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Alessandro Moreschi (November 11, 1858 - April 21, 1922) was one of the most famous castrati singers of the late 19th century, and was the only castrato of the classic bel canto tradition to make sound recordings (indeed, the only castrato ever to make solo recordings).
He was perhaps the best known castrato of his day after Domenico Mustafa, a former Direttore Perpetuo of the Sistine Chapel. Other famous castrati singers at this time were Domenico Salvatori and Giovanni Cesari.
Life and Career
Alessandro Moreschi was born to a large Roman Catholic family in the town of Montecompatri. It was suggested that he was castrated around 1865, but it is uncertain what were the exact reasons for performing the procedure — whether it was due to purely medical (such as scrotal hernia) or musical reasons.
Nevertheless, being now a castrato, he was appointed to the music school of Scuola di San Salvatore in Lauro, where he was discovered by Gaetano Capocci, who became his teacher. In 1873 he was nominated as a primary soprano at the Chapel of Laterano. In 1883 he was invited to join, and later same year admitted to the Capella Sistina, after being heard performing the role of Seraph in the oratorio Christus am Ölberge by Beethoven. At that time Moreschi's voice was a high soprano of extraordinary purity and agility, to such an extent that he was nicknamed Angelo di Roma and made soloist of the Capella Sistina by the pope.
In 1891 he was made a secretary of the Chapel. In 1898 Moreschi was promoted to the director of the choir, and two years later appeared singing in the funeral of Italian king Umberto I at the Pantheon.
In the spring of 1902 Moreschi made the first of his phonograph recordings, singing on gramophone records for the Gramophone & Typewriter Company. He made additional recordings in 1904. In all he made 17 recordings, where 8 of these were solo.
Moreschi was, apart from being a soloist and director of the chorus, also a singing teacher, mostly of young falsettists. One of his pupils left a memoir of Moreschi's teaching methods; the pupil had to copy his master's technique and intonation as exactly as possible, in the manner which Moreschi himself had been taught. He attempted to have the pupil admitted to the school of music of Mustafa's successor at the Sistine Chapel, one Don Lorenzo Perosi, but nothing came of it. In a peculiar quirk of fate, this particular pupil became a successful double-bass player.
By March 1913 he retired from the Cappella Sistina to his home in Rome where he spent the rest of his life. He still performed under certain circumstances, such as under a mass celebration at the Capella Giulia in 1914. He was also a friend of the German writer Franz Habock, author of the extremely important Die Kastraten und ihre Gesangskunst, who planned to cast Moreschi in reviving the Farinelli repertoire in 1914. However, the grand plan failed to became a reality due to several obstacles on the way — the war and the decay of Moreschi's voice has been suggested, yet Habock himself points out the main reason for the failure: Moreschi, as all the other Capella singers, was simply unqualified to sing the Baroque repertoire in a proper way.
Moreschi died of pneumonia in the spring of 1922 at his home in Rome.
Critical opinion
Critical opinion is divided about Moreschi's recordings; some say they are of little interest other than the novelty of preserving the voice of a castrato, and that Moreschi was a mediocre singer, while other critics detect the remains of a quite talented singer who was unfortunately past his prime by the time he recorded. It should, however, be noted that the age range during which Moreschi was recorded, 44 to 46, would be considered by many classical singers to be the time during which a singer's voice would be at its prime. Yet others feel that he was a very fine singer indeed, especially considering his age at the time and the fact that when Moreschi was young, those capable of training castrati properly had already died.
It should also be mentioned that Moreschi's vocal technique can grate upon modern ears; many of his seemingly imperfect vocal attacks are in fact grace notes, launched from as much as a tenth below the note up to the note itself. Furthermore, the dated aesthetic of Moreschi's singing, which involved extreme passion in the singing and a perpetual type of sob, often sounds bizarre to the modern listener and can be misinterpreted as technical weakness or an aging voice.
The standard of his recordings is variable; Rossini's "Crucifixus" is poor (so much so, in fact, that Moreschi re-recorded it in 1904) but Leibach's "Pie Jesu" is better and Tosti's charming song "Ideale" is a joy to listen to, as witnessed by the enthusiastic cheers at the end of the "Ideale" from Moreschi's fellow choristers.
The most well-known piece that Moreschi recorded is, of course, the Bach/Gounod "Ave Maria" (though the Sistine Chapel choir recorded Mozart's Ave verum corpus, Moreschi's voice is not audible). Perhaps only here does Moreschi's singing approach the type of star quality that the great castrati performances of the Baroque era must have possessed; there is a strong passion to the singing - "A sob in every note", as a contemporary said - and Moreschi, despite his age, takes the high B natural without apparent effort.
Regarding Moreschi's appearance Habock had this to say, after seeing him in 1914:
- Moreschi was of average height and rather short in stature; he had no facial hairs and his chest was broad and overdeveloped. In his youth, when he sang the Seraph's oratorio at the age of 25, his vocal range was from C` to E```. Now however, at the end of his career, his range is only from A to G``. Moreschi's speaking voice has a certain silverine quality to it, and reminds much of a high tenor. However, both his appearance and voice gives an impression of him still being a young person. (Moreschi was 56 years old at this time.)
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1858 births | 1922 deaths | Castrati | Italian opera singers | Natives of the Lazio | Roman Catholics | Roman Catholic entertainers
"Alessandro Moreschi"