Great

I confess I am absolutely fascinated by the thought of what a castrato sounded like, and am going to investigate some 20th Century male singers whose voices didn't change (Michael Maniaci, Radu Marian, Jorge Cano, Javier Medina and the late Paulo Abel do Nascimento). Last night, there was a very good programme on UK TV (BBC4) called "Castrato - Search for a Lost Voice", on which Maniaci appeared, and which also involved a Professor David Howard, who was trying to synthetically reproduce a castrato-like voice from somehow morphing recordings of boy sopranos, high tenors etc. The result was strange, if slightly underwhelming, but the questions the exercise raised were intriguing.

Nice list, the man in the BBC documentary was especially fascinating as his singing and speaking range were clearly in the Soprano range.

I think the difference between Male Sopranos and Castrati had more to do with the fact that physiologically a castrati had a boy's vocal chords whereas all of the men listed above have male vocal chords that just didn't change pitch. Many of them seemed to experience a hormonal disorder that has kept their voices in a higher range, but that doesn't necessarily make them men with the vocal chords of young boys, similar to the 18th century castrati.

You can hear a lot of flexibility in Michae Maniaci's voice, but I can imagine that a castrati's voice had a lot more flexibility and most importantly, a more haunting warm tone. The tone of a boy soloist, especially in ones that we see enter the pop scene, is unforgettable and striking. If you listen to a lot of boy soloists many of them are actually mezzo sopranos rather than actual pure sopranos. True boy sopranos tend to sing a lot of liturgical music. They can hit higher notes with ease, but their tessitura remains in a much lower range, giving them a very warm and pure tone. Even listening to pop singers such as Billy Gilman or the most recent boy soloist fad Shaheen jafargholi, can give us an idea of the type of structure that was present. Just had a pair of man's lungs to that, along with the cavernous and deep mouth and throat structure of a male, and I can't imagine what type of voice was amplified.

In the film they tried mixing a countertenor and a soprano, which gave us an interesting perspective of the range, but not necessarily the timbre. The problem is that countertenors have an ethereal quality by singing in their false voice or falsetto. I also think Sopranos are much too breathy with some of the repertoire that was written for castrati and lacking the warm tone of a mezzo soprano.

In the BBC documentary they tried combining a boy soprano and a tenor...which I think is why the recording is so underwhelming and strange. A much better idea imo, would have been to combine a true male soprano such as Michael Maniaci's voice and a boy alto (or mezzo soprano), rather than the church boy soprano they used. Perhaps even a mezzo soprano or contralto to add some dark color to the voice.

I think we all have our own idea of what a castrati might have sounded like, I imagine a more warm and rich timbre than the movie portrayed. Nonetheless, I was still mesmerized by the voice they constructed.

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