Portrait of a Castrato

This book explores the fascinating life of the most documented musician of the seventeenth century. Born in 1626 into a bourgeois family in Pistoia, Italy, Atto Melani was castrated to preserve his singing voice and soon rose to both artistic and social prominence. His extant letters not only depict the musical activities of several European centers, they reveal the real-life context of music and the musician: how a singer related to patrons and colleagues, what he thought about his profession, and the role music played in his life. Whether Atto was singing, spying, having sex, composing, or even rejecting his art, his life illustrates how music-making was always also a negotiation for power. Providing a rare glimpse of the social and political contexts of seventeenth-century music, Roger Freitas sheds light on the mechanisms that generated meaning for music, clarifying what music at this time actually was.

ISBN 0521885213   Volumes 1 ISBN13 9780521885218 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 1050 Publisher Cambridge University Press   Published in Cambridge Imprint Cambridge University Press   Series ISSN 19 Format Hardback   Series title New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism Publication date 14 May 2009   Height (mm) 247 Library of Congress ML420.M3497 F74 2009   Width (mm) 174 DEWEY 782.0092   Spine width (mm) 27 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Professional / Scholarly Pages 452

		List of figures
		List of tables
		List of plates
		Library sigla and abbreviations
		Note on the original texts of translations
		Note on the editing of musical examples
		Introduction		1
1		Creating a castrato		15
2		The politics of patronage: 1638-1653		33
3		In pursuit of prestige: 1653-1655		70
4		The sexuality of the castrato		101
5		Disgrace and transformation: 1656-1671		149
6		Atto Melani and the cantata		201
7		Completing the portrait: 1671-1714		286
		Appendices
A		The letters of Atto Melani		328
B		Letters addressed to or concerning Atto Melani		346
C		Satires		352
D		Excerpt from the Recueil des defenses of Nicolas Fouquet		358
E		Biographical sketch from Tommaso Trenta's Memorie		360
F		The texts of Atto Melani's cantatas, with analyses and translations		364
G		The wills		379
H		The cabinet in the "Salotto dell'Abbate Melani," from the inventory of 1782		387
		Works cited		390
		Index		418

'The book includes a survey of Atto's cantatas, polished, efficient exemplars of a fashionable new Italian genre, but in the end far less important to their creator than the wordly advancement their performances brought with it. Richly documented, this whole extraordinary chronicle of the eunuch as self-made man is one of the most absorbing studies in its field to have appeared in recent years.' Times Literary Supplement

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