This book highlights the experiences of castrato singers in Britain during the long eighteenth-century. These singers stood apart from traditional cultural and sexual norms of the period by nature of their altered bodies. The work investigates the fears surrounding the possibility of Catholic influence in the nation, and the ability of sensual Italian operatic music to feminize the male population and weaken the country’s leaders. The castrato as a possible romantic rival to “normal” men is also discussed, while the contributions of the castrati to cultural leadership in the areas of teaching, concert direction and social influence are examined. This book will appeal to music historians and those interested in cultural and gender studies.

Implements stories of surgical alteration to consider how early modern individuals conceived the relationship between body, mind, and self.

The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato’s comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchy—involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives—whereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers—from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini—were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive, their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their literal demise.

Love, one of the most profound of human emotions, love that accompanies us from puberty to old age, love that follows us from ancient times to modern, from ancient writings, through the Bible and the texts of medieval scribes to modern day books and movies. Through the millennia love has lost none of its secrecy, charm, attractiveness, craziness, even in this digital age, when we are overwhelmed by information. But what is love? Where does this emotion originate? Are we humans the only living beings feeling this emotion? Can love be explained by some chemical reactions in our brains? Is love just a trick of nature or is love some kind of higher feeling? We do not have definite answers to any of these questions, nevertheless, neuroscience, behavioral science and others have provided us with some, at least partial answers. We know today a great deal more than ever before about what is happening in the brain when we are madly in love. We understand why our hearts beat faster when we see the person we love, we know why we sweat and why we feel anxious when the loved one is away from us, and we have some ideas about how feelings of attachment form in the brain. This book guides you through the complicated labyrinth of genes, molecules and brain cells that are involved in the feelings of love, attachment, affection, and also simple sexual reproduction.

Written by leading authorities, the volume can be considered a standard work on seventeenth-century English social history. A tribute to the work of Keith Wrightson, Remaking English Society re-examines the relationship between enduring structures and social change in early modern England. Collectively, the essays in the volume reconstruct the fissures and connections that developed both within and between social groups during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Focusing on the experience of rapid economic and demographic growth and on related processesof cultural diversification, the contributors address fundamental questions about the character of English society during a period of decisive change. Prefaced by a substantial introduction which traces the evolution of early modern social history over the last fifty years, these essays (each of them written by a leading authority) not only offer state-of-the-art assessments of the historiography but also represent the latest research on a variety of topics that have been at the heart of the development of 'the new social history' and its cultural turn: gender relations and sexuality; governance and litigation; class and deference; labouring relations, neighbourliness and reciprocity; and social status and consumption. STEVE HINDLE is W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. ALEXANDRA SHEPARD is Reader in History, University of Glasgow. JOHN WALTER is Professor of History, University of Essex. Contributors: Helen Berry, Adam Fox, H. R. French, Malcolm Gaskill, Paul Griffiths, Steve Hindle, Craig Muldrew, Lindsay O'Neill, Alexandra Shepard, Tim Stretton, Naomi Tadmor, John Walter, Phil Withington, Andy Wood

Since the eighteenth century, the one-to-one singing lesson has been the most common method of delivery. The scenario allows the teacher to familiarise and individualise the lesson to suit the needs of their student; however, it can also lead to speculation about what is taught. More troubling is the heightened risk of gossip and rumour with the private space generating speculation about the student–teacher relationship. Venanzio Rauzzini (1746–1810), an Italian castrato living in England who became a highly sought-after singing master, was particularly susceptible since his students tended to be women, whose moral character was under more scrutiny than their male counterparts. Even so in 1792, The Bath Chronicle proclaimed the Italian castrato: 'the father of a new style in English singing'. Branding Rauzzini as a founder of an English style was not an error, but indicative of deep-seated anxieties about the Italian invasion on England’s musical culture. This book places teaching at the centre of the socio-historical narrative and provides unique insight into musical culture. Using a microhistory approach, this study is the first to focus in on the impact of teaching and casts new light on issues of celebrity culture, gender and nationalism in Georgian England.

The Savage and Modern Self examines the representations of North American "Indians" in novels, poetry, plays, and material culture from eighteenth-century Britain. Author Robbie Richardson argues that depictions of "Indians" in British literature were used to critique and articulate evolving ideas about consumerism, colonialism, "Britishness," and, ultimately, the "modern self" over the course of the century. Considering the ways in which British writers represented contact between Britons and "Indians," both at home and abroad, the author shows how these sites of contact moved from a self-affirmation of British authority earlier in the century, to a mutual corruption, to a desire to appropriate perceived traits of "Indianess." Looking at texts exclusively produced in Britain, The Savage and Modern Self reveals that "the modern" finds definition through imagined scenes of cultural contact. By the end of the century, Richardson concludes, the hybrid Indian-Brition emerging in literature and visual culture exemplifies a form of modern, British masculinity.