“Angel of Rome”, Alessandro Moreschi
Paola Spagno D'Ambra post
The “Angel of Rome”, the last castrato of the Sistine Chapel choir and the only one to have left a recording of his voice, made in London in 1904 by Gramophone and Typewriter, died in his Roman home on 21 April 1922 at the age of 63.
Listening to “Ave Maria” sung by Alessandro Moreschi on YouTube, despite all the limitations of a pioneering recording, is a mystical experience and helps us understand the response Igor Stravinsky gave in 1965 to Pope Paul VI, who asked him what he could do for the world of music lovers: “Your Holiness, bring the castrati back to music.”
The rigidity of the post-Tridentine Church, fixated on the literal interpretation of the “Taceat Mulier in Ecclesia” present in Saint Paul's letter to the Corinthians, was at the basis of the idea of grafting a crystalline, feminine voice into the ribcage of men whose parents, placing economic advantages before nature, agreed to slaughter their children, turning them into eunuchs.
Such surgical operations could even lead to the death of the unfortunate victims who, chosen when they were still children without any certainty about their true artistic talent, sometimes suffered this horrible violence without even obtaining the desired financial return.
This was not the case with Moreschi, born in Montecompatri in 1858 and “incommodato” at the age of 8 or 10 after being noticed for his voice by the director of the Sistine Chapel choir.
Having caught wind of the deal, the parents covered it up by blaming the incident on an attack by a ferocious wild boar.
Summoned to the capital, Moreschi made her debut as first soprano in the Lateran Basilica at just 15 years old, immediately enjoying triumphant success.
To his increasingly prestigious positions in the Vatican, he added social ones, because all those who mattered in high society of the time began to compete for his singing performances.
The pinnacle of Moreschi's career coincided with August 9, 1900, when he was asked to sing in the Pantheon at the memorial mass for King Umberto I, killed ten days earlier in Monza, in the presence of the entire royal family.
The downward spiral began in 1903 when the new Pope Pius X, with a “motu proprio”, decided to put an end to the controversial history of castrated singers, ordering that the voices of sopranos and contraltos be supported by “intact” boys.
Moreschi was, however, allowed to continue performing until he retired in 1913, to let the world hear, and even to a small extent, us too, "the music that had been Farinelli's."
(Text by Anselmo Pagani)
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