Alessandro Moreschi (November 11, 1858 − April 21,
1922) was the most famous castrato singer of the late 19th century, and the
only castrato of the classic bel canto tradition to make solo sound recordings.
Alessandro Moreschi was born into a large Roman Catholic
family in the town of Monte Compatri,
near Frascati. Baptised on the day of his birth, it is clear that his life was
in danger. Perhaps he was born with an inguinal hernia, for which castration was
still a "cure" in nineteenth-century Italy.
Or he could have been castrated later, around 1865, which would have been more
in line with the centuries-old practice of castrating vocally talented boys
well before puberty. In any case, much later in life, he referred to his
enjoyment singing as a boy in the chapel of the Madonna del Castagno, just
outside his native town.
It seems likely that Moreschi's singing abilities came to
the notice of Nazareno Rosati, formerly a member of the Sistine Chapel choir,
who was acting as a scout for new talent, and took him to Rome
in about 1870. Moreschi became a pupil at the Scuola di San Salvatore in Lauro,
where he was taught by Gaetano Capocci, maestro di cappella of the Papal
basilica of St John Lateran. In 1873, aged only fifteen, he was appointed First
Soprano in the choir of that basilica, and also became a regular member of the
groups of soloists hired by Capocci to sing in the salons of Roman high
society. His singing at such soiréesNew York,
a recent convert to the Church of Rome, receives on Saturday evening. The
Pope's singers are the great attraction for her salon is the only place outside
of the churches where one can hear them. The famous Moresca [sic], who sings
at the Laterano, is a full-faced soprano of some forty winters. He has a tear
in each note and a sigh in each breath. He sang the jewel song [sic] in
[Gounod's] Faust, which seemed horribly out of place. Especially when he
asks (in the hand-glass) if he is really Marguerita, one feels tempted to
answer 'Macchè' [not in the least] for him." In 1883 Capocci presented a
special showcase for his protégé: the first performance in Italy
of the oratorio Christus am Ölberge by Beethoven, in which Moreschi sang
the demanding coloratura role of the Seraph. On the strength of this
performance, he became known as l'Angelo di Roma, and shortly after,
having been auditioned by all the members of the Sistine Chapel choir, he was
appointed First Soprano there, a post he held for the next thirty years.
Moreschi's Director at the Sistine was Domenico Mustafà,
himself once a fine castrato soprano (maybe finer even than Moreschi), who
realised that Alessandro was, amongst other things, the only hope for the
continuation of the Sistine tradition of performing the famous setting of the Miserere
by Gregorio Allegri during Holy Week. When Moreschi joined the Sistine choir,
there were still six other castrato members, but none of them was capable of
sustaining this work's taxing soprano tessitura. Moreschi's star status
sometimes seems to have turned his head: "Moreschi's behaviour was often
capricious enough to make him forget a proper professional bearing, as on the
occasion after a concert when he paraded himself among the crowd like a
peacock, with a long, white scarf, to be congratulated ..."
The Sistine Chapel Choir was run on traditional lines
centuries old, and had a strict system of hierarchies. In 1886, the senior
castrato, Giovanni Cesari, retired, and it was probably then that Moreschi took
over as Direttore dei concertisti (Director of soloists). In 1891
Moreschi took his turn as segretario puntatore, being responsible for
the day-book of the choir's activities, and the following year was appointed maestro
pro tempore, a largely administrative post concerned with calling choir
meetings, fixing rehearsals, granting leave of absence and the like. During
this year, Alessandro was also responsible for overseeing the choir's correct
performance of its duties in the Sistine Chapel. Artistically speaking, the job
involved him in choosing soloists and in developing repertoire. This entire
period was one of great upheaval within the Sistine choir's organisation as
well as Catholic church music at large: the reforming movement known as
Cecilianism, which had originated in Germany,
was beginning to have its influence felt in Rome.
Its calls for the Church's music to return to the twin bases of Gregorian chant
and the polyphony of Palestrina were a direct threat to both the repertoire and
the practice of the Sistine Chapel. These were resisted by Mustafà, but time
was against him. In 1898, he celebrated fifty years as a member of the Sistine,
but also appointed Lorenzo Perosi as joint Perpetual Director. This 26-year-old
priest from Tortona in Lombardy turned out to be a real
thorn in Mustafà's side. Moreschi was very much a silent witness to the
struggles between the forces of tradition and reform, but was also caught up in
secular matters: on 9 August 1900,
at the express request of the Italian royal family, he sang at the funeral of
the recently assassinated king, Umberto I. This was all the more extraordinary
because the Papacy still had no formal contact with the Italian secular state,
which it regarded as a mere usurper.
In the spring of 1902, in the Vatican,
Moreschi made the first of his phonograph recordings for the Gramophone &
Typewriter Company of London. He
made additional recordings in 1904: there are seventeen tracks in all. Between
these two sessions, several most fateful events occurred: in 1903 the aged
Mustafà finally retired, and a few months later Pope Leo XIII, a strong
supporter of Sistine tradition, died. His successor was Pope Pius X, an equally
powerful advocate of Cecilianism. One of the new pontiff's first official acts
was the promulgation of the motu proprio, Tra le sollecitudini
("Amidst the Cares"), which appeared, appropriately enough, on St
Cecilia's Day, 22 November, 1903.
This was the final nail in the coffin of all that Mustafà, Moreschi and their
colleagues stood for, since one of its decrees stated: "Whenever . . . 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."
Perosi, a fanatical opponent of the castrati, had triumphed and Moreschi and
his few remaining colleagues were to be pensioned off and replaced by boys. A
singing pupil of Moreschi's, Domenico Mancini, was such a good imitator of his
master's voice that Perosi took him for a castrato (for all that castration had
been banned in Italy in 1870), and would have nothing to do with him.
Ironically, Mancini became a professional double-bass player.
Officially, Alessandro was a member of the Sistine choir
until Easter 1913 ( at which date he qualified for his pension after thirty
years' service), and remained in the choir of the Cappella Giulia of St
Peter's, Rome until a year after
that. Around Easter 1914 he met the Viennese musicologist Franz Haböck, author
of the extremely important book Die Kastraten und ihre Gesangskunst, who
had plans to cast Moreschi in concerts reviving the repertoire of the great
eighteenth-century castrato Farinelli. These never came to fruition: by this
date Moreschi (now fifty-five years old) no longer had the required high
soprano range, and in any case he had never had the necessary virtuoso operatic
training.
In retirement, Moreschi lived in his apartment at 19 Via
Plinio, a few minutes' walk from the Vatican,
where he died at the age of sixty-three, possibly of pneumonia. His funeral
mass was a large and public affair in the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso, and
was conducted by, of all people, Perosi, who, in spite of his antipathy towards
castrati, felt towards Moreschi, a "great friendship which bound them
together". Moreschi was buried in the family vault in the Cimitero del
Verano, the great "city of the dead" not far from Rome's
Tiburtina station. His colleague Domenico Salvatori lies in the same tomb.
According to Haböck, "Moreschi's external appearance
differs little from that usual for a singer. He is of medium or rather small
stature. His likeable face is completely beardless; his chest remarkably broad
and powerful. His speaking voice has a metallic quality, like a very high-speaking
tenor. His voice and demeanour make a youthful impression, reinforced by his
lively conversation, which add to the altogether charming picture that the
singer presents." Moreschi was fifty-ive years old at this time.
All of Moreschi's recordings were made in Rome
in two sets of recording sessions for the Gramophone & Typewriter Company.
The first series of recordings were made on 3 and 5 April 1902 by Fred Gaisberg and Will Gaisberg. Eighteen
usable sides by the members of the Sistine Chapel Choir were captured on wax,
four of them solos by Moreschi. Decades later Fred Gaisburg recalled making
these historic first recordings in the Vatican:
"Selecting a great salon with walls covered with Titians, Raphaels, and
Tintorettos, we mounted our grimy machine right in the middle of the
floor." The second set of recordings was made in Rome
in April 1904, under the direction of W. Sinkler Darby.
Critical opinion is divided about Moreschi's recordings:
some say they are of little interest other than the novelty of preserving the
voice of a castrato, and that Moreschi was a mediocre singer, while others
detect the remains of a talented singer unfortunately past his prime by the
time he recorded. (Moreschi was in his mid-forties when he made his
recordings.) Still others feel that he was a very fine singer indeed, and that
much of the "difficulty" in listening to Moreschi's recordings stems
from changes in taste and singing style between his time and ours. His vocal
technique can certainly seem to grate upon modern ears, but many of the
seemingly imperfect vocal attacks, for example, are in fact grace notes,
launched from as much as a tenth below the note − in Moreschi's case, this
seems to have been a long-standing means of drawing on the particular acoustics
of the Sistine Chapel itself. The dated aesthetic of Moreschi's singing,
involving extreme passion and a perpetual type of sob, often sounds bizarre to
the modern listener, and can be misinterpreted as technical weakness or
symptomatic of an aging voice.
The standard of his recordings is certainly variable:
Moreschi recorded two versions of Rossini's "Crucifixus". In the
first, Moreschi's first side from his first recording session in 1902, he goes
wrong and stays wrong for several bars. The remake from 1904 is far better.
Leibach's "Pie Jesu" is excellent, and Tosti's charming song
"Ideale" is a joy to listen to, as witnessed by the enthusiastic
cheers at the end from Moreschi's fellow choristers.
The best-nown piece Moreschi recorded is the Johann
Sebastian Bach/Gounod "Ave Maria" (though the Sistine Chapel choir
recorded Mozart's Ave verum corpus, Moreschi's voice is not individually
audible). Perhaps only here does Moreschi's singing approach the type of star
quality that the great castrato performances of the Baroque era must have
possessed; there is great fervour in the singing − the above-entioned
"tear in every note" − and Moreschi takes the climactic high B
natural without apparent effort.
1. Giovanni
Aldega (information: http://composers-classical-music.com/a/AldegaGiovanni.htm):
Domine salvum
fac Pontificem nostrum Leonem (rec. 1902)
2. Luigi
Pratesi (no information):
Et incarnatus
est/Crucifixus (rec. 1902)
3. Paolo Tosti
(information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Tosti):
