Castrati and countertenors: vocal and physiological specificity of performance

Abstract

Statement of the problem. Today, the vocal music of the Baroque era is in great demand among performers all over the world аnd in Ukraine too. This is a new trend in performance practice, since ancient works of the classical period are the basis of the vocal training repertoire Leading experts in various professional fields (medicine, archeology, history) have many positive research results. The author of the article uses new facts related to the effect of castration on the performer’s body. Today, the art of castrati remains understudied. This is an original phenomenon in the history of singing culture of the XVII–XVIII centuries. Castrato singers have mastered a wide range, limitless breathing and phenomenal vocal technique. They became standard singer-artists and supplanted female singers. The history of voice change after castration is recorded in fragments. It reached us only on the basis of documentary (medical) materials. This fact determines the relevance of the proposed topic. There are many published works in various fields. They are dedicated to this problem. But the secret of castrates has not been fully revealed yet. This is the novelty of the topic. Recent research and publications. Researchers J. Abitbol (2006), N. Clapton (2008)], P. Barbiere (1996), A. Heriot (1975), J. Lauri-Volpi (1972), Govorukhina, N. (2017), V. O. Gigolaeva-Yurchenko (2020, 2021) covered the issue of singing features in the performance of bel canto masters with the help of evolution, history, cultural studies, vocal methodology, phoniatrics and vocal phonopedia. Musical Analysis is complex. There is only one recording of the castrato singer A. Moresky. He is known as the “Angel of Rome” Therefore, the facts about the manner of singing in the Italian classical school of bel canto during the heyday of the Baroque era. They are in historical documents. These documents were written by historians and musicians of that time. Research materials. YouTube materials with performances by the castrato singer A. Moreski and modern countertenors F. Fajoli, F. Zharusski, M. Tsenchich, Yu. Minenko. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the article is to analyze the vocal and physiological specifics of the performance of castrato singers and modern countertenors. The object is the vocal technique of the authentic bel canto vocal style of baroque music affetti; subject – the influence of physiology on the formation of the performance style of castrato singers and modern countertenors stylistic Among the tasks is to identify the dynamics of growing interest in the art of castrato singers in medicine – genetics – vocals; systematize data on the physical and physiological differences in the vocal states of castrato singers and modern countertenors; on the example of the work of countertenors, to state the uniqueness of the vocal physiology of the human body in XX–XXI. The research methodology is represented by historical, analytical, functional, interpretive and gender methods. They contribute to the disclosure of the declared topic from different angles. Results and conclusion. The author presents a panorama of modern studies on castrates. She reveals the destructive function of surgical intervention in the human body, conducts a comparative comparison of castrates and counter tenors. They are two phenomena belonging to different historical centuries. The author emphasizes the advantages of developing the natural sound of a coloratura male voice without medical intervention. She gives examples of the analysis of the adaptive voice capabilities of the human organism of the 20th–21st centuries