La Voce
"Falsetto means a little false voice, which is really, grossly unfair because there is nothing false or unnatural about a falsetto voice; it's a perfectly normal function of any adult male. And the irony is, however, that it was the castrati who came to be referred to as the natural soprano, soprani naturale" Nicholas Clapton, BBC Documentary "Castrato."
La Voce. Bel Canto.
Is the opera singer only a voice that creates a beautiful song? How important is the body in an art form where the notes of an aria are lauded above all else? Need opera singers move, act or convince their audience of anything, besides the power of their own voice?
The Voice VS. the Body
The voice cannot be castrated from the physical presence of the body, especially for the castrati, a singer whose body fascinated, repelled and seduced opera goers.
Roger Freitas' article "The Eroticism of Emasculation: Confronting the Baroque Body of the Castrati," criticizes music history's tendency to highlight the voice of the castrati while disregarding the body; the voice is seen as an "incarceration of the phallus" (200) while the body is neutral. The voice takes on a sexually potent role; can the voice of a singer be "disembodied?"
Sam Abel is interested in the erotic nature of the physical body in his book, "Opera in the Flesh: Sexuality in Operatic Performance." He believes that "modern popular discourse remains far too squeamish to talk about men without testicles, symptomatic of a much larger blind spot toward sexual irregularity in general (132).
Roger Freitas' article "The Eroticism of Emasculation: Confronting the Baroque Body of the Castrati," criticizes music history's tendency to highlight the voice of the castrati while disregarding the body; the voice is seen as an "incarceration of the phallus" (200) while the body is neutral. The voice takes on a sexually potent role; can the voice of a singer be "disembodied?"
Sam Abel is interested in the erotic nature of the physical body in his book, "Opera in the Flesh: Sexuality in Operatic Performance." He believes that "modern popular discourse remains far too squeamish to talk about men without testicles, symptomatic of a much larger blind spot toward sexual irregularity in general (132).
The Blind Spot
Marking Sexuality
How did 17th and 18th century societies view sexual and gendered bodies?
- "A vertical axis of infinite gradiations" (Freitas, 203)
- A widely acknowledged middle ground between the sexes; this space was occupied by the prepubescent boy and the castrati.
-"The masculinized woman and the effeminized man stood remarkably close on the continuum of sex...they seem to have carried the same erotic charge" (233).
-"Castrating a boy before puberty...did not throw his sex, in the modern sense, into question. It merely froze him within the middle ground... he would have been viewed as equivalent to the boy" (204).
- A boyish body lacked vital heat, and was therefore seen as effeminate (defined as "a man who is pretty in a feminine way, and who is happy to remain among women" (204)).
- Humors: "cold, wet humors said to dominate women's bodies to their social qualities -- deceptiveness, changeability, instability -- while the hot, dry humors in men supposedly accounted for their honor, bravery, muscle tone and general hardness of body and spirit" (206).
- The male whose appearance was more feminine (the castrato) suggested "a highly sensual creature wanting in the 'masculine' virtues of restraint and abstinence" (206).
- "In an age where pederasty was the homosexual norm, the (adult) castrato took the role of the boy" (215).
How did 17th and 18th century societies view sexual and gendered bodies?
- "A vertical axis of infinite gradiations" (Freitas, 203)
- A widely acknowledged middle ground between the sexes; this space was occupied by the prepubescent boy and the castrati.
-"The masculinized woman and the effeminized man stood remarkably close on the continuum of sex...they seem to have carried the same erotic charge" (233).
-"Castrating a boy before puberty...did not throw his sex, in the modern sense, into question. It merely froze him within the middle ground... he would have been viewed as equivalent to the boy" (204).
- A boyish body lacked vital heat, and was therefore seen as effeminate (defined as "a man who is pretty in a feminine way, and who is happy to remain among women" (204)).
- Humors: "cold, wet humors said to dominate women's bodies to their social qualities -- deceptiveness, changeability, instability -- while the hot, dry humors in men supposedly accounted for their honor, bravery, muscle tone and general hardness of body and spirit" (206).
- The male whose appearance was more feminine (the castrato) suggested "a highly sensual creature wanting in the 'masculine' virtues of restraint and abstinence" (206).
- "In an age where pederasty was the homosexual norm, the (adult) castrato took the role of the boy" (215).
"To be not quite fully masculine -- in body or manner -- was to be especially susceptible to love" (Freitas 247)
"The castrato embodied the trinity -- man, woman and child... a voice often judged sublime and sensual by contemporary observers who were certainly more kindly disposed towards artifice then the general public of today" - Patrick Barbier, "The World of the Castrati," 17.
How do we see sexual and gendered bodies today?
- A one-sex system; the sexes occupy opposite sides of a scale
- Today, effeminate generally implies "homosexual leanings, a womanish demeanor" (204).
- "Queer" is a term not only for what is strange, but what is other. The marked body of the castrato is lumped with queer (or homosexual) tendencies though there is no real correlation between castrated men and homosexuality.
- "The ideal male was simply younger, and so more androgynous, than the current norm" (247).
- Is an emasculated person assumed to be weak? If the castrati was marked as emasculated by his contemporaries, did that mean he was weak?
Open Up
From Wayne Koestenbaum's non-fiction study, The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire:
A singer’s voice sets up vibrations and resonances in the listener’s body…. The listeners inner body is illuminated, opened up: a singer doesn’t expose her own throat, she exposes the listener’s interior. Her voice enters me, makes me a “me,” by virtue of the fact that I have been entered” (43).
Koestenbaum suggests a sexual tryst occurring when the voice, standing in for a phallus, enters his own body which is open and penetrable to sound. Koestenbaum, a white, gay, male reflecting on the power of the voice and performer's body, suggests that the performer is not the penetrable, subjugated partner in the sexual relationship. In fact, the singer takes a dominate role and marks the audience as an open vessel that can be influenced by the voice.... and the body on stage.
A singer’s voice sets up vibrations and resonances in the listener’s body…. The listeners inner body is illuminated, opened up: a singer doesn’t expose her own throat, she exposes the listener’s interior. Her voice enters me, makes me a “me,” by virtue of the fact that I have been entered” (43).
Koestenbaum suggests a sexual tryst occurring when the voice, standing in for a phallus, enters his own body which is open and penetrable to sound. Koestenbaum, a white, gay, male reflecting on the power of the voice and performer's body, suggests that the performer is not the penetrable, subjugated partner in the sexual relationship. In fact, the singer takes a dominate role and marks the audience as an open vessel that can be influenced by the voice.... and the body on stage.
"Because sound emerges from the singer's mouth, and because singers' bodies are mythically unsightly, it makes sales-sense, and it saves space, to shield the body and present only the singer's head in opera record ads. But another meaning emerges: decapitation. Do we interpret this decapitation as castration, and connect it to the imagery and reality of castration that is opera's heritage, and that is one source of opera's folkloric association with emasculation?" (Koestenbaum 74)
Abel recognizes the castrati as a body without boundaries:
"The castrated singer, his transgression permanently imprinted on his body, is released from the restrictive sexual norms of society, allowing him to take erotic pleasure from any and all sources, then to wield his transgressive freedom as a tool to fascinate his audience" (Abel 131).
Abel imagines a physical mark as a liberating and empowering tool for a castrato's identity to perform without borders. He is not limited to one gender or one sexuality. Therefore he has the power to play with audience's fascination and re-mark their bodies in relation to his own.
"The castrated singer, his transgression permanently imprinted on his body, is released from the restrictive sexual norms of society, allowing him to take erotic pleasure from any and all sources, then to wield his transgressive freedom as a tool to fascinate his audience" (Abel 131).
Abel imagines a physical mark as a liberating and empowering tool for a castrato's identity to perform without borders. He is not limited to one gender or one sexuality. Therefore he has the power to play with audience's fascination and re-mark their bodies in relation to his own.