Introduction
by Yossi Markel
The Crusades, the Inquisition etc., it was all "official" Church policy!
People should understand, supposedly Jews were the ONLY people who could have met Jesus [remember Jesus was said to be a Jew and went to synagogue] and to this very day, Jews do not accept Jesus or Christianity. Jews had educated Rabbis who knew the Bible better [than those you now call Christians] and refuted their religion, calling it lies and nonsense and choosing death over conversion.
The Crusades, the Inquisition etc―it all does not make sense if you look at the Church as a supposedly “Divine” organization. Jews have always considered it an evil organization.
I know that is hard for you to swallow. Many Catholics are finding it hard to believe that the Church is full of homosexuals and child molesters. Yet, if you read Church history you will find that it was Church policy to take little boys and castrate them so their voices would stay high for the choir.
They were called Castrati!
Castrati
Patricia Juliana Smith 1
Castrati
(singular form: castrato) were male singers who were castrated before they
reached puberty so as to retain their high voices. This practice, while not
exactly commonplace, persisted in Europe from the late sixteenth to the
nineteenth century, and reached its height in the eighteenth century. It was,
moreover, exploitative; castrati were usually poor boys, often orphans, and the
operation itself was of dubious legality.
The
justification for this extreme measure was the result of various dictates of
the Catholic Church during the years following the Reformation. As certain
scriptural passages called for women remaining silent in church, their voices
were banned from choirs; therefore, in order to retain the four-part harmonies
of polyphonic church music, the mutilation of young boys was deemed an
acceptable sacrifice in the name of divine service.
As
adults, castrati were capable of singing in the vocal range usual for female
contraltos and, in some instances, sopranos, but with much stronger projection.
Castrati
first entered papal service toward the end of the sixteenth century, and their
numbers quickly increased. Simultaneously, they began to appear in opera,
usually performing heroic male roles, such as Nerone in Claudio Monteverdi's
L'Incoronazione di Poppea (1642), the title role in George Frideric Handel's
Giulio Cesare (1724), and Orfeo in Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed
Euridice (1762). In areas where the Catholic Church banned women from
performing on stage, castrati performed female roles as well.
Castrati
reached the height of their popularity from the mid-seventeenth to the
mid-eighteenth century. During this time, they were the major stars of the
operatic stage and enjoyed the reputations and behaviors of latter-day female
divas. They drew large fees for their performances, took fantastic stage names,
were known for temperamental and capricious conduct on the stage and off, and,
despite their mutilation, were said to engage in sexual intrigues of every sort
with both sexes.
The
most celebrated among them were Senesino (Francesco Bernardi, 1680-1750),
Farinelli (Carlo Broschi, 1705-1782), and Caffarelli (Gaetano Majorano,
1710-1783).
Operatic
roles for castrati continued to be written by major composers such as Mozart,
Rossini, and Meyerbeer through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century. But with the Napoleonic wars and the diminishing of papal powers, the
practice of castration for musical purposes was more often seen as cruel and
inhumane.
Women,
moreover, had been seen and heard on the operatic stage with much greater
frequency since the eighteenth century, and, with fewer castrati available,
female contraltos in male attire took over their roles.
The
last two known castrati were Domenico Mustafŕ (1829-1912), who was director of
the pope's Sistine Choir from 1860 to 1898, and Alessandro Moreschi
(1858-1922). In 1903, Pope Pius X banned castrati from papal choirs; Moreschi
was, nonetheless, a member of the Sistine Choir until 1913.
Castrati
were not necessarily homosexual, although many seem to have conducted affairs
with either sex or both. They nevertheless occupy a "queer" space in
cultural history, as their peculiar situation as emasculated men rendered them
as less than masculine according to societal norms, even as their performances
made them objects of admiration and even envy.
Embodying
the roles of women and male heroes alike, they blurred distinctions of sex and
gender. Accordingly, these shape-shifters have retained a certain queer
appeal--as evinced by their presence in such contemporary works as Anne Rice's
novel A Cry to Heaven (1982) and Gérard Corbiau's film Farinelli (1994)--long
after they have ceased to exist.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Patricia
Juliana Smith is Assistant Professor of English at Hofstra University. With Corinne
Blackmer, she has edited a collection of essays. She serves on the editorial
advisory board of www.glbtq.com.
SOURCE:
http://www.glbtq.com/arts/castrati.html