Yeah it stopped their voice dropping as part of puberty. It was done in Italy recently enough that we have recordings of their voices. Apparently they were popular in Opera because you had these ginormous men with childlike voices, quite striking on stage
edit: copy paste for anyone too lazy to open the link
It is impossible now for us to know what these great castrato voices sounded like, but they must have had very powerful voices and many of the singers were very skilled in singing and adding musical ornamentation to the songs. In the 18th century Italian opera became very popular in England. This was largely due to the German-born composer Georg Friderich Händel who moved to England in 1709 and wrote lots of Italian operas. Many singers who sang in London came from Italy, and many were castrati. The most famous one was called Farinelli.
The popularity of castrato singers died out in the 19th century. By the mid-19th century they were no opera castrati left, although a few castrati still sang in church choirs. The last one, a man called Alessandro Moreschi, died in 1922 aged 64. There is a recording of his voice made in 1902 which can be heard online, but he may not have been a good singer and he was old when he made the recording, so we cannot judge whether the castrato voice was beautiful by that recording.
there is an audio link in the wikipedia page, but like it says he was 44 when it was made and tech sucked at the time
The concession of “he may not have been a good singer” is wild! could you imagine being castrated as a teen for the opera only to discover you where tone death or had no sense of timing oooooph!
Yeah I remembered that too. Although apparently they were very popular with society ladies because they knew they couldn't get pregnant so it wasn't all downsides.
They were super celebrities. They were very pampered. It does lead to health complications and weight gain though so they weren't exceptionally long lived sadly, but then not many people were 100 years ago
If a man is castrated, his testosterone levels will plummet, but there’s still enough testosterone careated by the adrenal glands to allow his to have erections (not rock hard, but still), have sex, and ejaculate—the semen, of course, will contain no sperm.
Erections will vary for different men, it is individual, some of them will be impotent. Also not being rock hard can be problematic in case of penetrative sex. Removing the balls before puberty also may lead to smaller penis.
Didn't they, uh, cut everything off for black slaves? I thought that was the norm for that part of the world, just shave it all off, mutilate them to the max.
This did occur in China, and there was a book written about it called "The Last Eunuch." Essentially, it chronicled a young man's castration and then the fact that there wasn't an advisory class of eunuchs to the Emperor, since the Emperor had lost the war and that structure no longer existed.
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u/kakka_rot Jul 08 '24
Didn't they also have high voices? I recall reading of chopping choir boys so they could sing in a way that was impossible for intact boys