Mr. Daniels rose to fame as a countertenor, singing high parts that were once the province of castratos or mezzo-sopranos at the Metropolitan Opera and around the world.
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Alexander Neef, the general director of the Canadian Opera Company, laments the difficulty of finding real contraltos to fuel the continuing renaissance of Baroque opera, with its many roles originally geared to castratos.
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And the superstars of Baroque opera were castratos — boys castrated before puberty to retain their high voices — the best of whom intriguingly combined a feminine range and sound quality with heroic, masculine power.
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Scarlatti's opera was first performed at the Teatro Capranica, Rome, in January 1721 with an all-male cast (five castratos and a tenor).
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The singers included the castratos Valeriano Pellegrini and Valentino Urbani. Between 1713 and 1984, there were only two revivals,Dean, Winton, "Music in London: Opera – Teseo" (October 1985). The Musical Times, 126 (1712): pp. 611-612.
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At the end of the 1930s she wrote about the "Castratos" who were an unusual Russian sect who removed their genitals to gain godliness. During the war they ended up in Germany from North Caucasus. They were accused of treason. She and her husband were arrested in 1945, and she died in a gulag in Rybinsk on 23 February 1949.
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The lord chamberlain, who regarded him as an undesirable foreigner, made him struggle to get a licence to perform. Surprisingly, Gallini paid more attention to opera than to dance, mounting highly creditable seasons. To supplement the Italian repertory he began to import both works and performers from German houses, and he drew to England such major performers as Gertrud Elisabeth Mara and the castratos, Giovanni Maria Rubinelli and Luigi Marchesi. Dance required more than a single star, however.
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So-called "natural" or "endocrinological castrati" are born with hormonal anomalies, such as Klinefelter's syndrome and Kallmann's syndrome, or have undergone unusual physical or medical events during their early lives that reproduce the vocal effects of castration without being castrated. Basically, a male can retain his child voice if it never changes during puberty. The retained voice can be the treble voice shared by both sexes in childhood and is the same as boy soprano voice. But as evidence shows, many castratos, such as Senesino and Caffarelli, were actually altos (mezzo-soprano) – not sopranos.
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The Queen's Theatre, London, where Il Pastor Fido had its first performance It was composed in 1712 and first performed on 22 November of the same year under the composer. The opera opened to a largely hostile reception, probably due to disappointment after the success of Rinaldo: one diarist noted critically that "the scene represented only the Country of Arcadia; the Habits [costumes] were old – the Opera short". The roles of Mirtillo and Silvio were originally sung by the castratos Valeriano Pellegrini and Valentino Urbani. The overture is in six movements and is long for its time: it is thought that it may have been originally composed as an unrelated orchestral suite.
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An archivist and palaeographer (class 2004 of the École nationale des chartes), a former member of the École française de Rome (2008-2011), professeure agrégée, Giron-Panel holds a degree in history from the Pierre Mendès-France University of Grenoble and a doctorate in musicology from the Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Her early work focused on Venice in the modern era, female musical practices, travel stories in Italy and the circulation of cultural models in Europe. She is also interested in gender issues in music (castratos, contraltos, musicians and transgender musicians), the punk scene and comic strips. In 2006 she obtained the prize of the "Société française d'histoire des hôpitaux", in 2016 the prize of the Levi foundation of the Académie française and the of the .
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Zucker has written a number of articles about singing and singers, four of which are collected as The Origins of Modern Tenor Singing, a 16-page booklet consisting of four articles that were originally published in Opera News from 1981 to 1986. The articles focus on Gioachino Rossini, castratos and florid singing; the David family of tenors plus Andrea Nozzari; Giovanni Battista Rubini; Gilbert Duprez and the high C "from the chest." These articles trace the development, as understood by Zucker, of tenor singing from the 1770s through the mid-19th century to Enrico Caruso. Zucker and his mother, soprano Rosina Wolf, claim to be the last in a line of singers using the method of singing style taught by Giovanni Battista Rubini.
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Gluck revised the score again for a production by the Paris Opera premiering on 2 August 1774 at the second Salle du Palais-Royal. Renamed Orphée et Eurydice, this version had a French libretto by Pierre-Louis Moline, which expanded as well as translated Calzabigi's original. Gluck composed additional music and made other adjustments such as shifting Orpheus down to a high tenor, or haute-contre, from castrato, to suit the convention in French opera for heroic characters (the French almost never used castratos). The opera now had more ballet sequences, conforming to Paris taste, including the long "Dance of the Furies" originally written for Gluck's ballet Don Juan and the "Dance of the Blessed Spirits" for flute and strings.
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Giacomo David represents the typical baritonal tenor of the late 18th century, gifted with remarkable voice volume, but not lacking in high-pitching capability, though singing sharp notes in falsettone. He had mastery of coloratura for which he was famous: "he was able to compete with the castratos in the florid music and far exceed them in his dramatic intensity",Forbes and, by 1786 he was the first tenor in the history of Turin's Teatro Regio that was paid more than the primo uomothe leading castrato in the company during the carnival season. "Here was a sign that, with the castrati in decline, the tenor voice was beginning to engage the audience's interest as more than the stereotype utterance of kings and old men ...".John Rosselli, Singers of Italian opera.
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