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Kastratensänger standen bislang vor allem im Mittelpunkt des Forschungsinteresses der Musik- und Theaterwissenschaften. Dabei wurden vor allem ihr Wirken auf den Bühnen des italienischen Musiktheaters des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts oder die Rezeption der hohen Männerstimme auf das barocke Publikum beleuchtet. Die vorliegende geschichtswissenschaftliche Studie konzentriert sich hingegen auf die Personen als soziale Akteure in der Spätphase dieses Phänomens im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert, wobei exemplarisch vier mitteleuropäische Fürstenhöfe (Wien, München, Dresden, Stuttgart) in den Blick genommen werden.In detaillierten Analysen der Lebenswelten des Hofes und der Residenzstadt fächert die Autorin auf, welchen hohen Stellenwert Kastratensänger innerhalb der höfischen Machtrepräsentation bis zum Schluss besaßen, wie sie sich innerhalb höfischer Anstellungsstrukturen immer wieder erneut positionierten, mit den Bewohnern der Residenzstädte interagierten und welche wichtigen Rollen sie gegenüber Familienangehörigen einnahmen.Insbesondere durch die Untersuchung des individuellen Umgangs mit dem vermeintlichen körperlichen Defizit kann sie zeigen, dass die Annahme, Kastraten seien in der Endphase ihres Bestehens grundsätzlich als defizitäre »verstümmelte Körper« wahrgenommen worden, revidiert werden muss. Auf diese Weise leistet die Autorin einen innovativen Beitrag zur Kultur- und Geschlechtergeschichte am Übergang von der Frühen Neuzeit ins 19. Jahrhundert.

Castrati. --- Evirati --- Eunuchs --- Singers --- 1700-1899 --- Central Europe. --- Europe, Central

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The use of high male voices in the past has long been one of the most seriously misunderstood areas of musical scholarship and practice. In opening up this rich subject (to readers of all sorts) with refreshingly clear perspectives and plenty of new material, Simon Ravens' well-researched book goes a very long way to rectifying matters. Ravens writes damnably well, and if the story that emerges is necessarily a complex one, his treatment of it is always engagingly comprehensible.' ANDREW PARROTT Tracing the origins, influences and development of falsetto singing in Western music, Simon Ravens offers a revisionist history of high male singing from the Ancient Greeks to Michael Jackson. This history embraces not just singers of counter-tenor and alto parts up to and including our own time but the castrati of the Ancient world, the male sopranists of late Medieval and Renaissance Europe, and the dual-register tenors of the Baroque and Classical periods. Musical aesthetics aside, to understand the changing ways men have sung high, it is also vital to address extra-musical factors - which are themselves in a state of flux. To this end, Ravens illuminates his chronological survey by exploring topics as diverse as human physiology, the stereotyping of national characters, gender identity, and the changing of boys' voices. The result is a complex and fascinating history sure to appeal not only to music scholars but to performers and all those with an interest particularly in early music. Simon Ravens is a performer, writer, and director of Musica Contexta, with whom he has performed in Britain and Europe, regularly broadcast, and made numerous acclaimed recordings. Ravens had previously founded and directed Australasia's foremost early music choir, the Tudor Consort. Between 2002 and 2007 his regular monthly column Ravens View appeared in the Early Music Review, to which he still regularly contributes.

Countertenors. --- Singing --- Vocal music --- Vocal methods --- Voice methods --- Contratenors --- Counter tenors --- Singers --- History. --- History and criticism. --- Baroque. --- Western music. --- boys' voices. --- castrati. --- counter-tenors. --- early music. --- falsettists. --- gender identity. --- high male voices. --- male sopranists. --- vocal genres.

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Castration and castrati have always been facets of western culture, from myth and legend to law and theology, from eunuchs guarding harems to the seventeenth and eighteenth-century castrati singers. Metaphoric castration pervades a number of medieval literary genres, particularly the Old French fabliaux - exchanges of power predicated upon the exchange or absence of sexual desire signified by genitalia - but the plain, literal act of castration and its implications are often overlooked. This collection explores this often taboo subject and its implications for cultural mores and custom in Western Europe, seeking to demystify and demythologize castration. Its subjects include archaeological studies of eunuchs; historical accounts of castration in trials of combat; the mutilation of political rivals in medieval Wales; Anglo-Saxon and Frisian legal and literary examples of castration as punishment; castration as comedy in the Old French fabliaux; the prohibition against genital mutilation in hagiography; and early-modern anxieties about punitive castration enacted on the Elizabethan stage. The introduction reflects on these topics in the context of arguably the most well-known victim of castration in the middle ages, Abelard. Larissa Tracy is Associate Professor of Medieval Literature at Longwood University. Contributors: Larissa Tracy, Kathryn Reusch, Shaun Tougher, Jack Collins, Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Jay Paul Gates, Charlene M. Eska, Mary A. Valante, Anthony Adams, Mary E. Leech, Jed Chandler, Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, Robert L.A. Clark, Karin Sellberg, Lena Wånggren

Literature, Medieval --- Castration in literature. --- Castration. --- Civilization, Medieval. --- History and criticism. --- Civilization, Medieval --- Medieval civilization --- Middle Ages --- Civilization --- Chivalry --- Renaissance --- Emasculation --- Gonadectomy --- Animal contraception --- Male contraception --- Sterilization (Birth control) --- Testis --- Veterinary surgery --- History --- Surgery --- Abelard. --- Archaeology. --- Castrati Singers. --- Cultural Mores. --- Cultural mores. --- Culture. --- Custom. --- Demystify. --- Demythologize. --- Eunuchs. --- Gender Studies. --- Genitalia. --- Harems. --- Law. --- Literal castration. --- Literary Motifs. --- Medieval Castration. --- Metaphoric castration. --- Middle Ages. --- Old French Fabliaux. --- Old French fabliaux. --- Punishment. --- Taboo subject. --- Western Europe. --- Eunuchs --- History.