Until now, however, there has been no comprehensive presentation of the art of the castratos in music, word and image. In our attempt to portray this musical phenomenonas fully as possible, Naples and its inestimably rich musical culture have served as our model. Thanks to its historical, demographic and cultural situation, this city developed towards the end of the seventeenth century into the centre of the Western musical world — the true capital of European music, as it were — and its influence extended well into the eighteenth century.
The pivotal character in this story is the Neapolitan composer, composition teacher, vocal pedagogue and impresario Nicola Porpora (1686–1768), who quickly attained a reputation as the foremost voice trainer of the eighteenth century — “premier maître de chant de l’univers” (George Sand). Porpora achieved renown through his singing pupils: Farinelli, Caffarelli, Salimbeni, Appiani and Porporino, an illustrious quintet which includes the most famous castratos of all time. Besides these singers, Porpora also taught the great opera librettist Pietro Metastasio and, to a certain degree, the composers Johann Adolf Hasse and Joseph Haydn.
The present compilation of arias — both typical and colourfully varied — has been drawn from several hundred works (operas, cantatas and sacred pieces) written as repertoire for graduates of Porpora’s “Scuola dei castrati” (school for castratos). By virtue of their stupendous virtuosity, cultivation of piano singing, protracted melismas, endless coloratura chains, lung-bursting challenges to breathing and phrasing, and tessitura-stretching from the contralto register via the mezzo-soprano range right up to that of the soprano, they represent some of the most demanding music ever composed for the human voice. May these arias, in all their rich variety and exploitation of every conceivable Baroque affect, succeed in recreating for our senses the sound stage of a vanished era in all its magnificence and extravagance.
(This text is from the Sacrificium Deluxe Limited Edition Hardcover Book which includes a 108 page illustrated ‘Castrati Compendium’, full sung texts and translations, and a 3 track bonus CD of best-loved castrato arias.)
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