Castrati

Castrati

Cas·tra·to \ ka-ˈsträ-tō
Cas·tra·ti \ ka-​ˈsträ-​tē
a singer castrated before puberty to preserve the soprano or contralto range of his voice

The singers.  Between 1550 and about 1850 in Italy, boys were castrated under the auspices of the church despite religious prohibition of the practice.  They were not slaves and are even said to have given consent prior to the surgeries. Martha Feldman’s recent book on the subject describes the history and nuance of the castrati with incredible detail.

All of them shared the deformation of having been castrated testicularly before puberty, the hormonal effects of which were erratic across the population and the anatomical consequences thus highly variable.  (Feldman, 2016)

Alessandro Moreschi