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At the height of the Ottoman Empire, Black eunuchs - rare, castrated slaves imported from Africa - became a key part of court politics. Unlike White eunuchs, who were only permitted outside the palace, Black eunuchs had access to the Harem - the Sultan's inner court. The chief Black Eunuch, appointed personally by the Sultan, had both the ear of the leader of a vast Islamic Empire, and power over a network of spies and informers, including eunuchs and slaves throughout Constantinople and beyond. The story of these remarkable indivuduals, who rose from difficult beginnings to become amongst the most powerful people in the Ottoman Empire, is rarely told. The author places their stories in the context of the wider history of African slavery, and sets them at the centre of Ottoman history. This work marks a new direction in the study of courtly politics and power in Constantinople--Back cover.
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The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato's comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchy--involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives--whereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers--from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini--were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive, their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their literal demise [Publisher description]
Castrati. --- Evirati --- Music. --- Singing --- Singing. --- History. --- Eunuchs --- Singers --- 16th century practices. --- bel canto. --- bodily mutations. --- castrated for music. --- castrated males. --- castrated singers. --- castrati and eunuchs. --- castrati musicians. --- castrati vocalists. --- castrati. --- castration. --- castrato voices. --- castrato. --- catholic blood sacrifice. --- cavalli. --- eunuch singers. --- handel. --- high male voices. --- historical body mutations. --- history of castration. --- history of music. --- history of singing. --- mozart. --- music history. --- music. --- nonsexual castration. --- pergolesi. --- pulcinella. --- rossini.
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