Alessandro Moreschi - The Last Castrato: Complete Vatican Recordings

Published Thursday 1st July 2004
Alessandro Moreschi - The Last Castrato: Complete Vatican Recordings
Alessandro Moreschi - The Last Castrato: Complete Vatican Recordings

STYLE: Classical
RATING 3 3 3
OUR PRODUCT CODE: 9416-9122
LABEL: Pearl OPALCD9823
FORMAT: CD Album

Reviewed by Tony Cummings

The 17 tracks recorded by Professor Alessandro Moreschi made at the beginning of the 20th century are the only existing relics of a vocal tradition that flourished for some 250 years and I for one am heartily grateful has now died out. Castrati (eunuchs recruited to sing high musical parts more appropriate left for women) were commonly employed in church choirs throughout Italy. Inasmuch as Pope Sixtus banned women from appearing on stage in the late 16th century, the castrati were employed prominently in opera from the beginning - Monteverdi, Handel and Mozart all wrote leading roles for the eunuch vocalists! Alessandro Moreschi was born in 1858 but by the time he was ready to begin his vocal training the gruesome practice that resulted in men having soprano voices had ceased. Nevertheless he got his training and in 1883 entered the Choir of the Capella Sistina, the Pope's personal chorus. In 1902 the first managers of the London branch of the Gramophone Company, Fred and Will Gaisberg, visited Rome and, through a set of circumstances explained in the comprehensive sleevenotes accompanying this CD reissue, came to record his first batch of solos. More recordings followed in 1904. The compositions here are beautiful - Rossini's "Crucifixus", Leibach's "Pie Jesu", Bach/Gounod's "Ave Maria" - but the renditions are something else. Even the sleevenote admits that "Moreschi was trained in traditions of singing that have long since disappeared" and that "many of Professor Moreschi's seemingly imperfect vocal attacks are actually grace notes, executed upward from below the note." Fascinating history but, to my unfamiliar ears, painful listening in more ways than one.

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