ALESSANDRO MORESCHI, castrato - 1904 record

	£		42
	$		56

ALESSANDRO MORESCHI (1858-1922) - 'The Last Castrato'

1904 record of 'Laudamus te' (Gaetano Capocci) with C. Boezi (tenor), A. Dadó (bass) and chorus of boys

Gramophone & Typewriter record no. G.C.54780, matrix 2199h


10-inch single-sided record with Gramophone & Typewriter black label in special. 'Canto Gregoriano' design. Back of record blank except for etched logo and 'Reproduced in Hanover' stamp.

The record plays well but shows sign of wear (appearing as grey lines) in the louder grooves. It is free from gouges or cracks, but there is a light diagonal scratch about 30mm long, together with a few much smaller scratches; however, these do not affect playing on an acoustic machine. This pressing probably dates from 1906-7.

Alessandro Moreschi is the last known example of a true castrato, a male soprano who owed the quality of his voice to an intrusive surgical operation as well as to vocal training and aptitude. It is not known whether he was castrated specifically with a view to making him a singer (a practice, begun in the sixteenth century, which was once common but had been in decline since the late 1700s) or whether he was a victim of a crude surgical treatment for a hernia. He was taken to Rome in 1870 and by 1873 he was a member of the choir of St. John Lateran under the direction of Capocci, the composer of the work represented here. Ten years later he joined the Sistine Chapel choir, then directed by the castrato Domenico Mustafà, and he remained there for thirty years. His repertoire included (at least in his early years) operatic arias such as the Jewel Song from Gounod's Faust as well as liturgical items ranging from the Renaissance to his own day. He retired in 1914.

Moreschi's records date from 1902 and April 1904; the latter group, of which this is one, were connected with the conference held in the Vatican as a result of Pope Pius X's edict Tra le sollecitudine, which was designed to introduce a higher and more scholarly standard of church music and to revivify the plainsong tradition (and which, ironically, included a ban on all further use of voices of Moreschi's type); hence the distinctive. if inaccurate, 'Gregorian Chant' labelling on this record.

Moreschi's vocal quality on his records has always been a source of controversy. It is marked by a wide vibrato (not common in those days), a plangent wailing timbre and a very loose treatment of pitch (with notes often approached from below) and of note-values. Although singers were allowed much more freedom than is customary today, this does not mean that they could simply do as they pleased; press criticisms of the time are very detailed and often very severe, and it is hard to see how a singer who showed the faults listed above (and they were normally regarded as faults, then no less than now) could gain acceptance as a master of his art. Did the castrato voice have its own independent set of laws and standards, isolated from those prevailing among other kinds of singer and perhaps genuinely derived from classical or even baroque tradition? Or is it simply the case that Moreschi was past his best and retained his position only because there was no longer any competitor in the field? (It strikes me that the features I have mentioned are not unlike those often found in Wagnerian singing. I am sure Moreschi never sang a note of the Ring, but it may be that in competing with raucous choirs, scratch orchestras and inartistic organists in over-resonant churches, he faced similar problems to those encountered by Wagner singers overwhelmed by unsympathetic accompaniments, and that his art became coarsened in a similar way to theirs. However, I am not an expert..)

Capocci's setting of Laudamus te (part of the Te Deum - I do not know whether it is a movement from a setting of the complete hymn or an independent work) is a mildly Mendelssohnian piece, ending - probably after a cut, since the words do not follow on correctly - with a setting of Et in terra pax which oddly echoes a famous motif from the aria 'Madre, pietosa vergine' in Verdi's Forza del Destino. It includes a fair amount of solo work for Moreschi. The conductor on this record is perhaps the priest-composer Lorenzo Perosi (1872-1956), who was appointed director of the Sistine Choir in 1898 - and who shared with the future Pope Pius an attitude of disgust for the castrato voice, although personally he liked and respected Moreschi.

Records of this period usually play slightly below 78rpm; I regret that I cannot give an exact figure.