Alessandro Moreschi was the most famous castrato

Castrato

A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's...

 singer of the late 19th century, and the only castrato of the classic bel canto

Bel canto

Bel canto , along with a number of similar constructions , is an Italian opera term...

 tradition to make solo sound recordings.

Life

Alessandro Moreschi was born into a large Roman Catholic

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

 family in the town of Monte Compatri

Monte Compatri

Monte Compatri is a comune in the Province of Rome in the Italian region Latium, located about 20 km southeast of Rome on the Alban Hills. It is one of the Castelli Romani.-History:...

, near Frascati

Frascati

Frascati is a town and comune in the province of Rome in the Lazio region of central Italy. It is located south-east of Rome, on the Alban Hills close to the ancient city of Tusculum. Frascati is closely associated with science, being the location of several international scientific...

. Perhaps he was born with an inguinal hernia

Inguinal hernia

An inguinal hernia is a protrusion of abdominal-cavity contents through the inguinal canal. They are very common , and their repair is one of the most frequently performed surgical operations....

, for which castration was still a "cure" in nineteenth-century Italy. Or he could have been castrated later, around 1865, which would have been more in line with the centuries-old practice of castrating vocally talented boys well before puberty. In any case, much later in life, he referred to his enjoyment singing as a boy in the chapel of the Madonna del Castagno, just outside his native town.

It seems likely that Moreschi's singing abilities came to the notice of Nazareno Rosati, formerly a member of the Sistine Chapel choir, who was acting as a scout for new talent, and took him to Rome in about 1870. Moreschi became a pupil at the Scuola di San Salvatore in Lauro

San Salvatore in Lauro

San Salvatore in Lauro is a Catholic church in central Rome, Italy, located in the rione Ponte. It is the "national church" of the marchigiani, the inhabitants of the Marche region of Italy...

, where he was taught by Gaetano Capocci

Gaetano Capocci

Gaetano Capocci was a composer, organist and maestro.Capocci was born in Rome. As a boy he studied the organ under Sante Pascoli, organist of St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, and he completed his musical studies under Valentino Fioravanti and Francesco Cianciarelli...

, maestro di cappella of the Papal basilica of St John Lateran. In 1873, aged only fifteen, he was appointed First Soprano in the choir of that basilica, and also became a regular member of the groups of soloists hired by Capocci to sing in the salons of Roman high society. His singing at such soirées was vividly described by Anna Lillie de Hegermann-Lindencrone, the American wife of the Danish Ambassador to the Holy See: "Mrs Charles Bristed of New York, a recent convert to the Church of Rome, receives on Saturday evening . . . The Pope's singers are the great attraction . . . for her salon is the only place outside of the churches where one can hear them. The famous Moresca [sic], who sings at the Laterano, is a full-faced soprano of some forty winters. He has a tear in each note and a sigh in each breath. He sang the jewel song [sic] in [Gounod's] Faust, which seemed horribly out of place. Especially when he asks (in the hand-glass) if he is really Marguerita, one feels tempted to answer 'Macchè' [not in the least] for him." In 1883 Capocci presented a special showcase for his protégé: the first performance in Italy of the oratorio

Oratorio

An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...

 Christus am Ölberge

Christus am Ölberge

Christus am Ölberge , Op. 85, is an oratorio by Ludwig van Beethoven portraying the emotional turmoil of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane prior to his crucifixion. It was begun in the fall of 1802, soon after his completion of the Heiligenstadt Testament, as indicated by evidence in the...

by Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

, in which Moreschi sang the demanding coloratura role of the Seraph. On the strength of this performance, he became known as l'Angelo di Roma, and shortly after, having been auditioned by all the members of the Sistine Chapel

Sistine Chapel

Sistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. It is famous for its architecture and its decoration that was frescoed throughout by Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio...

 choir, he was appointed First Soprano there, a post he held for the next thirty years.

Moreschi's Director at the Sistine was Domenico Mustafà

Domenico Mustafa

Domenico Mustafà was an Italian castrato singer, composer and choir director. He was born in the comune of Sellano, province of Perugia....

, himself once a fine castrato soprano (maybe finer even than Moreschi), who realised that Alessandro was, amongst other things, the only hope for the continuation of the Sistine tradition of performing the famous setting of the Miserere

Miserere (Allegri)

Miserere, full name "Miserere mei, Deus" by Italian composer Gregorio Allegri, is a setting of Psalm 51 composed during the reign of Pope Urban VIII, probably during the 1630s, for use in the Sistine Chapel during matins, as part of the exclusive Tenebrae service on Wednesday and Friday of Holy...

by Gregorio Allegri

Gregorio Allegri

Gregorio Allegri was an Italian composer of the Roman School and brother of Domenico Allegri; he was also a priest and a singer. He lived mainly in Rome, where he would later die.-Life:...

 during Holy Week

Holy Week

Holy Week in Christianity is the last week of Lent and the week before Easter...

. When Moreschi joined the Sistine choir, there were still six other castrato members, but none of them was capable of sustaining this work's taxing soprano tessitura. Moreschi's star status sometimes seems to have turned his head: "Moreschi's behaviour was often capricious enough to make him forget a proper professional bearing, as on the occasion after a concert when he paraded himself among the crowd like a peacock, with a long, white scarf, to be congratulated ..."

The Sistine Chapel Choir was run on traditional lines centuries old, and had a strict system of hierarchies. In 1886, the senior castrato, Giovanni Cesari

Giovanni Cesari

Giovanni Cesari was an Italian singer with a soprano acuto, or high soprano voice.Together with Alessandro Moreschi, Domenico Salvatori and Domenico Mustafà, Cesari was a famous castrato singer of the late 19th century. Born in the town of Frosinone, he was dropped off at an orphanage in 1852 by...

, retired, and it was probably then that Moreschi took over as Direttore dei concertisti (Director of soloists). In 1891 Moreschi took his turn as segretario puntatore, being responsible for the day-book of the choir's activities, and the following year was appointed maestro pro tempore, a largely administrative post concerned with calling choir meetings, fixing rehearsals, granting leave of absence and the like. During this year, Alessandro was also responsible for overseeing the choir's correct performance of its duties in the Sistine Chapel. Artistically speaking, the job involved him in choosing soloists and in developing repertoire. This entire period was one of great upheaval within the Sistine choir's organisation as well as Catholic church music at large: the reforming movement known as Cecilianism

Cecilian Movement

The Cecilian Movement of church reform was centered in Italy but received great impetus from Regensburg, Germany, where Franz Xaver Haberl had a world-renowned Kirchenmusicschule...

, which had originated in Germany, was beginning to have its influence felt in Rome. Its calls for the Church's music to return to the twin bases of Gregorian chant and the polyphony of Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...

 were a direct threat to both the repertoire and the practice of the Sistine Chapel. These were resisted by Mustafà, but time was against him. In 1898, he celebrated fifty years as a member of the Sistine, but also appointed Lorenzo Perosi as joint Perpetual Director. This 26-year-old priest from Tortona in Lombardy turned out to be a real thorn in Mustafà's side. Moreschi was very much a silent witness to the struggles between the forces of tradition and reform, but was also caught up in secular matters: on 9 August 1900, at the express request of the Italian royal family, he sang at the funeral of the recently assassinated king, Umberto I. This was all the more extraordinary because the Papacy still had no formal contact with the Italian secular state, which it regarded as a mere usurper (see Unification of Italy).
In the spring of 1902, in the Vatican, Moreschi made the first of his phonograph

Phonograph

The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...

 recordings for the Gramophone & Typewriter Company

Gramophone Company

The Gramophone Company, based in the United Kingdom, was one of the early recording companies, and was the parent organization for the famous "His Master's Voice" label...

 of London. He made additional recordings in 1904: there are seventeen tracks in all. Between these two sessions, several most fateful events occurred: in 1903 the aged Mustafà finally retired, and a few months later Pope Leo XIII

Pope Leo XIII

Pope Leo XIII , born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci to an Italian comital family, was the 256th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, reigning from 1878 to 1903...

, a strong supporter of Sistine tradition, died. His successor was Pope Pius X

Pope Pius X

Pope Saint Pius X , born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, was the 257th Pope of the Catholic Church, serving from 1903 to 1914. He was the first pope since Pope Pius V to be canonized. Pius X rejected modernist interpretations of Catholic doctrine, promoting traditional devotional practices and orthodox...

, an equally powerful advocate of Cecilianism

Cecilian Movement

The Cecilian Movement of church reform was centered in Italy but received great impetus from Regensburg, Germany, where Franz Xaver Haberl had a world-renowned Kirchenmusicschule...

. One of the new pontiff's first official acts was the promulgation of the motu proprio

Motu proprio

A motu proprio is a document issued by the Pope on his own initiative and personally signed by him....

, Tra le sollecitudini ("Amidst the Cares"), which appeared, appropriately enough, on St Cecilia's Day, 22 November 1903. This was the final nail in the coffin of all that Mustafà, Moreschi and their colleagues stood for, since one of its decrees stated: "Whenever . . . it is desirable to employ the high voices of sopranos and contraltos, these parts must be taken by boys, according to the most ancient usage of the Church." Perosi, a fanatical opponent of the castrati, had triumphed and Moreschi and his few remaining colleagues were to be pensioned off and replaced by boys. A singing pupil of Moreschi's, Domenico Mancini, was such a good imitator of his master's voice that Perosi took him for a castrato (for all that castration had been banned in Italy in 1870), and would have nothing to do with him. Ironically, Mancini became a professional double-bass player.

Officially, Alessandro was a member of the Sistine choir until Easter 1913 ( at which date he qualified for his pension after thirty years' service), and remained in the choir of the Cappella Giulia of St Peter's, Rome until a year after that. Around Easter 1914 he met the Viennese musicologist Franz Haböck, author of the extremely important book Die Kastraten und ihre Gesangskunst, who had plans to cast Moreschi in concerts reviving the repertoire of the great eighteenth-century castrato Farinelli

Farinelli

Farinelli , was the stage name of Carlo Maria Broschi, celebrated Italian castrato singer of the 18th century and one of the greatest singers in the history of opera.- Early years :...

. These never came to fruition: by this date Moreschi (now fifty-five years old) no longer had the required high soprano range, and in any case he had never had the necessary virtuoso operatic training.

In retirement, Moreschi lived in his apartment at 19 Via Plinio, a few minutes' walk from the Vatican, where he died at the age of sixty-three, possibly of pneumonia. His funeral mass was a large and public affair in the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso

San Lorenzo in Damaso

San Lorenzo in Damaso is a basilica church in Rome, Italy, one of several dedicated to the Roman deacon and martyr Saint Lawrence...

, and was conducted by, of all people, Perosi, who, in spite of his antipathy towards castrati, felt towards Moreschi, a "great friendship which bound them together". Moreschi was buried in the family vault in the Cimitero del Verano, the great "city of the dead" not far from Rome's Tiburtina station. His colleague Domenico Salvatori lies in the same tomb.

Moreschi's appearance

According to Haböck, "Moreschi's external appearance differs little from that usual for a singer. He is of medium or rather small stature. His likeable face is completely beardless; his chest remarkably broad and powerful. His speaking voice has a metallic quality, like a very high-speaking tenor. His voice and demeanour make a youthful impression, reinforced by his lively conversation, which add to the altogether charming picture that the singer presents." Moreschi was fifty-five years old at this time.

Moreschi's voice on record

All of Moreschi's recordings were made in Rome in two sets of recording sessions for the Gramophone & Typewriter Company. The first series of recordings were made on 3 and 5 April 1902 by Fred Gaisberg

Fred Gaisberg

Frederick William Gaisberg was an American-born musician, recording engineer and one of the earliest classical music producers for the gramophone. He himself did not use the term 'producer' and was not an impresario like his protégé Walter Legge of EMI or an innovator like John Culshaw of Decca...

 and Will Gaisberg. Eighteen usable sides by the members of the Sistine Chapel Choir were captured on wax, four of them solos by Moreschi. Decades later Fred Gaisburg recalled making these historic first recordings in the Vatican: "Selecting a great salon with walls covered with Titian

Titian

Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...

s, Raphael

Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...

s, and Tintoretto

Tintoretto

Tintoretto , real name Jacopo Comin, was a Venetian painter and a notable exponent of the Renaissance school. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso...

s, we mounted our grimy machine right in the middle of the floor." The second set of recordings was made in Rome in April 1904, under the direction of W. Sinkler Darby.

Critical opinion

Critical opinion is divided about Moreschi's recordings: some say they are of little interest other than the novelty of preserving the voice of a castrato, and that Moreschi was a mediocre singer, while others detect the remains of a talented singer unfortunately past his prime by the time he recorded. (Moreschi was in his mid-forties when he made his recordings.) Still others feel that he was a very fine singer indeed, and that much of the "difficulty" in listening to Moreschi's recordings stems from changes in taste and singing style between his time and ours. His vocal technique can certainly seem to grate upon modern ears, but many of the seemingly imperfect vocal attacks, for example, are in fact grace note

Grace note

A grace note is a kind of music notation used to denote several kinds of musical ornaments. When occurring by itself, a single grace note normally indicates the intention of either an appoggiatura or an acciaccatura...

s, launched from as much as a tenth below the note - in Moreschi's case, this seems to have been a long-standing means of drawing on the particular acoustics of the Sistine Chapel itself. The dated aesthetic of Moreschi's singing, involving extreme passion and a perpetual type of sob, often sounds bizarre to the modern listener, and can be misinterpreted as technical weakness or symptomatic of an aging voice.

The standard of his recordings is certainly variable; Moreschi recorded two versions of Rossini's

Gioacchino Rossini

Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces...

 "Crucifixus". In the first, Moreschi's first side from his first recording session in 1902, he sings off key, and continues to do so for several bars. The remake from 1904 is considered better by some, Leibach's "Pie Jesu", and Tosti's

Francesco Paolo Tosti

Sir Paolo Tosti was an Italian, later British, composer and music teacher.-Life:Francesco Paolo Tosti received most of his music education in his native Ortona, Italy, as well as the conservatory in Naples. Tosti began his music education at the Royal College of San Pietro a Majella at the age of...

 song "Ideale" are also considered to be of superior quality.

The best-known piece Moreschi recorded is the Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

/Gounod

Charles Gounod

Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...

 "Ave Maria

Ave Maria (Gounod)

The Bach/Gounod Ave Maria is a popular and much-recorded setting of the Latin text Ave Maria.Written by French Romantic composer Charles Gounod in 1859, his Ave Maria consists of a melody superimposed over the Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier, written by...

" (though the Sistine Chapel choir recorded Mozart's Ave verum corpus, Moreschi's voice is not individually audible). Perhaps only here does Moreschi's singing approach the type of star quality that the great castrato performances of the Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

era must have possessed; there is great fervour in the singing - the above-mentioned "tear in every note" - and Moreschi takes the climactic high B natural without apparent effort.

External links

• The complete text of Tra le sollecitudini is available on-line in English at http://www.adoremus.org/MotuProprio.html
• 1904 Recording of Bach/Gounod: Ave Maria