For a solid portion of musical history, castrato singers or ‘castrati’ had a prominent role in operas, churches and courts across Europe. But why were young boys forced to undergo the gruesome ...

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Tuesday 13 April 2010 An editing change had us saying that Michael Maniaci and Radu Marian are both to ...

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Listen to the "last castrato", Alessandro Moreschi, recorded in 1902. The castrato's voice was prized for its combination of pitch and power - an unbroken male voice able to reach the highest notes, ...

The following content is purely satirical and entirely fictional. The Princeton TestosterTones, the University’s premier and only all-castrato a cappella group, made a splash Monday night at their ...

Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. In The Castrato and His Wife, Helen Berry explores 18th-century marriage, gender and celebrity through the ...

When Alessandro Moreschi died on 21 April, 1922, the world thought it had felt the last stubbleless kiss of the voice of an angel on Earth — the boy castrato. The castrato tradition dictated that the ...

The legendary castrato singer Farinelli (1705–1782) suffered from a disease typical of post-menopausal women, according to the first-ever osteological analysis of a eunuch. The poorly preserved ...

For centuries, their voices soared in gilded churches and candlelit concert halls - otherworldly, pure and achingly beautiful. But behind the ethereal sound of the castrato singers lay an unspeakable ...

Ivan Hewett is The Telegraph’s Classical Music Critic and an author whose works include Music: Healing The Rift, a personal history of modern music. He has been involved in music as a composer, ...