Talk:Domenico Donzelli

Domenico Donzelli and castrati
I believe that the last part of the article dealing with Donzelli's supposed credit for the demise of castratos in Italian opera is substantially incorrect.

In fact, castratos' demise was brought about by the illuministic public opinion's impatience at a horrible practice that would have thousands of male children be permanently maimed and then obliged to lead awfully wretched and disgraceful lives, just to enable exceedingly few of them to amuse the European operatic public (but not the French one) and to grow possibly very rich.

Castrati were put on one side both by the luckily increasing want of them, and by the success, at the beginning of the XIX century, of vocal categories able to replace them in public's liking, such as the so-called "contralto musico" (contralto female singers performing male heroic parts), and the contraltino tenor which would eventually evolve into the new myth of the romantic tenor.

By no means did Donzelli play any major or special rôle in such evolution, for he always remained quite an old style "baritenore" (tenor with a tessitura not far from the baritone's), belonging to a sort of operatic singers which had been coexisting for two centuries, on a second or third rank, with castratos' world.

Unless anybody would disprove my aforesaid opinions within some two weeks, I will therefore expunge the last part of the article and replace it myself by the translation of Donzelli's "Caratteristiche artistiche" (artistic features) from the corresponding Italian Wikipedia article.

Jeanambr (talk) 5 December 2008‎, 22:02