Check if you have access via personal or institutional login Castration and castrati have always been facets of western culture, from myth and legend to law and theology, from eunuchs guarding harems ...

At one time, of course, we had castrati, who naturally put on weight. Though this abominable practice ceased many years ago, it may have set the fashion for weightiness. Fat certainly used to be ...

Cabaret performer Ernesto Tomasini, brings this new play to glorious, grisly life. Plundering five centuries of musical and papal history, this operatic comedy is a real revelation ...

Conservative campaigning gave a chilling indication of the depths to which they will sink to retain power ...

Katherine Goforth will receive Washington National Opera’s inaugural award for transgender and nonbinary singers.

The history of the castrati paints a dark picture in European music history. To keep their voices bright, thousands of choir boys were castrated in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Italian-style opera seria (‘serious opera') becomes fashionable in Europe with castrati singers such as Farinelli becoming highly paid celebrities. Starting with Rinaldo in 1711 George Frederick ...

The label of elitism sticks to opera like superglue. The label is a fake, but one for which no cultural chemical capable of removing it has yet proved effective. Still, opera populists are trying ...

Topics to be selected from: the impact of star performers (castrati and divas); character types (courtesans); constructions of exotic “others”; and the world of contemporary opera composition and ...

Elon Musk may hardly come across as a cultural warrior who is working hard to turn the tables on what he describes as woke ...

In Vivaldi’s more extravagant operas, some of the arias can seem like a competition for the gold medal. L’Olimpiade is ...