An article in Slate yesterday on the castrati caught my eye. I remember the first time I learned about the castrati, from a professor who guest-taught one of my classes. She lectured on Farinelli, who some consider the greatest Italian castrato of them all. He and his three-octave range became very famous, and he spent his later years singing solely for the melancholy Philip V of Spain.

Castrati are in the news due to Cecilia Bartoli, an Italian opera singer who has just released a recording of some of the gorgeous arias written for them — men with heartbreakingly beautiful voices who were castrated before they hit adolescence.

Was this in the Dark Ages? No — rather, the 16th through the 19th centuries. Tens of thousands of boys went under the knife and then on to vocal training and careers in church choirs or on the opera’s stage. Women weren’t allowed to sing in a Catholic church, and the vocal quality of a castrato was much preferred to that of a falsettist. Show-stopping choirs are a good way to get people to come to church — and then stay for the homily and perhaps the passing of the collection basket.

The horror of the procedure and the idea of castrating a child to preserve his high voice didn’t stop a lot of people from offering up their sons, or anyone else from hiring the castrati. Some, like Farinelli, went on to fame and celebrity and could command astronomical prices for their performance, but most went on to sadder fates — prostitution and suicide were all too common.

Eventually, the practice was outlawed. We have but a few recordings from one castrato, Alessandro Moreschi, who died in the 1920s, and those, vocally speaking, aren’t impressive. All we have to go on are breathless accounts of the beauty, the power, the brilliance of the castrati.

Today, the castrati are a focus of a lot of people interested in gender studies. It’s been suggested that some of the fascination a 16th-century audience had with them may have had less to do with their voices and more with the always-titillating subject of transgression.

If you want more on the castrati, Mark and John of Stuff from the B-Side, the HowStuffWorks music podcast, recorded an episode on the subject recently.

A clip from 1994’s “Farinelli,” which illustrates his effect on audiences:

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