Editing Castrato (section)

==Decline==
[[File:Moreschi giovane.jpg|thumb|left|[[Alessandro Moreschi]], the last of the Sistine castrati]]
By the late 18th century, changes in operatic taste and social attitudes spelled the end for castrati. They lingered on past the end of the ''[[ancien régime]]'', which their style of opera parallels, and two of their number, [[Gaspare Pacchierotti|Pacchierotti]] and [[Girolamo Crescentini|Crescentini]], performed before Napoleon. The last great operatic castrato was [[Giovanni Velluti (castrato)|Giovanni Battista Velluti]] (1781–1861), who performed the last operatic castrato role ever written: Armando in ''[[Il crociato in Egitto]]'' by [[Giacomo Meyerbeer|Meyerbeer]] (Venice, 1824). Soon after this they were replaced definitively as the first men of the operatic stage by a new breed of heroic tenor, as first incarnated by the Frenchman [[Gilbert-Louis Duprez]], the earliest so-called "king of the high Cs". His successors have included such singers as [[Enrico Tamberlik]], [[Jean de Reszke]], [[Francesco Tamagno]], [[Enrico Caruso]], [[Giovanni Martinelli]], [[Beniamino Gigli]], [[Jussi Björling]], [[Franco Corelli]] and [[Luciano Pavarotti]], among others.

After the unification of Italy in 1861, "eviration" was officially made illegal, as the new Italian state had adopted the previous penal code of the [[Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861)|Kingdom of Sardinia]], which expressly forbade the practice.<ref>''[https://www.giustizia.it/resources/cms/documents/Codice_penale_esteso_alla_Sicilia.pdf Codice penale per gli Stati di S.M. il Re di Sardegna esteso alla Sicilia con decreto del Luogotenente generale del Re del 17 febbraio 1861 e modificato con la legge del 30 giugno 1861 di n. 56]'', Palermo, Lao, 1864, art. 552.</ref> In 1878, [[Pope Leo XIII]] prohibited the hiring of new castrati by the church: only in the Sistine Chapel and in other papal basilicas in Rome did a few castrati linger. A group photo of the Sistine Choir taken in 1898 shows that by then only six remained, plus the ''Direttore Perpetuo'', the fine soprano castrato [[Domenico Mustafà]]. In 1902 a ruling was extracted from Pope Leo that no further castrati should be admitted. The official end to the castrati came on St. Cecilia's Day, 22 November 1903, when the new pope, Pius X, issued his ''[[motu proprio]]'', ''[[Tra le Sollecitudini]]'' ("Amongst the Cares"), which contained this instruction: "Whenever&nbsp;... it is desirable to employ the high voices of sopranos and contraltos, these parts must be taken by boys, according to the most ancient usage of the Church."

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|filename=Alessandro_Moreschi.ogg
|title=A castrato singing
|description=[[Alessandro Moreschi]] performs part of Eugenio Terziani's ''Hostias et preces''
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The last Sistine castrato to survive was [[Alessandro Moreschi]], the only castrato to have made solo recordings. While an interesting historical record, these discs of his give us only a glimpse of the castrato voice. Although he had been renowned as "The Angel of Rome" at the beginning of his career, some would say he was past his prime when the recordings were made in 1902 and 1904 and he never attempted to sing opera. [[Domenico Salvatori]], a castrato who was contemporary with Moreschi, made some ensemble recordings with him but has no surviving solo recordings.<ref>Clapton, N.: Alessandro Moreschi and the World of the Castrato (London, 2008), pp. 197–216</ref> The recording technology of the day was not of modern high quality. Salvatori died in 1909; Moreschi retired officially in March 1913, and died in 1922.

The Catholic Church's involvement in the castrato phenomenon has long been controversial, and there have recently been calls for it to issue an official apology for its role. As early as 1748, [[Pope Benedict XIV]] tried to ban castrati from churches,<ref>{{cite book |title=The World of the Castrati: the history of an extraordinary operatic phenomenon |last=Barbier |first=P. (trans. M. Crosland) |year=1998 |publisher=Souvenir Press |location=London |isbn=0-285-63460-7 |chapter=Chapter 6. The Castrati and the Church }}</ref> but such was their popularity at the time that he realised that doing so might result in a drastic decline in church attendance.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Frosch |first=W.A. |year=2006 |title=The sopranos: post-op virtuosi |journal=The FASEB Journal |volume=20 |issue= 6|pages=595–97 |pmid=16581964 |doi=10.1096/fj.06-0402ufm|doi-access=free |s2cid=29528825 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=The Popes and European Revolution |last=Chadwick |first=O. |year=1981 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford, England |isbn=0-19-826919-6 |page=[https://archive.org/details/popeseuropeanrev0000chad/page/89 89] |url=https://archive.org/details/popeseuropeanrev0000chad/page/89 }}</ref>

The rumours of another castrato sequestered in the Vatican for the personal delectation of the Pontiff until as recently as 1959 have been proven false. The singer in question was a pupil of Moreschi's, Domenico Mancini, such a successful imitator of his teacher's voice that even [[Lorenzo Perosi]], Direttore Perpetuo of the Sistine Choir from 1898 to 1956 and a strenuous opponent of the practice of castrato singers, thought he was a castrato. Mancini was in fact a moderately skillful falsettist and professional [[double bass]] player.<ref>Clapton, N.: Alessandro Moreschi and the World of the Castrato (London, 2008), pp. 180–81, 200</ref>