你好Castratis were the greatest singers who have ever lived. Singing female roles was certainly not their principal raison d'être. Most of the time they were used to sing male roles. Tenors and basses were useful additions to a cast (playing small roles, villains and so forth), but they were not thought of as virtuosi - whereas castrati were. Only the very best of them got to perform in opera, of course, but those who did had considerable advantages over other singers. They had been trained from a very early age, with no interruption for puberty. Their larynxes had not moved downwards, as normally happens at puberty, and their training...had concentrated on the development of the muscular system around the vocal cords so that the high, flexible, and brilliant sound of the voice could be augmented by prodigious power and almost superhuman breath control. Such a voice could produce crowd-pleasing pyrotechnics, but it was also capable of great subtlety and shades of emotion that could move listeners to tears. We may think of the castrato voice as artificial, but it was undeniably one of the most virtuosic instrument ever.

It isn't surprising that the form of opera in which the castrati shone was the most artificial and virtuosic form there has ever been - opera seria. Castrati had been a perceptible presence at the very beginning of opera, in the time of Peri and Caccini, but it was the arrival of opera seria in the last two decades of the seventeenth century that made them indispensable. The Italian castrato became an international phenomenon, and would remain one for the best part of 130 years. Siface and Pistocchi were among the first to become famous outside Italy.

High noon for the castrati, as well as for opera seria, was the first half of the eighteenth century. This was when singers like Nicolini, Bernacchi, Senesino, Farinelli, Caffarelli, and Carestini vied for supremacy with female stars like Cuzzoni and Bordoni, and generally had top billing. But the greatest of all composers at that time, Handel, wrote major roles for them in almost every opera he composed. He introduced them to London and made them the superstars of the London operatic stage, where his operas reigned supreme for over twenty years.

Of course, the barbaric operation that stopped the larynx from maturing, is no more. The only approximation we have is the modern countertenor, which is in reality just an alto voice. Still when the genius of a composer like Handel able to create totally rounded, human characters and then wring every drop of emotion from them, is combined with the countertenor voice – and we can get a sense of what drove audiences into a frenzy over two hundred years ago. It’s greater and more poignant than anything you’ll find in Verdi.

What’s in our player now: Handel: Operatic Arias – David Daniels, countertenor, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightment, Sir Roger Norrington, Cond.

There have been a number of recordings of Handel’s arias since this was released, but few have this incredible beauty of sound. Forget any resistance you may have had to the countertenor voice, this is singing as pure communication and it goes straight to the heart.

Daniels sees himself as a singer first, and a countertenor second. Listening to this glorious CD is pure pleasure. No wonder it was a best-seller!