What did the public think of Castrati? How was life for them past their singing age? Did the public accept/approve the castration for music practice?

Oooh one in my subject area!! Best mark this in my diary, this only happens twice a year or so. :) Can I ask what made you think of the castrati?

It’s a little hard to say what “people” thought of them, because the castrati kinda got around! Castrati went to work in England, France, Spain, most German courts, and even Russia! So in many places where they travelled they were not just castrati, but also representatives of Italy, Catholics, and the entire noble beast that is Italian music. So sometimes attitudes about the castrati overlapped pretty heavily with attitudes about these other things. I’ll talk about their home country Italy, although I can answer for the other European cultures if you’re curious.

For the basic concept of what gender they were, most of Europe was still on a humoral (the four humors, think of medical bleeding!) understanding of medicine, and part of that was the one-sex model, which had men and women on sort of a sliding scale between masculine and feminine. Children were one sort of blank gender, and during puberty a boy got a burst of “vital heat” that made him into a man, women did not. On this model castrati are best understood as sort of permanent boys. They wouldn’t have been thought of in any way close to our various understandings of trans* people, intersex people, etc. today. This permanent boyishness also made them something like an idealized sexual object, both for men and women. You can see this echoed in opera to some extent - castrati always played the lovers, until the takeover of the tenor.

They were a socially marginalized people, because they were denied the basic human right of marriage. However, inside of Italy there was a fair amount of celibate (meaning unmarried, not necessarily sexually inactive) people in society, such as nuns, monks, priests, etc, so while they were denied marriage by the Catholic church, they weren’t too unusual there, lots of people in society had roles that denied marriage. Outside of Italy, especially in places where there wasn’t as much social celibacy, you’ll sometimes see castrati who got married, usually in Germany, as the Lutherans didn’t have any big problem with them getting married. There was a guy named Filippo Finazzi who pretty much “went native” in Germany, converted to Lutheranism, and married the widow of a blacksmith in 1765.

In general terms though, the castrati were generally considered a normal subset of professional musician and accepted as such, but also they were objects of pity or scorn, often they were subjected to rather crude “farmyard” jokes (ask me how I know all the words for castrated animals! capon, barrow, ox, etc.), sometimes treated as a threat to the masculinity of those around them, sometimes considered as a threat to the virtue of women as they were offering risk-free sex, often they were considered overpaid whiny children, and sometimes they were well-respected wealthy professionals. Some castrati were nice, some were douchy, and most just wanted to make a living.

Life after their singing age was actually pretty good for them. Castrati had pretty long-lasting voices in general, and they usually didn’t retire until at earliest their 50s, usually they could sing into their 60s. If you know modern opera voices this isn’t too unusual, most opera singers don’t hit their vocal peak until their late 30s or early 40s, and they can usually go on working into their 50s-60s if they wish. After this point your successful castrato might have enough money just to retire entirely, but some also would teach singing or stay active in music this way. One other interesting example of their post musical life would be the small corps of castrati who worked at the French royal chapel in the 1700s. The French didn’t have a place for castrati really, they weren’t acceptable in opera, and no one else had them on staff, there was only this small bunch of them in all of France. These men sort of lived in a commune, they had a shared house and left all their money to each other when they died.

There’s a good argument that Italian society’s acceptance of castration was high in the 1600s and dropped off after maybe 1700. In the 1600s you can find pretty hum-drum matter-of-fact records of castration, for example a contract between parent and teacher specifying the teacher has permission to castrate the boy if he thinks it appropriate and will pay for the procedure, petitions from boys (or someone writing for the boy) requesting a local lord sponsor him and pay for his castration, records in court accounting books of paying for castrations, etc. After 1700 you don’t find so many of these records, and most men after this period also have a little tale or excuse for their castration, a “childhood accident” of some vague sort. (There are exceptions, Caffarelli told no tales about his castration, and in his grandmother’s will there’s the very plain language that she bequeaths to him “a wallet with greatly fitting music, for which Cajetanus is said to have a great inclination, and a desire to be castrated and become a eunuch” and also the income from a vineyard to pursue music. He was castrated some time after this document, maybe 1722. Caffarelli was an odd duck though.) By the 1800s castration had completely soured in public opinion, and very few castrati were made after the turn of the century, the last known musical castration around 1865.

Let me know if you have any other questions! :)