The Castrato and His Wife by Helen Berry: review
A unique and unsettling exploration of 18th-century castrati
By Philippa Stockley
8:00AM BST 05 Oct 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8797796/The-Castrato-and-His-Wife-by-Helen-Berry-review.htmlNewspapers can make or break careers. That was also the case in the 18th century, according to historian Helen Berry's account of the successful and briefly notorious Italian castrato opera singer Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci, who, arriving in London at just 23, used the press to his advantage to publicise forthcoming performances. Berry has found 300 contemporary advertisements for operas between 1761 and 1780 when Tenducci, a major star of Opera Seria, popular with high society and royalty, sang at 24 venues in Scotland, Ireland, England and Italy.
And, despite always struggling with English, Tenducci managed well enough at it to place adverts in the press appealing directly to his fans when embroiled in the scandal that could, as a eunuch, have cost him his life in his native country: marriage, at 30, to an approximately 15-year-old Irish protégée from Limerick called Dorothea Maunsell. This unprecedented event gripped the imagination of a leering public.
