Castration (also referred as: gelding, neutering, orchiectomy, and orchidectomy) is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which a biological male loses use of the testes. This causes sterilisation, preventing him from reproducing; it also greatly reduces the production of certain hormones, such as testosterone. It is usually considered painful, and in some countries is used as torture. It should not be confused with penectomy, which is the whole or partial removal of the penis, nor with vasectomy, which is a procedure to sterilize a male by blocking the vas deferens, the tubes that connect the testicles to the prostate.

The term castration is sometimes also used to refer to the removal of the ovaries in the female, otherwise known as an oophorectomy or, in animals, spaying. This is similar to male castration, as it causes females to stop producing estrogen, and makes them infertile.

 

So what are we supposed to do in this thread other than post this:

 

Well, there's always .

 

Not if she took your balls away!

 

Then it's more like this

 

What did Jeffrey Dahmer say to Lorena Bobbit?












Are you gonna eat that?

 

Or this:

 

"But, why, in the first place, were the castrati brought into being? It all goes back a long way, to when the eunuchs of the harem were sometimes found to have sweet singing voices, to entertain their masters' many ladies. Gradually it was realised that early castration of boys around the ages of 8 to 10 (who could already sing) would save their singing voices; first for the church and cathedral choirs, and, after rigorous training, for the opera: to sing male and female roles.

Male roles? The heroes who were the stars of C17 and C18 opera had high voices to match their high rank, as it was then conceived. Tenors and basses sang comic parts; old men types.

Female roles? Women were not allowed to tread the boards in many Catholic countries; the Popes would not permit such a thing. St. Paul said, "Let women be silent in churches", following the Judaic pattern of men being the cantors and the women sitting in the gallery!!

Opera...that was indecent; shocking; the thin edge of the wedge.

The ban was exercised particularly in the Papal States, which were extremely extensive during the 18th century and the early 19th and long before all the diverse kingdoms and principalities of Italy were "united" under the rule of the House of Savoy, and the Vatican became a kingdom on its own in 1869, with Pope Pius IX becoming the "prisoner of the Vatican"."

 

WHERE ARE THE CASTRATI NOW?

Public and Papal opinion had long since condemned the practice; supposedly by Papal decree in 1878, but not exactly on humanitarian grounds. The last castrato, Alessandro Moreschi, died in 1922, leaving a legacy of 17 recordings of not very high quality and not very choice music. He was limited by the recording facilities of the time: 1902/4; hardly CD standard. His voice was put on single-sided shellac discs, of no fixed speed, with a limited time capacity; at best, about 4 minutes playing time. He was the director of the Sistine Chapel Choir in Rome, at St. Peter's, and their soloist; he was the youngest of the surviving castrato singers there, and even so, he was in his early forties. You can find him and his recordings of the Opal CD 9823 (Pavilion Records) still being pressed, taken from those primitive discs. Listen to him; read the extensive booklet, and see what you think.

Practically every day one hears a joke along these lines...if a man has a certain kind of accident, he will be singing soprano in the choir. Sometimes a variant of these remarks is made quite seriously in the media, but there is no truth whatsoever in that. At puberty, a boy's vocal chords grow and thicken, and so the voice deepens, in speaking and singing. The famous boy treble Aled Jones, who made gold and platinum discs in the 80's, now sings a well-trained high baritone, of no great remark...yet; he is only in his late 20's. If an accident or injury occurred, the voice would not change; transsexuals (male to female) have to risk surgery on their vocal chords to shorten them, in order that they may sound more feminine.


As has been already said, they were boys with outstanding singing voices who were offered by their families for castration, to preserve those voices. Mostly the boys came from very poor families, who saw nothing wrong in the practice, since it would lift them out of poverty, and we are talking what is called "Third World" poverty today. But such families were often secretive about offering their children in this way, since canon and civil law would be broken. So, the victims were castrated on the grounds of: illness, injury (wild boars were favourite), accidents. These were the excuses given, on a kind of Chinese whispers basis.

The "operation" involved drugging the boy with opium, immersing him in a warm bath until he became (hopefully) insensible; then the ducts leading to the testes were severed and that was it ... if he recovered, and many did not; no aseptic procedures in those days. This information is included in Charles D'Ancillon's "Traite des Eunuques", aka "Eunuchism Displayed" (1707) and is a contemporary account of the castration of boys.

 

I like my "Comic Voice" as it is. . . heck, I can get up there (A? C? above the staff?). . .can't I just get the opium?