#castrato #castrati #malesoprano #mozart
A modern castrato (NOT falsetto) ultra rare recording! This is a live recording from 1999 that I have had all this time but never released. The piece is an aria "Va, l'error mio palesa" from the opera Mitridate, re di Ponto K 87. It was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the age of only 14 whilst touring Italy with his family. Full details about the piece are in the video itself.
The singer is Cesare Santos, a Brazilian singer from Recife who I knew very well at the time. I also lived with him for around a year in London. Due to some unknown physiological anomaly his voice did not break or change at puberty and he speaks with a high childlike voice. When he was a teenager the doctors did not know why this happened but said if it was not causing him any problems he could either let his voice develop like that or they could give him drugs which would maybe force his voice to break. Cesare decided to let it develop naturally and had been singing in Brazil for some time before I met him in London, he was working as a chef at the time. I introduced him to the Guildhall School of Music where I was studying lute and started to work with him as well as becoming good friends. I moved away from London in 2002 and tried to stay in touch but his number changed (this was before everyone had emails) and I sadly lost touch with Cesare.
His voice then was in the mezzo-soprano range - I think he goes up to G in this aria. Many 18th century castrati were alto or mezzo-soprano in range. As Cesare's voice is unbroken he is not using falsetto at all, so what you hear is his full natural voice. He belongs to an exceedingly rare group of "natural castrati" who have retained their child singing AND speaking voice into adulthood without actual castration. The quality of his voice sounded quite different to a countertenor and quite a bit more powerful, he could sing really loud! If you have any questions please let me know in the comments and I'll do my best to remember!
The instruments used are copies of an 18th century violin and a German 13-course lute that I am playing, and an original 18th century fortepiano. This combination was inspired by a painting shown in the video, which was claimed to show the Mozart family.
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Images used in the video are taken from Wikimedia Commons and marked for reuse
3 окт 2024