CASTRATO, BBC Documentary Part 5 of 6

[thomastmwc]

one thing he can't do: have a normal man's sound

[chrisstevensjunior]

i wish people can be castrated by choice if they want to let them stupid laws...

[primohomme]

@chrisstevensjunior

Even voluntarily the boy would have to be castrated before age 12...

And I personally think a 12 year old does not have the mental maturity

as to make such an important decision which will affect the rest of his life, not only his sexual and reproductive life but also his health both physical and mental.

[jewelmarkess]

@primohomme I agree. The times are different today too. I think we forget that back then the life and mentality were very different: people were starving, dying early, there was no way for a boy born in a poor family not to go hungry and make a living if not become a star than at least as a church singer. Also people looked at sex differently. Mutilation was common as a punishment or "medical treatment": I read people back then were castrated as part of "treatment" for hernia too.

[macallan30forme]

Even if I had a son who was a complete faggot like these boys I wouldn't leave him with the pedophile butthole pirates in the video. These guys should be hung for their crimes of prepubescent semen bottling.

[primohomme]

@macallan30forme

Faggot is your dad taking dicks and cum up his ass at the truck stop

Go kill yourself, nobody will miss you.

[n5rnd]

@macallan30forme Isn't that literally impossible? I mean, "prepubescent semen bottling?"

[macallan30forme]

When does the man in the suit wedge his penis into the boys' buttholes? (4:32)

[mcconvilleme]

@macallan30forme You're a disgraceful human being.

[macallan30forme]

i consider them all faggots. this music sucks put some Jay-Z on niggaz

[Vivaldi1677]

Its a lost "art" but any tenor who can hit and sustain the High C of the aria from "La Fille du Regiment" by Donizetti, gets my respect. No wonder that Pavarotti's moniker was "King Of The High C's"

[Soundz2598]

Poor kids, they cant enjoy sex so they can sing like girls :/

[primohomme]

@Soundz2598

They had fully functioning penis, their testicles were the thing that was removed

[day50912A]

@primohomme

Would they have a sex drive? Would they have the penis size of a little boy? Did they have sex?

[primohomme]

@day50912A

There's actually stories of their love affairs with both men and women

I think perhaps they have small penises but not too small, and their libido decreased after age 30

[92NordicQueen]

@primohomme As far as I know, ''it'' is flaccid without the testosterone that testicles provide...so no sex.

[primohomme]

@92NordicQueen

There are many stories of their sexual affairs, both with married women and married men, as well as amongst each other and with members of the clergy.

[Soundz2598]

So theres more castratos??? O_o

[Vivaldi1677]

YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT THEY STILL HAVE CASTRATOS. I THOUGHT THE LAST ONE EVER WAS ALESSANDRO MOROSCHI BACK IN THE VERY EARLY 20TH CENTURY !!! ALL I CAN SAY IS "OWWWWWWWWWW"

[violinistx100]

@Vivaldi1677 ...someone didn't pay attention...A. Moroschi WAS the last one M. Maneachi is one of the few TRUE male sopranos that didn't have to go through the process of castration, like how my voice teacher had a hormonal problem when he was young and his voice was affected to where it didn't break that much so his range was left to that of an alto( low D3) to soprano(High D6)

[Vivaldi1677]

YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT THEY STILL HAVE CASTRATOS. I THOUGHT THE LAST ONE EVER WAS ALESSANDRO MOROSCHI BACK IN THE VERY EARLY 20TH CENTURY !!!

[67675656565655656565]

grow some balls ya poof

[cgc010]

i dont have any idea with this opera but geeee damn i do really enjoy it soo much

[Drelnis]

The sound coming out of the tenor is ridiculously distasteful :P And this is true in the parts that are only directly above the staff - G, A, Bb, and he cannot sing them properly, why did they even choose him for this?

[indgiu]

thanks for this.

I wanted to ask you what do you think about the 1994 movie Farinelli? Do you think they did a good job of trying to recreate the castrato voice?

[primohomme]

@indgiu

Not at all. But in itself is an interesting audio engineering project, amalgaming two voices into one...very interesting, but I don't think it's true to the castrati

[51m0n77]

@primohomme could you please upload part 3 again, for some reason part 3 breaches some copyright jargon. Thanks again for part 1 2 4 5 6.

[primohomme]

@51m0n77

I'm really sorry, it seems it was blocked by copyright :( I can't re upload it without severely messing up the image and sound. But I'll upload the whole documentary to download instead and I'll let you know the links

[51m0n77]

@indgiu i think the end result is acceptable. but not perfect ......

[2010wieliczka]

@indgiu I think they did but not completely. It is not possible to reconstruct castrato voice when we have only some examples of “castrati” voices – that examples (Maniaci, Radu Marian, Paradowski) are not similar to each other– Paradowski is perfectly resonant and has unbeatable rich timbre and stable voice, Maniachi has rich timbre and his voice is light like a clouds, Radu Marian has voice strong like oak but light like balsa. Neither of them is similar to the Godlewska& Ragin voice…

[granten0re]

@indgiu

He looks like he's stoned on lithium -- absolutely no warmth at all. Actually, kind of scary..................

[whistlenotelover]

also if you listen closely and decipher all the internal shadings, i don't how to explain it unless u have an acute sense of hearing of absolute pitch as I do, u can hear an intriguing phenomen which all good singers with wide vocal ranges should, but in his case to the unique physiological factors involved make it more perceptable...if u hear his middle register it is more reminscent of a mezzo, but if he goes higher it develops that simpler dynamic, bright treble tonality!

[whistlenotelover]

if u carefully listen to his voice, even though it is very connected evenly recall that physiologically his cords did not retain pre-puberty's 100% child-like state; if they did don;t you think he would sound more like powerful treble like Radu Marian?? so we know his voice dropped ever so slightly as if he is eternally transitioning through puverty because in live performances he is known to have only 1 distinictive passagio 'bump' on the way down into his lower, chest register.

[whistlenotelover]

isn't 6:06 horridly flat! makes you ask why did they chose to get a normal, or 'average' tenor and have him push his instrument in his middle voice sounding this tight, and ungraceful if the question was to have a man vocal tract/sinuses don't you think the BBC should have spent a lil more time on trying to acquire a naturally higher sitting tenor voice, aka the HAUTE-CONTRE type tenor these type of tenor in chest/full voice are known to sing up to G5, COMFORTABLY hence their androgynous timbre!

[primohomme]

@whistlenotelover

They should have gotten me :P I can sing up to C6 in head voice, not falsetto, and the repeated F5 wouldn't have been too much trouble :P poor guy was DYING trying to sing those high notes.

Anyways, Maniaci has a more colorful middle but his top notes are light-soprano, and he truly has a weak low register, I don't consider him a mezzo soprano or alto AT ALL.

[MooseyFate100]

@primohomme I guarantee your C6 is strained/gritty falsetto

[primohomme]

@MooseyFate100

No daaahling, it's head voice and it's quite resonant and not strained, though it is a bit harsh like that of a female high belter like Patti Labelle or Aretha Franklin, but changing the vowel I can sing it much sweeter, here's an example of my sustained C6 and a scale up to D6

/watch?v=e-fQGWR5UqU

And just in case, here's a video where I show the difference between falsetto and head voice:

/watch?v=fx6P0wYziBE

[whistlenotelover]

I heard he admits to sounding like mezzo Susan Graham I would say his tone/timbre has shades of soprano but his comfortable tessitura or where his voice sits is equivalent to that of 'high' mezzo if there is such a thing, take Joyce or Cecilia for instance technically mezzos but their timbres hint at soprano tendencies in the facility, and ease of their higher registers. I am sure he could sustain an Eb6 that would be interesting even though it might be of one color/dynamic, as Cecilia's is.

[skababy8227]

is it true that his ball were cut off so he may be a castrato? thus the name castro from the word castration.?

[Animefan300]

@skababy8227 Yes, a castrato is a singer who was castrated. That is where the name came from.

[Abracadabra208]

When they spliced the boy's and man's voices together, why didn't they just use Michael Maniaci for the man's voice???

[primohomme]

@Abracadabra208

Because Maniaci is a male soprano, and the sound of a castrati was more like a tenor comfortably singing in soprano, very hard to imagine.

[Abracadabra208]

@primohomme Thanks for the explanation. I believe Gregory Kunde or William Matteuzzi would have been better choices, though. They are tenor leggieri, and thus it would not have been so hard for them. Oh, well...

[primohomme]

@Abracadabra208

Very true, but they used shitty singers for some reason, the only one who seems to be able to sing in tune is Michael Maniaci, the countertenor is ridiculous! using his shit out of tune voice to try to show how the castrati sang, it's like if I a beginner singer tried to show with my voice how Maria Callas sang, ridiculous!

[whistlenotelover]

@primohomme the question is what kind of tenor: one more ala Juan Diego Florez or more ala HAUTE-CONTRE type. but apart from that i kind of have issues with that metaphor cuz it's kinda oxymorinic cuz it cancels eachother out in way cuz technically they were nor tenor nor soprano cuz these terms are simply relative, s we know them today refer to tessitura and we associate them with gender for example, there is no such thing as a female tenor, persay but there is tessitura equivalent: CONTRALTO.

[whistlenotelover]

@Abracadabra208 that is a vewry good question I kinda ponder about the physioligical factors involved and it is just mind-boggling. For example they say castrati were over 6 feet tall, they must have incredible lung capacity which explains why they were praised for making singing outrageous ornamentation so easy for them, of course with Porpora's Neapolitan school of training which they say was equivalent to grades K-12! yes 8 to 12 years I heard for some of the best castrati!

[acerb45666555]

regarding Romes last castrato, one must realize that he is only famous bacause he was the last genuine castrato!......not because he was the best one! no way could he have made the stage with Farinelli !!

[MegaTurboTurtle]

This doesn't sound like falsetto at all to me, totally different. Doesn't sound like a woman either, but this is the sporano range (he's singing an old soprano warhorse written for a sproano castrato) and is a big full voice, the hige notes are amazing and not 'barked' out at full volume like a countertenor. He also sounds nothing like singers such as Radu Marian who have a very thin childlike sound. To me it sounds unique.

[vitroz]

He is a falsettist.......

[hngltn]

MMMmmm, I don't hear soprano in Michael's voice...