Abstract
It is not the least of paradoxes that the castrati that performed in Italian opera both in Italy in the 17th century and on the London stage after the Restoration should have acted the parts of manly seducers, mighty kings or warriors in spite of their high-pitched, ‘feminine’ voices. Roger Freitas argues that in order to understand the predilection for castrato voices one need to take the erotic bodily dimension of the singers into account. The fascination exerted by this type of voices was closely linked to a contemporary conception of sexuality. This article consequently attempts to analyse, by opposition, the meaning and impact of the emergence of the oratorio genre. It argues that the rise of oratorio was accompanied by a re-composition and re-definition of the respective masculine and feminine territories and that the metamorphosis of the heroic voice on the English lyrical stage in the collective imagination may be interpreted as the allegorical index of a shift towards a “modern,” “Enlightened” conception of sexuality.
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