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Article: The castrato's castration.
- Article from:
- Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
- Article date:
- June 22, 2006
- Author:
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To write about castrati--the male-bodied sopranos and contraltos who became, under aristocratic patronage, the first international stars--is to write about the historical place of the voice. To have heard the sound of castration--remembered now as the cry of subjectivity--was to have inscribed the privileges of subjection. "[I]n Florence they are so given to the musique of the voice," noted the early physiognomer John Bulwer in 1653, "that there the Great ones keep their Castrati, whose Voices scandalize their breeches." (1) Reading the antecedents of "they" and "their" consistently across the sequence of clauses, one might think that the voice of the castrato caused a ...