I found this article very interesting. I learned about Farinelli and the “castrati” in a music history course that I took this summer. I loved the course and I found the castrati quite interesting. The reason they made castratis was because females were not allowed to perform in public so there were no soprano vocalists. Interestingly though, despite theabsence soprano vocalists, soprano parts in music were all but eradicated. This caused parents and prominent prepubescent male vocalists to contemplate castration.
This sounds like a huge and horrific leap to make but these castrati were extremely famous in their time. With this fame also came riches. Castrati were also known to be very popular with rich women because in a time without birth control, castrated males seemed to be quite useful. Farinelli was the most famous of all the castrati of his time.
I had never heard about Farinelli suffering from “hyperostosis frontalis interna” though. This is very interesting to hear and brings up many questions. The first that comes to my head is did this disease kill Farinelli? Also, a much farther stretch, if males who are castrated have lessened levels of testosterone and are susceptible to this post-menopausal disease then can testosterone be used as a cure for this disease in women? This research, I’m sure, will be very useful to medicinal researchers.
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