The Castrati And Intuitive Genius

Most, if not all, of the great voice teachers of the day were retired castrati. Their remarkable success is interesting in light of the fact that they were able to produce artists of exceptional quality without the benefit of an accurate, scientific understanding of physiology or voice mechanics. This curious point clearly suggests that their expertise was based on experiential knowledge and pure intuition. The brilliant accomplishments of these singing masters consist largely in marrying experience and tradition in such a fruitful way so as to create correct formulas for vocal development.

In the final analysis, theirs was a particular brand of intuitive genius, borne out of a passionate love for the voice. The powerful emotion of being in love with something—a person, piece of music, a city—is quite remarkable, but just as remarkable is the lover’s acute sensitivity to the object of his desire. There is no question that this mysterious emotional/mental state can heighten the lover’s powers of perception and understanding. Indeed, despite the over-emotionalism and self-deception that could blind and misguide even the greatest lover, who could deny his capacity to plumb the depths of his beloved’s inner world and discover subtle truths and nuanced meanings that otherwise remain hidden? And so it was for lovers of the art of singing. The great singing maestros were devoted lovers who pursued unflaggingly the perfect object of their desire: Bel Canto—beautiful singing. The intensity of their love no doubt increased their aptitude to hear what others could not, and fueled their passion to know in detail what beautiful singing is, and how to coax it out of resistant vocal muscles and unfinished, artistic brains.

It’s worth repeating that it did not matter a little that these very first artistic singers were castrated men. This had to mean that the anatomical/hormonal changes that resulted from this alteration were critical factors in their vocal training. The youthful vocal musculature of the castrati—strong, agile, and flexing with immense growth potential—had to be especially responsive on a bio-mechanical level to voice training. When you add to the equation that the professional castrati were grown men with the strength, intelligence, and experience to match, then we begin to see the greatest castrati for what they were: unnaturally created singing prodigies—contraltos, mezzo sopranos, and sopranos—with wondrous vocal abilities that “uncut” men, and even the most gifted women, could never equal.

The inconvenient message that we must take from the art of the castrati is that their masters must have fashioned vocal regimens for them in light of the castrato’s extraordinary—and unnatural—abilities. This suggests that, perhaps, we should not expect today’s students of singing—with their normal vocal apparatus—to respond to vocal training in the same remarkable way as that of the castrati. Moreover, it’s certainly possible that the technical training that the castrati underwent—or at least some aspects of their training—would be ill suited to natural vocal instruments. The altered larynx of the castrato had to function quite differently from typical ones, and perhaps those artists were able to achieve their astounding results by arcane physical maneuvers that are not possible for normal vocal cords and attendant mechanisms. If this is true then it’s possible that the training regimens of the castrati—or components of them—could have unfortunate consequences when used to train basses, baritones, and tenors as well as “female” contraltos, mezzo sopranos, and sopranos. This may explain, at least in part, why the history of singing—and the history of voice instruction—has been such a chaotic affair.

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