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Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani

Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani Roger Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 431 pp. Discussions of opera or of the cantata in the scholarly literature revolve ever more strongly around the protagonists of performance, particularly the singers whose physical accomplishments we treasure when we enjoy their art. Indeed, concern for singers and their accomplishments has often permitted scholars to ignore what the virtuosos are singing or to examine it principally from a viewpoint that composers such as Verdi would have scorned (Verdi would not sanction even a phrase such as "singer Y created role X": as far as he was concerned, only the composer created a role.) No bodies have fascinated modern authors more than those of the castrated males whose art was fundamental to the contemporary success of much seventeenth-century cantata and opera, and to the works of no less a composer than George Friedrich Handel in the eighteenth century. (By the nineteenth, the practice of castrating young boys so their voices would not change no longer prevailed, not even in Italy.) As works by Cavalli, Carissimi, or Handel have been heard with increasing frequency in modern venues, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani

Gossett, P.
Common Knowledge , Volume 20 (2) – Mar 20, 2014
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Duke Univ Press
ISSN
0961-754X
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1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-2422998
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Abstract

Roger Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 431 pp. Discussions of opera or of the cantata in the scholarly literature revolve ever more strongly around the protagonists of performance, particularly the singers whose physical accomplishments we treasure when we enjoy their art. Indeed, concern for singers and their accomplishments has often permitted scholars to ignore what the virtuosos are singing or to examine it principally from a viewpoint that composers such as Verdi would have scorned (Verdi would not sanction even a phrase such as "singer Y created role X": as far as he was concerned, only the composer created a role.) No bodies have fascinated modern authors more than those of the castrated males whose art was fundamental to the contemporary success of much seventeenth-century cantata and opera, and to the works of no less a composer than George Friedrich Handel in the eighteenth century. (By the nineteenth, the practice of castrating young boys so their voices would not change no longer prevailed, not even in Italy.) As works by Cavalli, Carissimi, or Handel have been heard with increasing frequency in modern venues,

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Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Mar 20, 2014

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