soprano castrato

[Sue]

Shocking, there was a time, when thousands of boys got castrated to maintain there boy soprano. I read often that especially the churches tolerated this for a very long time...

Getting shocked when I heard this one...Its Alessandro Moreschi, an adult male and last Vatican castrato, in a 100-year-old recording of the Bach/Gounod "Ave Maria".

[youtube][/youtube]

[Yorkie]

This probably isn't representative of what the Castratos sounded like. The sound quality is obviously dodgy and the golden age of castrato's was long past (thankfully) - he certainly wasn't considered as anything great or special in his own time.

[Sue]

Yes its bad quality cause the recording was so long ago. But I read that this is the only one castrato from which are recordings descents does exist.

[Sue]

Today I found a interesting BBC documentary about this topic.
Last part is very exciting, they have created a thing - of course with the help of a computer - which gives an impression how the voice of a trained castrato might have sounded.
But we should note that singing boys in those ancient times were trained in another way than today. They had to deliver other singing skills.

documentary links:
part 1:

part 6 (last part):