Patricia Howard. The Modern Castrato: Gaetano Guadagni and the Coming of a New Operatic Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. xiv + 238 pp. $41.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-19-936520-3. Reviewed by Corinna Herr Published on H-Music (September, 2017) Commissioned by Lars Fischer (UCL Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies) Gaetano Guadagni (1729–92) was and is gun his career in Venice in opera seria and would doubtless one of the best-known castrati of the go on to become “one of the most noted exponents second half of the eighteenth century. In contrast in Europe in serious roles” (p. 28). Having begun to Giovanni Battista Velluti (1781–1861), whom his career in 1748 as an alto, he moved on to mez‐ Stendhal called “the last of the good castrati,” zosoprano roles that habitually reached a g2, Guadagni lived in an age in which castrati were though his most famous role, the Orfeo in Gluck’s still the norm rather than the exception. Not reform opera, was an alto role with a modest much has been published on Guadagni and noth‐ range (to e2). ing that goes beyond his role in Christoph To the best of our knowledge, Guadagni’s last Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). A fuller concert performance took place in 1785 in his account has long been a desideratum, then. Patri‐ then hometown of Padua. He subsequently suf‐ cia Howard has now flled this gap with her de‐ fered a stroke, which left him aphasic—a particu‐ tailed biography. Her reconstruction of his career larly cruel fate for a singer. He nevertheless draws on Claudio Sartori’s invaluable catalogue of seems to have retained his energy and could still published libretti, which were frequently pre‐ be heard singing in a liturgical context at the pared for specific performances and therefore Basilica del Santo. Howard cites a contemporary listed the artists involved. Paduan source describing how the “curiosity of The 1760s and 1770s were a crucial time for hearing him sing a versicle attracted an incredible opera reform and Guadagni was repeatedly en‐ number of people” (p. 185). gaged in places that stood at the forefront of this His participation in Crosa’s buffa troupe reform movement, especially Vienna and Padua. demonstrated—or perhaps established—a trait Yet the most important location in terms of his ca‐ that later became a crucial factor for Guadagni’s reer progression was London, where he spent his success: his ability to act. Unlike opera seria, formative years as a singer (1748–55), traveling opera buffa depended, for the most part, on actors there with the opera buffa troupe of the impre‐ who were also able to sing. Opera seria, by con‐ sario Giovanni Francesco Crosa. As Howard trast, depended before all else on trained singers points out, it was most unusual for a castrato to who could meet the challenges of coloratura, mes‐ sing in a buffa troupe and this trajectory seems all sa di voce, and the wide range for which castrati the more improbable given that Guadagni had be‐ were known. In the past, the fact that Guadagni H-Net Reviews trained with the famous actor David Garrick has Lespinasse’s reaction to the same singer from the generally been presented as fundamental to his following year: “Never, no never was the perfec‐ acting skills. Howard, however, quite rightly tion of singing so united with sensibility and ex‐ stresses the significance of his experience as a pression. What tears he made me shed! what buffa singer and the fact that his acting skills were trouble he brought into my soul! No singing ever enhanced by his cooperations with Filippo Laschi left so deep, so sensitive, so heart-breaking an im‐ and, especially, with Pietro Pertici, who had pression; I could have listened to him till it killed worked extensively with Carlo Goldoni and whom me. Oh! how preferable such a death to life!”[2] London critics considered “one of the greatest co‐ Apparently, Howard has found no similar reac‐ medians of his age and country” (p. 30). tions to Guadagni, which is hardly surprising, giv‐ In her otherwise chronological account, en that such extreme responses were usually pro‐ Howard frequently references the status of cas‐ voked not by the alto but by the soprano male trati in general. In her account of Guadagni’s frst voice—with the notable exception of Francesco sojourn in London, for instance, she discusses the Bernardi, widely known as Senesino, whose re‐ state of opera seria in London around the middle turn from England to the Continent in 1737 appar‐ of the eighteenth century, the various well-known ently provoked extreme female reactions, which stories and rumors about the castrati’s virility and again became the butt of much satire. attractiveness to women, and the casting of cas‐ Like Guadagni, Millico too was one of the ini‐ trato roles in the twentieth and twenty-first cen‐ tial embodiments of Gluck’s Orfeo (or Orphée). turies. Unfortunately, these digressions are too Guadagni’s participation, in 1762 in Vienna, as the long not to interrupt the fow of her account of lead in the premiere of the original Italian version Guadagni’s career and too short genuinely to ad‐ of Gluck’s opera clearly marks his greatest claim dress the issues they raise. Her treatment of vari‐ to fame (which may explain why Howard’s book ous scholarly opinions on the castrati’s ability to was published in 2014, the year of the 300th an‐ perform sexually, for example, only generates the niversary of Gluck’s birth). When the opera, as vague sense that the contemporary discourse “Atto d’Orfeo,” was performed in Parma in 1769 must surely have been more substantial than her as the third act of Le Feste d’Apollo, Gluck altered discussion reflects—as indeed it was. One need the part and it was performed by the soprano Mil‐ only consult the contemporaneous discussions of lico. At the 1774 premiere of Orphée in Paris, the (platonic) androgynous ideal, or the legal in‐ Joseph Legros, a Haute-contre, sang the title role. tricacies pertaining to the castrato’s marriage, to These respective adjustments of the score chart a realize how profound the impact of these phe‐ development from a stile d’agilità, represented by nomenona was at the time.[1] Guadagni, to a more dramatic part relying on On the issue of sexual attraction, Howard Legros’s more “heroic” timbre. This trajectory mentions reactions to the castrato’s voice, espe‐ maps neatly both onto the development of opera cially that of the notoriously ostentatious Fanny more generally in this period and onto the history Burney after hearing the soprano Giuseppe Milli‐ and eventual demise of the castrati, even if this co in London in 1773. Burney spoke of “rapture” history would not fnally draw to its close until and Millico’s “divinely penetrating” voice. For 1824, when Giacomo Meyerbeer created the fnal Howard, these expressions have a sexual connota‐ castrato role in opera for Giambattista Velluti in Il tion. This is certainly a possibility but one might crociato in Egitto. equally well contextualize these utterances with Guadagni’s acting and singing skills doubtless reference to the Age of Sensibility. Take Julie de affected Gluck’s conception of the Orfeo role. How 2 H-Net Reviews exactly it did so is hard to determine precisely, the methodological problems that arise as a result though. Howard approaches this complex prob‐ of Howard’s decision to offer a predominantly lem with caution and insight. There is very little chronological account become particularly clear. evidence documenting the role’s development. His Guadagni’s performance of the role in the 1762 statement that the role was “tailor-made” for Orfeo performance, discussed in chapter 6, can‐ Guadagni apart, the librettist, Ranieri de’ Calzabi‐ not fully be understood with taking into account gi, seems to have had no more to say about the his later resumption of the same role in London singer. Given that “Orfeo is literally never off (chapter 8), his acting skills (chapter 4), and his stage, and … sings almost continuously” (p. 98), skills as a singer and composer (chapters 12 and the dramatic scope of the role would certainly 9). have matched Guadagni’s well-known acting The crucial chapter on “Guadagni the Singer” skills. The noticeable plainness of Orfeo’s arias is the last in the book. Much of its content would suggests that they were designed for free orna‐ be very useful for the appreciation of some of the mentation, and there has been much speculation earlier chapters, though. Here, Howard comes in the scholarship as to how much ornamentation back to Guadagni’s time in London where he per‐ Guadagni is likely to have introduced. On the oth‐ formed extensively in oratorios by Handel (the er hand, Gluck is known to have loathed the tradi‐ parts of Didymus in Theodora [1750] and Her‐ tion of free ornamentation that was common cules in The Choice of Hercules [1751] were writ‐ practice in opera seria and engaged in with some‐ ten for him). Examining the music that Handel, times excessive relish by castrati and female Gluck, and others wrote specifically for Guadagni, singers alike at the time. Howard approaches this she concludes that his was a lyrical alto voice with issue from a comparative perspective, drawing on extensive inflections, suited most of all to arie the ornamentation documented for Guadagni’s cantabile and arie parlante but less so to bravura stage performances in London where, in 1770, he arias, and emphasizes especially his “strengths as also resumed the Orfeo role in a pasticcio with ad‐ a declamatory singer-actor” (p.