Martha
Feldman’s The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys
were castrated to improve their singing between the mid-sixteenth and
late-nineteenth centuries. The book details how the entire foundation of
Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an
unlikely and historically unique set of desires, both public and private, as
well as aesthetic, economic, and political. Martha Feldman, professor of music
at the University of Chicago, is the author of City Culture and the Madrigal
at Venice and The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. She
is a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the Royal Musical Association’s Dent
Medal, and various book prizes and is a member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences. Seth Brodsky teaches music history at the University of Chicago
and works on new music, psychoanalysis, and the nature of influence, musical
and otherwise.
