The tenor-castrato connection, 1760-1860

Abstract

THE history of singing from the 16th century to the first quarter of the 19th is (broadly speaking) one of increasing virtuosity, as both composers and singers tested each others' limits in terms of taste and agility, the former bearing in mind that singers would always seek to ‘improve’ on their efforts, and the latter creatively exceeding the notes on the page whenever they got the opportunity. The continual pushing at the boundaries of virtuoso vocalism tended to expand singers' upper ranges, while the increasing size of venues, louder instruments and the colourful tonal palette of the Baroque made an extended lower tessitura impractical (though not unknown). The process seems to have occurred to some extent in all voice types, though not always at the same time. By the middle of the 18th century the castratos were taking virtuoso singing into realms that we can now barely imagine, but as the century wore on there were remarkable developments in both soprano and tenor singing as these voices came to equal, and eventually supersede the musici (as they were euphemistically called) in terms of success if not in outlandish virtuosity. The tenor voice in particular saw a brief but extraordinary flourishing of extremely high singing, in which the best singers could unite the registers to combine ‘the power of a man's voice with all the sweetness and charm of a woman’s’.1 The decline of this mixed-register singing overlaps with the final demise of the castratos and the evolution of the modern tenor, for whom the sweetness and charm has been replaced with powerful top notes sung in what we call chest voice.2 These three apparently separate developments are closely connected, as I hope to show below.

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