2018), Patti “must be considered the leading singer, if not the leading musician, of the later nineteenth century” (p. 288). Her mastery of coloratura in her recording of Luigi Arditi’s “Il Bacio” perfectly exemplifies why she earned this sobriquet (see appendix 14). On the other hand, her no-less-talented contemporary and frequent collaborator, Emma Albani, was particularly famous for her ability to sing sustained, “cantabile” pieces. Her recording of Handel’s “Ombra mai fu” is likewise a testament to her command of this style (see appendix 15).
Tosi even gives an account of the Baroque era’s equivalents of Patti and Albani: Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. He describes them as being “of a Merit superior to all praise, who with equal Force, in a different Stile, help to keep up the tottering Profession from immediately falling to Ruin… The Pathetick [slow singing] of the one, and the Allegro [fast singing] of the other, are the Qualities the most to be admired... What a beautiful mixture it would be, if the Excellence of these two angelick Creatures could be united in a single person!” (Tosi, 1743, p. 73). He then describes one singer whom he believed accomplished this: Antonio Pistocchi.
Tosi begins his description of Pistocchi by hailing how masterfully he embellished the pieces he sang – the subject on which Tosi spends most of his treatise giving instruction. However, Tosi expounds upon his ability to sing fast and slow pieces by continuing to decry the fact that most singers of his day prefer to sing only fast coloratura and neglect the ability to sing slowly and emotively. He says that in the time of singers like Pistocchi, though, “divers Airs were heard in the Theatre… that ravished the Senses” and that “it was… impossible for a human Soul, not to melt into Tenderness and Tears from the violent Motion of the Affections” (Tosi, 1743, p. 47). While Tosi (1743) concedes that the fast style of the singers whom he described as “The Moderns” was technically impressive, he still maintains that “The Taste of the Ancients was a Mixture of the Lively and the Cantabile the Variety of which could not fail giving Delight” (p. 47).
It bears mentioning that Patti and Albani did not represent the same dichotomy between older and newer styles that Tosi describes here, as they were active when the musical landscape looked vastly different than in the Baroque era. It is also important to note that they, like Pistocchi, though undoubtedly not to the same extent, could each excel in both coloratura and more lyrical singing despite their natural aptitudes. Their versatility is particularly evident in Patti’s rendition of one of her favorite encores, “Home Sweet Home,” and Albani’s account of “L’Éte” by Cécile Chaminade (see appendices 16 & 17). Because they were both magnificent singers, it is unsurprising that they followed Tosi’s guidance to cultivate both capacities in their voices, forestalling the rigid stratification of vocal subfachs that took hold in the 19th century (Nelson, 2020, p. 2).
Other significant facets of Tosi’s approach to performance practices include underscoring the importance of keeping time well, particularly when embellishing. However, implicit in this is the notion that singers would employ liberal rubato in their performances during his lifetime. He indicates this was part of the accepted musical zeitgeist when he writes, “Whoever does not know how to steal Time in Singing… is destitute of the best Taste and greatest Knowledge” (Tosi, 1743, p. 66). As mentioned previously, this quality is another one of the reasons why he labeled Pistocchi as the greatest singer of all time – because he was able to “introduc(e) Graces without transgressing against Time” (Tosi, 1743, p. 45), meaning he never lost his capacity to audiate the correct note-lengths and tempo of a piece, even when varying them from moment-to-moment and adding ornaments extemporaneously.
Though it is not usually associated with late 19th-century repertoire today, one singer on record who was particularly famous for his extempore embellishments was the great Verdi baritone Mattia Battistini. Merely compare his rendition of "Di Provenza il mar, il suol" from La Traviata to a more modern account such as Dmitry Hvorostovsky's, who sings it almost entirely come scritto. In contrast to the latter, Battistini's performance is replete with ornaments, interpolated passages, and a liberal use of rubato (see appendices 18 and 19). According to Dana Gooley (2018) in his book Fantasies of Improvisations, the decline in prominence of these techniques throughout the 20th century mirrors a general waning of improvisatory composition that took place over the course of the 19th century (p. 2). However, as demonstrated here, and as Gooley (2018) says is reflected in the research of Kenneth Hamilton, "forms of improvisation were perpetuated in the practices of virtuosos well beyond the familiar heuristic cutoff point of 1850" (p. 7). This conclusion is also affirmed by Freitas (2018), who, in summarizing Clive Brown’s work, writes that the late 19th century was characterized by a “greater prominence of rubato, portamento, and ornamentation, and the lesser importance of vibrato and precise ensemble” than the late 20th and early 21st centuries (p. 288). Battistini is but one example of this more "flexible" and "performance-centered musical ontology,” as opposed to today’s classical music world, “where the law of the work is so deeply entrenched" (Gooley, 2018, p. 7).
Lastly, Tosi emphasizes always adhering to nature and achieving the greatest effect with the least effort throughout all his instructions. To this end, he says, "The most necessary Study for singing… and what is more difficult than any other, is to seek for what is easy and natural" (Tosi, 1743, p. 43). This statement perfectly encapsulates one of the core precepts of the castrati's teachings, though it is also one of the great paradoxes in any performing art. Namely, what is most natural requires the most significant amount of time and effort to manifest. This truism is something that Giovanni Battista Mancini explicitly addresses in the conclusion of his treatise. In drawing a similar parallel to the same phenomenon in acting, he says that "acting must be natural… however, this does not justify one's not studying the art; instead it means, that one must learn to act without affectation, simply and naturally… Adaptation and uniformity is what is meant by naturalness, and these are acquired through study" (Mancini, 1912, p. 183).
Summary of Practical Reflections…:
If there could be one critique leveled against Tosi’s text, it would be that he gives limited prescriptions on how to achieve the various ends that he outlines, such as perfect intonation, seamlessly fused registers, dynamic control, and perfect pronunciation. However, that is not something of which Giovanni Battista Mancini, “the other main pedagogue of the eighteenth century” (Feldman, (2015), p. 91), could be accused.
Like Tosi, Mancini begins his text, Practical Reflections of the Figurative Art of Singing, by emphasizing the centrality of empirical observation in his pedagogy. He writes, “If you investigate the principles of (music’s) combinations, the cause and effects which it awakens in us, you will readily see that it can be called a science, as well as an art” (Mancini, 1912, p. 17). This quote confirms the proposition that the castrati’s goal was to deconstruct the human voice into its smallest component parts, using empirical observation to do so and building there from first principles, much like the sciences do. The aesthetic implications of this require further exploration, as this concept raises the specter of whether an understanding similar to the castrati’s of the functional makeup of the voice could yield a framework to form normative aesthetic judgments of musical performances. However, anything that results from this investigation would likely be subject to Carl Dahlhaus’ (1982) disclaimer in the preface to his Esthetics of Music, in which he remarks that “Music esthetics, at least that of the present, is by no means a normative discipline. It does not prescribe how one should think, but rather explains how thinking has gone on in the course of the centuries” (p. viii). This helps demonstrate that any normative framework established from this kind of analysis wouldn’t be able to claim universality; however, it could be a novel lens through which to understand how musicians historically conceptualized “good” and “bad” performance practices, hopefully without resorting to what Carolyn Abbate (2001) describes as the long history in music of “fantastic appeals to historical authority” (p. xii).
To this end, as is evident by their writings, the subject of normative aesthetic judgments was not one that the castrati shied away from, as the bulk of the first section of Mancini’s text consists of first- and secondhand accounts of those who he believed to be the greatest singers of the 18th century. Some of the most notable virtuosi he mentions in this section are the castrati Siface and Matteuccio. In the case of the latter, he says that, while in retirement, “Although he was eighty years of age, he was still able to sing in any style and preserved a voice of such clarity and purity, that if he was not seen, one would think him a singer in the flower of his youth” (Mancini, 1912, p. 29). This statement indicates that the castrati’s teaching methods preserved the longevity of the voice far longer than modern singing methods. Merely compare the singing in the farewell performances of someone like Joan Sutherland, who was regarded by many as one of the greatest singers of the latter half of the 20th century, with that of Nellie Melba, whose training with Mathilde Marchesi was more similar to that described in this paper (Marchesi, 1970). One immediately hears what Mancini is describing, as it is difficult to tell that the latter was nearly seventy when she recorded it. In contrast, the ravages of a long career are sadly quite evident in the case of the former, even though she was the same age as Melba at the time of the recording at hand, whether that be in her pronounced wobble, circumscribed range, or flat high notes. (see appendices 20 and 21).
Mancini also briefly describes the period of study undertaken by his teacher, the eminent Antonio Bernacchi, while under the tutelage of Pistocchi himself. He writes, "During his time of study, he not only refused to sing in any of the churches and theatres, but even for his most intimate friends. He continued living this way until his teacher gave him permission to do otherwise, and at that time he startled the world with his art" (Mancini, 1912, p. 30). This story mirrors that of the dictum the illustrious Cafarelli lived by while under the instruction of Nicola Porpora – the teacher of the even more legendary singer, Farinelli, and who, consequently, may very well have been the most influential vocal pedagogue in history.
According to Franz Haböck in his book, Die Kastraten und ihre Gesangkunst, Porpora had Cafarelli practice from a single sheet of vocalezzi on only vowels for five whole years and forbade him to sing anything else. At the end of his sixth year of study, which consisted mainly of him introducing consonants into these types of exercises, Porpora said to him, “Go my son, you have nothing left to learn, you are the greatest singer in Italy and the world.” (Habök, 1927, pp. 384-385). According to Haböck, this page of exercises was luckily preserved for posterity in the library of the Naples Conservatory (see appendix 22). One can readily see that it consists primarily of singing the messa di voce throughout one’s range, doing simple scales (both chromatic and diatonic), and learning how to perform ornaments such as the trill. For a particularly adroit example of this ornament, consult Ellen Beach Yaw’s 1913 recording of “The Skylark” (see appendix 23). Throughout it, she goes from trilling to executing tremolos as wide as a fifth with miraculous ease, providing a small glimpse as to what this kind of adherence to the latter might achieve.
Not only does the aforementioned story highlight the elegant simplicity of, though inestimable difficulty, imposed by the castrati’s teachings, but it also reiterates Tosi’s prescription that the student was never supposed to tackle repertoire or sing in public during the vast majority of their study. Instead, the ability to do so was an epiphenomenon of the castrati’s teaching methods and would naturally result once the voice was entirely built. Similarly (and in the same vein as Flagstad’s advice), Mancini (1912) explicitly addresses this when he writes that having students sing repertoire before they are ready “produces the ruin of beautiful voices… Being loaded with a weight for which they are not trained to endure, they will sing but with poor voice… and lacking that strength which (can) be acquired only by time and practice” (p. 125).
Mancini also addresses a prominent subject of much of 20th- and 21st-century singing instruction: “breath control,” though evidently, he thought it was an injudicious preoccupation. He writes, “The lungs are not the actual organs of the voice; they merely furnish the material, the air; the real organs of the voice are: larynx, glottis, uvula, tongue, palatine arch, hard palate, and lips. These organs are the means by which the voice is given its diverse modulations, so that the better organized they are the more perfect, strong and clear the voice will be” (Mancini, 1912, pp. 53-54). This quote is critical because it further implies that the castrati believed the only way to improve the function of the voice was to train the musculature of the throat and mouth, which are solely under the purview of pronunciation and registration.
To this end, the importance of the vocal folds when it comes to breath expenditure can be demonstrated by returning to the exemplar of pronunciation and register balance that is John McCormack. In his recording of "Il Mio Tesoro" from Don Giovanni, he modulates from blindingly fast coloratura to long, sustained notes throughout his range, all within the course of a single breath on multiple occasions (see appendix 24). His ability to do so was likely made possible by his registers being in such strong accord. Feldman (2015) alludes to this when she mentions the primacy of the vocal folds in mediating breath expenditure: "intense training and exercise… allow one to sing longer on a single breath, controlling the folds with maximal efficiency such that less breath escapes and more tone is transmitted in output" (p. 98-99).
Notably, while Mancini does give instructions throughout the Reflections… on how to improve the functionality of the larynx and glottis (the systems that affect registration), as well as the tongue and lips (which are the organs responsible for articulation), he never once instructs students to attempt to control the other organs that he mentions in this quote regarding “breath control.” Nowhere in his text are there entreaties for the student to raise their soft palate or direct air towards their palatine arch, etc., as in the writings of later pedagogues like Lilli Lehmann (1903, pp. 45-46). These omissions would indicate Mancini thought that while these structures may be involved in the act of phonation, they are not under voluntary control, and consequently, any attempts to control them directly would do more harm than good.
In fact, Mancini describes a specific kind of tension that mars pronunciation and which, today, many students are actually entrained to perform: that which results when one tries to raise the "soft palate." He says, "The voice cannot come out natural and spontaneous, if it finds the fauces in a forced position" (Mancini, 1912, p. 96). This quote is germane, as the fauces constitute the entry to the oropharynx, which is bound to be affected if one tries to artificially hold in place the surrounding structures, such as the soft palate (Biga et al., 2019, 23.3). In fact, Mancini (1912) implies that any command for the student to control specific muscles directly is bound to result in further tension when he says that the best way to correct any of these kinds of faults is for the teacher to point them out by simply "faithfully reproduc(ing) himself the defect of the student" (p. 97) and encouraging them to try to correct it by their own accord. He believed that the teacher should merely repeat this process until their student has found their own way of producing a functionally effective sound.
Mancini also goes further than Tosi in describing the importance of strengthening the chest and head voices in isolation before bridging the two. To that end, he says one must “draw out all the voice” to have a strong, vigorous, and audible tone (Mancini, 1912, p. 99). However, Mancini (1912) stresses the importance of balancing this with a robust head voice when writing that the singer must also be able to “hold the voice back… and at the same time produce smooth effects” (p. 100), indicating an incorporation of the head voice’s qualities. He speaks directly to this dynamic of balancing the two when he writes that the study of slowly increasing one’s capacity to maintain stronger and stronger dynamics can “never produce good results unless the voice is equalized” (Mancini, 1912, p. 102). This comment is relevant to the registers because, as previously mentioned, strong dynamics are a consequence of robust chest action/vocal fold adduction, whereas range extension is under the purview of head voice, as the head voice entails the engagement of the cricothyroid muscles, which are the muscles used for altering pitch (Husler & Rodd-Marling, 1965, p. 60). To summarize Mancini’s mandate: these types of laryngeal activities can only occur healthily so long as one doesn’t overpower the other.
Though now the vocal sub-fach is associated with having an overbearing chest voice, the earliest generation of Wagnerian singers on record understood this, as evidenced by the great heldensopran, Lillian Nordica. In her recording of Ferenc Erkel’s “Ah Rebéges” from his opera Hunyadi László, she displays remarkable limpidity and dynamic control -- hallmarks of a robust head register. In fact, starting at the 1:30 mark, she performs coloratura that would be liable to impress Adelina Patti. However, she also contrasts it with the kind of earth-shattering dynamics that made audiences around the world lionize her as one of the preeminent Wagnerian sopranos of an age that included the likes of Amalie Materna – particularly in the piece’s last minute (see appendix 25). The same is true of her no-less redoubtable singing partner Jean de Reszke, who in his recording of Meyerbeer’s “O Paradis,” hits the high notes at the 0:36 mark of track 1 and at 0:43 in track 2 with a starkly falsetto-dominant register configuration (see appendix 26).
In his next chapter, Mancini (1912) writes that to blend the two registers, one must “keep the chest tones back… and… force the voice little by little against the head… and thus fix it and develop it with the same strength that the chest tones have already naturally developed” (pp. 109-110). To paraphrase: the student must scale their robust chest voice back to mimic the head voice, then slowly try to bring this tone into the true head voice’s range. After the student devotes much study to this, they will be able to incorporate more and more strength/chest into a head-dominated register coordination until it sounds exactly like a pure chest voice.
Another one of Nordica's colleagues, the contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink, was someone who understood the importance of this kind of training all too well. Though she similarly excelled in very heavy repertoire, her robust chest action in her upper range was predicated on a primarily head-dominant blend – something that can be heard in her recording of "Land of Hope and Glory" made at the very end of her career. In it, one can discern a marked timbral shift when she is singing in her pure chest range, as opposed to that of her head (see appendix 27). This shift is something that she obscured earlier in her career, as evidenced by her 1908 recording of "I und mei Bua," in which she displays her facility at yodeling (see appendix 28). Her doing so is significant because "yodeling" is just another name for when a singer makes a "gear-shift" change from chest to head voice instantaneously (Titze, 2014, Introduction). Schumann-Heink doing so demonstrates that she had the ability to artfully blend chest action into a head-dominant register configuration above the passagio and that she sang in a purer chest voice below it.
Mancini then describes how, once the singer achieves this blend of the registers, they will be able to perform what he calls a “portamento di voce” -- a vocal effect that consists of “passing and blending… the voice from one tone to another… with perfect proportion and unison” (Mancini, 1912, p. 111). This technique is a deceivingly complex one that Freitas (2018) notes has recently received significant “technical… affective… and hermeneutic” attention (p. 322). To add to this scholarship, Mancini believed that only once the student can execute a portamento throughout their entire range can they progress to the messa di voce, making its “(fall) from favor in the early twentieth century” (Freitas, 2018, 323) somewhat disconcerting, given the messa di voce’s importance in the castrati’s aesthetics and pedagogy.
In describing the significance of the messa di voce, Manicni brings up the singer briefly mentioned earlier in this paper, Farinelli, whom he describes as the “glory of his century” (Mancini, 1912, p. 121), precisely because he was able to execute the portamento and messa di voce so flawlessly. Mancini (1912) describes Farinelli’s voice as being “perfect, beautiful and sonorous in its quality and unparalleled in its range… perfect, from the lowest note to the highest” (p. 121). He continues: “The perfect intonation, the unfolding, the extending and expanding of the voice, his portamento, the perfect union of the registers, the sparkling agility, and perfect trill were all in him in the same degree of perfection. In every style of singing, he was perfect, and to such a degree as to make himself inimitable” (Mancini, 1912, p. 122). Essentially, Farinelli must have been the zenith of all the things the castrati held most dear and saw as crucial in the art of cultivating the voice: all made possible by his adherence to the precepts outlined in this paper, such as the strengthening and total blending of the two pure registers, a monastic dedication to cultivating perfect intonation and pronunciation, ability to excel in the sustained and blindingly fast styles, and an assiduous study of the many “graces” like the trill and extemporaneous ornamentation.
Conclusion:
Perhaps one day, the musical world will be able to recapture some of the sounds produced by the glorious voices outlined in this paper, among countless others not mentioned, though addressed in the Reflections…, such as Senesino, Nicolini, and Carestini. Luckily, though, posterity has writings such as those of Tosi, Mancini, and Porpora to preserve the castrati’s legacies, as well as the recordings of singers who were active only a few generations after their fall from grace. There is much more to this subject that is beyond the scope of this paper, such as the specifics of the various vocalezzi that Mancini and his contemporaries outline and the technical considerations that each exercise purports to address. It may also be worth addressing this paper’s glaring omission of any of the recordings made by the only castrato to leave behind solo records, Alessandro Moreschi. However, this decision is partly attributable to Feldman’s (2015) already extensive analysis of his voice in Castrato… (Chapter 3). It is also attributable to the singers under discussion arguably highlighting the core tenants of Tosi and Mancini’s writings more clearly than any techniques embodied by Moreschi, despite his incredible voice. Regardless, his sound legacy is undoubtedly worthy of further investigation.
The ways that vocal pedagogy has changed in the centuries following the waning of the precepts of Bel Canto is similarly a subject worthy of much further elucidation – one that can further clarify the utility of turning to recordings of 19th-century singers in understanding the castrati’s writings. As discussed earlier, this paper has also not made the philosophical case that there is normative weight behind the methods espoused by these pedagogues. Instead, it has attempted to give the musical community new tools to understand just what the aesthetic zeitgeist at the time of the castrati entailed through an exegesis of their writings and early sound recordings. Hopefully, it has shown that these repositories of knowledge, when investigated, can provide the tools to listen through the ears of some of the most beautiful singers ever to walk the face of the earth.
References
· Abbate, C. (2002). In Search of Opera. In Princeton University Press eBooks. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400866731
· Biga, L. M., Bronson, S., Dawson, S., Harwell, A., Hopkins, R., Kaufmann, J., LeMaster, M., Matern, P., Morrison-Graham, K., Oja, K., Quick, D., Runyeon, J., & Oeru, O. (2019, September 26). 23.3 The Mouth, Pharynx, and Esophagus. Anatomy & Physiology. https://open.oregonstate.education/aandp/chapter/23-3-the-mouth-pharynx-and-esophagus/
· Dahlhaus, C. (1982). Esthetics of music (W. W. Austin, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.
· Feldman, M. (2015). The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds. University of California Press.
· Freitas, R. (2018). Singing Herself: Adelina Patti and the performance of Femininity. Journal of the American Musicological Society, 71(2), 287–369. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2018.71.2.287
· Garcia Jr., M. (1894). Hints on Singing (B. Garcia, Trans.; New & Revised ed.). E. Ascherberg & Co.
· Gooley, D. (2018). Fantasies of Improvisation: free playing in nineteenth-century music. Oxford University Press.
· Haböck, F. (1927). Die Kastraten und ihre Gesangskunst; eine gesangsphysiologische, kultur- und musikhistorische Studie. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt.
· Husler, F., & Rodd-Marling, Y. (1965) Singing: The Physical Nature of the Vocal Organ: A guide to the unlocking of the singing voice. Faber and Faber Limited.
· Lehmann, L. (1902). How to Sing (Meine Gesangskunst) (R. Aldrich, Trans.). Macmillan Company.
· Mancini, G. (1912). Practical Reflections On the Figurative Art of Singing (P. Buzzi, Trans.). Gorham Press.
· Marchesi, M. (1970). Bel Canto: A Theoretical & Practical Method. Dover Publications, Inc.
· Miller, R. (1996). Si canta come si parla? In On the Art of Singing (pp. 48–50). Oxford Academic Books. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195098259.003.0015
· Nelson, R. (2020, March 31). Voice classification in Opera and the German Fach System. MusRef Bibliographies. https://musref.lib.byu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NelsonRebekahBibApproved200722.pdf
· Peritz, J. G. (2022). The Lyric Myth of Voice: Civilizing Song in Enlightenment Italy. University of California Press.
· Titze I. R. (2014). Bi-stable vocal fold adduction: a mechanism of modal-falsetto register shifts and mixed registration. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 135(4), 2091–2101. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4868355
· Tosi, P. F. (1743). Observations on the Florid Song; or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers (J. E. Galliard, Trans.; 2nd ed.). J. Wilcox.
Appendix
1. Mozart, WA. (1782). Die Entführung aus dem Serail: O wie will ich triumphieren [Recorded by W. Hesch]. (1906).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b674MUx2Iz4
2. Godard, B. (1888). Jocelyn: Berceuse [Recorded by R. Helder]. (1917).
https://archive.org/details/78_berceuse_ruby-helder-godard_gbia0016837a
3. Lawrence, J. (1939). If I Didn't Care [Recorded by The Ink Spots]. (1939).
https://archive.org/details/78_if-i-didnt-care_ink-spots-jack-lawrence_gbia0013893a
4. Gershwin, G. (1926). Oh, Kay!: Someone to Watch Over Me [Recorded by G. Lawrence]. (1926).
5. Verdi, G. (1861). La Forza Del Destino: Pace, pace mio Dio [Recorded by R. Ponselle]. (1928).
6. Smith, J.S. (1814). The Star-Spangled Banner [Recorded by L. Price]. (1982).
https://archive.org/details/star-spangled-banner-price-gerhardt
7. Smith, J.S. (1814). The Star-Spangled Banner [Recorded by J. McCormack]. (1917).
8. Flagstad, K. (1950) Talk on Wagner [Radio broadcast]. BBC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuUeyj78YgA
9. Aa Ola Ola Min Eigen Onge [Performed by K. Flagstad]. (1914).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DicVDCaW6Yc
10. Wagner, R. (1856). Die Walküre: Ho-Yo-To-Ho [Recorded by K. Flagstad]. (1935).
https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/200021933/BS-95357-Ho-yo-to-ho
11. Vrignault, M. (Director). (1900). Romeo et Juliette [Film]. La Société Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre; Gaumont Pathé Archives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lldYQCsIBus
12. Gounod, C. (1867). Romeo et Juliet: Ah, lève-toi soleil [Recorded by V. Grigolo]. (2016).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-NZlCVSH0E
13. Auber, D. (1828). La muette de Portici: Du pauvre seul ami fidèle (Air du Sommeil) [Recorded by É. Cossira]. (1904).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsYe1eQbxrU
14. Aditi, L. (1860). Il Bacio [Recorded by A. Patti]. (1905).
15. Handel, G.F. (1738). Serse: Ombra mai fu (Largo) [Recorded by E. Albani]. (1904).
16. Bishop, H. (1821). Home! Sweet Home! [Recorded by A. Patti]. (1905).
https://archive.org/details/78_home-sweet-home_mme-adelina-patti-bishop_gbia0299597a
17. Chaminade, C. (1894). L'Éte [Recorded by E. Albani]. (1904).
18. Verdi, G. (1853). La Traviata: Di provenza il mar, il suol [Recorded by M. Battistini]. (1911).
19. Verdi, G. (1853). La Traviata: Di provenza il mar, il suol [Recorded by D. Hvorostovsky]. (1990).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMclquuh3PE
20: Flotow, F.V. (1847). Martha: The Last Rose of Summer [Recorded by J. Sutherland]. (1990).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=izmsa6D4mxw
21: Verdi, G. (1887). Otello: Ave Maria [Recorded by N. Melba]. (1926).
https://archive.org/details/78_avemaria_313_08/Ave+Maria+-+Nellie+Melba+-+Giuseppe+Verdi.flac
22. Habök’s reprint of Porpora’s vocalezzi for Caffarelli (pp. 384-385)
https://imslp.org/wiki/Die_Kastraten_und_ihre_Gesangkunst_(Hab%C3%B6ck%2C_Franz)
23. Yaw, E.B. (1913). The Skylark [Recorded by E.B. Yaw]. (1913).
https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/2000150354/2219-The_skylark
24. Mozart, W.A. (1787). Don Giovanni: Il mio tesoro [Recorded by J. McCormack]. (1916).
https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-17646/
25. Erkel, F. (1844). Hunyadi László: Ah Rebéges [Recorded by L. Nordica]. (1907).
https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/2000146797/30144-Hunyadi_Lszl_Hungarian_air
26. Meyerbeer, G. (1865). L’Africaine: O Paradis [Recorded by J. de Reszke]. (1901). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0K_5i5BN4k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXmYKWd1628
27. Elgard, E. (1902). Land of Hope and Glory [Recorded by E. Schumann-Heink]. (1929).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q42T8xkUmbY&list=OLAK5uy_mfGYlw-TuLjE-qLL7-Uk-6CpYytQFYOFw&index=36
28. Millöcker, C. I und mei Bua [Recorded by E. Schumann-Heink]. (1908).
https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/200007429/C-6480-I_und_mei_Bua