h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A543485

I'm a new arrival here, so this is my first attempt at a Guide entry. The subject may seem a bit esoteric, but I'm very interested in opera and I wanted a topic that nobody has covered yet. I'm happy with the resulting article, but I'd like to know what other researchers think of it. Balancing the length and the amount of information is trickier than I expected!

Azara

Good effort

I seem to remember there was some film a few years ago about castrati it was the first time I'd heard of them. Can't remember what it's called though

Found it

Farinelli: Il Castrato directed by Gerard Corbiau.

6.5 out of 10 in the internet movie database

I think this was really interesting. Here's 2 brief comments for you:

1) 'No-one' should be 'no one', no hyphen

2) What's a counter-tenor?


Mikey

I was wondering about including something about the film Farinelli: Il Castrato, but I had two problems - I haven't seen it myself, and a lot of opera fans seem to have hated it. But then real opera fans have an amazing selection of hates! For the film, they apparently "morphed" together the sounds of a boy soprano and a tenor, to try and get the reputed unearthly sound of a castrato. The real Farinelli seems to have been a very respectable fellow, while the film sounds rather lurid. To explain it all might need an entry in itself - perhaps I should put in a footnote to the name Farinelli in the text, with something like "A controversial view of his life can be seen in the film Farinelli: Il Castrato"?

Azara

Sounds about right. I think some mention should be made in case people (like me ) who don't know much about Opera wonder where they might have heard the terms before.

Mikey, that's a good point about the counter-tenor. It's when a man with a normal voice sings soprano or alto in falsetto, but the people who know this probably know most of what's in the article as well, so I'll add it in. And the no-one was just an oops!
Thanks,
Azara

Well, Dancing Ermine, now I have to go off and look up how to do a footnote. And to check that Smiley page while I'm at it - my posts are beginning to look a bit curt without them.
Thanks,
Azara

Azara, you may enjoy this piece, and get a bit of info from it. I posted it in an h2g2 forum last year

Loonytunes, the DJ from h2g2 Radio, has been covering The Celery's press conference. He sits down with the stations award-winning producer, Asteroid Lil.

Asteroid Lil: Problem: what do you do when you're making a programme about castrati and want to play some of the music they made? No recordings exist, of course, because 200 years ago, even in liberal Holland, no one volunteered for the necessary op in the name of authenticity.

Loonytunes: We here at h2g2 Radio can do the next best thing. Use the voices of a soprano and countertenor. It will give the listeners a good idea of what castrati must have sounded like, and ensures that no human is harmed in the making of our programme.

Asteroid Lil: Loony that's a good idea. We can describe it, appropriately enough, as an "exploration of the abnormal and the sublime".

Loonytunes: Lil, did you know the 18th-century craze for castrati was confined almost entirely to Italy, where as many as 4000 young males had certain parts removed in the cause of art. Their appeal lay in the fact that they grew up to be big strong men with the voices of little boys: castration, apparently, gives you a bulky physique, and female opera fans got off in a major way on the contrast between the singers' masculine appearance and feminine sound. Castrati such as Pacchieroti and Farinelli - whom one musicologist calls an idol "of Mick Jagger proportions" - .were the prima donnas of the age. Composers such as Handel, Scarlatti and Gluck wrote works specifically for them.

Asteroid Lil: Loony, you'll be wanting to know how it was done. The odd thing is that nobody knows for sure. One theory is that a seminal cord was severed, but in some cases, it seems, the testicles were removed from the testicular sac while the subject lay in a warm bath. No anaesthetics then, of course; and the ever-attendant risk of a serious balls-up.

Loonytunes: Extraordinary.

Asteroid Lil: I think our programme should conclude with the speculation that castrati may yet walk the planet again.

Loonytunes: Move over, Pavarotti. Appointment with ... Castrati.

Hi, Loonytunes, that's interesting! You had a lot of the information I was using. I noticed commentators seemed to skate around a bit about what *exactly* was done (ouch!!), partly because, since it was all officially illegal, no one admitted to doing the operations. My version of the operation came from a Lancet article - hormone specialists are obviously interested in the whole business. I wasn't sure about the numbers involved - some sources said 4,000, others said 4,000 a year, so I left it out.

Oddly enough, there apparently are some candidates for present-day castrato singers - the hijra caste of entertainers in India, who undergo a castration operation as boys, and afterwards dress as women. I read a mystery story by Robert Barnard which had this as part of the plot, where someone brings in a hijra singer, then pretends he's an exceptionally good counter-tenor! The author's conclusion was that the audience wouldn't stand for it once they knew, but I wonder.

Azara

Another place where young boys are often castrated is the South Pacific island nation, Samoa. They are called a name that, alas, currently escapes me.

Many end up, looking dashing in female clothing, loosly attached to the downmarket end of the entertainment industry in New Zealand and Australia.

Oops, they are not castrated - though many are transsexuals.

Fafafine

Fafafine is a Samoan word for men who dress as women, and does not differentiate between Crossdressers, Transsexuals and other forms of cross-gendered express or behaviour.

Well written article. I particularly enjoyed the succinct nature in which the topic was introduced. And I must also say that I don't feel that the article lost anything by not describing exactly what happens in the em...well surgery.

well done.

Having seen a very long and fascinating TV programme on this topic, I felt compelled to have a peek. The article covers all the important points made, including the fact that this type of singing is coming back into fashion. And that, while for the film Farinelli a mixture of a counter-tenor's and a soprano's voices were used, there is a singer around today (possibly the Andreas Scholl you mention - is he Austrian?) who could have sung all the parts in the film.

The programme included close ups of the anatomy of the singers' throats which showed that they had some kind of different formation which allowed them to sing particularly high, and this had been developed. It also pointed out that for some strange reason (mystery to me!) the actual voice alone had an erotic effect on women, not even mentioning your bit about the "doctored" castrati growing up butch and handsome.

I also learned that all men can sing like this to a certain extent, i.e. falsetto. Our last choir master had a lousy tenor voice but a beautiful counter-tenor. He used it sometimes to show the sopranos and altos what they were supposed to do. I never had the nerve to tell him how much better this sounded! As a church organist, he had to sing tenor solos quite often.

As to the format of the article, the make up of the pages on H2G2 seems to cry out for a small introductory sentence before the first header. As you dive straight in, it may help to give the reader a little bit of blah-blah at the beginning, even if he does know the basic idea.

And I am campaigning for explanations of words. I occasionally come across words - jargon - that I don't know, but which someone writing an article just takes for granted, using these words every day. So go ahead and explain words like counter-tenor, castrato, falsetto. You'd be surprised how many people are not famliar with them, or are not quite sure what they mean.

This is particularly important when thinking up a title for your entry. This can be simple things like calling an entry "Passover". This word would put 90% of the readers here in mind of the Jewish holiday, which is what it is about. But to a non-native-English speaker it could suggest other things, even if the concept of the actual Jewish holiday was known to them in their own language. Then there is the example of the entry "Tesseracts" which is a word that probably only 20 - 40% of H2G2 readers are familiar with, and will probably not get read much because of this.

In this case, too, I would extend the name of the entry to "Castrati - male opera singers with high voices" or something. After all , you want to tell people who don't know about it something they know rather than just have people looking in who knew what a castrato was all along and are not going to learn anything new.

hth

O Gosh, sorry - all negative, or suggestions for "improvement". I really liked the entry, as it was well-structured, eloquent and succinct, covering certainly anything I could have thought to say on the subject, (had I known it all). Shame we can't include mp3's!

As a great Opera fan, I can't say I know what Felsato is, but I did enjoy your article.
You should clarify the terms, shortly. Give more background on what Oera is and stuff like that.
About women voice: in the Opera Ophenbach Tales, there's a marvellous duet sung by 2 women, 1 of them in a male role.
I find it charming.

At presently I am in a choir where we are doing Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydike (in German, as it is in Germany) A tenor will be taking over the solo part - we are just singing the part where he tries to get into the underworld and the furies try to turn him back, but finally are persuaded by his beautiful singing and extreme sadness to let him in.

When the choirmaster was telling the choir that originally this part was written for castrato, this caused great hilarity and prolonged laughter. I couldn't quite see what was so funny. This was all adults - I could understand it if this had been the other half of the choir (it is a school project, the part of the choir I am in is the parents, and the rest is the senior pupils, 16 - 18 years old)

Perhaps it is a point that can be made - this sort of thing is considered so unusual these days that people are either so embarrassed or shocked or amazed that they react by laughing out loud.

Trillian's Child, I think the suggestions for improvement were all very helpful, and I'm glad you like the entry. I was wondering about the title myself: I knew that just calling it "The Castrati" would mean no one would find it, but so far there don't seem to be very many opera entries and a search on "opera" will bring the castrati article up near the top of the list. And I think if I used any version of "male high voices" in the title, I'd have to spend more time on counter-tenors in the article.

I see now that the h2g2 style is to put a short introduction before the first header, so I'll try and follow your suggestion there. And I'll try and work out a simple explanation of "falsetto".
Thanks,
Azara

Pleased to be of assistance. I never comment on spelling or anything like that because the subeditors iron all those mistakes out. Also the format - it could be a bit more spaced out, but this will be sorted out by someone before the entry is approved.

So - now I wish you the best of luck.

Researcher....... your article has been accepted for inclusion in
the h2g2 Edited Guide. It will now be sent to the sub editors and any additions to the article will not be seen. Eventually, it will appear on h2g2's front page. When this happens you will be sent an email informing you.Well done Send me any questions you might have about the process, should any arise.

Again, congratulations.