AND NOW FOR today's music trivia question: When did androgyny become an influential element in popular music?

If you're thinking of the late-20th century antics of artists like David Bowie, Prince (well, the artist formerly known as Prince) and Mick Jagger, you're a good 200 years off. In fact, those gender-bending rockers were just dabbling in sexual ambiguity compared to 18th-century singing sensations like Caffarelli, Senesino and Farinelli--men who made the ultimate sacrifice for their art. They lived during a musical era often referred to as "the golden age of the castrati."

It was a bizarre scene, to say the least. Without that biologically pre-determined shot of testosterone threatening to rough up their vocal chords, these talented performers, who were usually castrated at the age of seven or eight, raised the art of singing far beyond natural human capabilities. The most famous of them all, Farinelli (1705-1782), delighted royalty, demanded a king's ransom for public performances and had women fainting at his feet all over Europe. With his stunning physical beauty and mesmerizing voice, no one seemed to care much about the mechanics of his sexual apparatus. In an age before birth control could hide a host of sins, it may have even added to his appeal.

If this strange chapter in the history of Western music has piqued your curiosity, you don't have to run to the nearest library and pour through a pile of dusty reference books. You can watch it all unfold on film as Farinelli opens at The Loft theater on Friday, May 26.

The legendary castrato's colorful life is the subject of this Academy Award-nominated foreign film, and the accompanying soundtrack CD is currently one of the Top 10 best-sellers on the Billboard classical chart.

This sudden interest in the man and the era go far beyond some sort of operatic Lorena Bobbit fantasy. A castrato met his destiny long before he could incite the rage of a woman. It was his testicles, not his penis, that were very carefully removed in the ultimate powdered-wig, rite-of-passage scenario.

Besides, the whole idea came up in church. Initially castrati sang exclusively in religious choirs. At the time the first medically-altered vocalists were admitted into catholic choruses in 1599, women wereas yet forbidden to perform in churches or theaters throughout the papal states. Boy sopranos were employed to wax lyrical through the upper registers of human expression.

The problem was that just about the time these youngsters would begin to get a grip on the difficult performance techniques demanded at that time, their voices would change. The speculation is endless on how some music fanatic convinced the pope to allow the castration of the church's most promising singers, insuring that the angelic quality of their voices would remain intact for a lifetime. But then again, it was well-known that Middle Eastern harems were manned by eunuchs--why not musicians in service to God?

If castrati had merely replaced women singers in the religious institutions of the day, they no doubt would have faded from existence with little more than a shudder and a trace of historical curiosity. However, a castrated male singer did not sound like a woman.

He deftly combined the ethereal purity and freshness of a child's voice with the vocal power of a man, possessing an uncanny brilliance, nuance of expression and flexibility that created feelings of otherworldy reverie in listeners. The boys who made this unseemly commitment spent decades in monastic service to the study of sound in all its intricacies before descending upon the public. This resulted in a level of supernatural musical prowess that can only be compared to the phenomenal martial arts feats made legendary by certain sects of Oriental holy men.

All this leads to a word of advice concerning the Farinelli CD: Don't run out and buy this recording expecting to hear what a castrato sounded like. Granted, the music is exquisitely performed. The pieces chosen represent castrati arias by Broschi, Porpora and Handel that you rarely get to hear these days. But the attempted creation of the castrato voice is accomplished by digitally "morphing" the expert performances of counter-tenor Derek Lee Ragin and soprano Ewa Mallas Godlewska; and while the two flow together beautifully, Godleswska's voice is obviously female. Better to see the film first.

The spectacle of watching a male actor like Stefano Dionisi convincingly lip sync musical lines higher than most women can even reach is sure to stay with you, irreparably transforming the effectiveness of the soundtrack through the power of your own imagination.

As for a taste of just how amazing that castrato vocal quality must have been, you have a couple of options. The 1984 EMI disc Allegri: Miserere features boy-soprano Timothy Beasley-Murray singing a haunting renaissance devotional amidst a choir of male and female singers. The unearthly sound of that young man's voice is not likely to be rivaled on recording.

Also, the KOCH label has just announced a timely rejuvenation and importation of an ancient recording featuring performances by the last castrato, Alessandro Moreschi, who died in 1922. There's no telling the status of the sound quality; but as the only fragment of history we have concerning this wild episode in our musical heritage, it may be worth owning as a sonic relic alone.
--Linda Kohanov

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