Castrato Phantoms: Moreschi, Fellini, and the Sacred Vernacular in Rome by Marth

by Fellini Moreschi

$43 · Offered by eBay · No longer available

The Nile on eBay Castrato Phantoms by Martha Feldman Martha Feldman, Martha Feldman A new mapping of castrato afterlives in modern RomeAround 1830, opera houses stopped using castrati, and Rome and the Vatican became home to their glorious singing, engineered by surgery and intensive vocal training. Castrati were long mired in secrecy, obfuscations, and lies about their origin and conditions, not least the last of them, Alessandro Moreschi. Musicologist Martha Feldman declines to accept these deep-seated mysteries and concealments. After a decade and more of digging through archives and family histories comes her exciting transdisciplinary and quasi-cinematic account of Moreschi, whose recordings preserve the only sonic trace of a solo castrato.Yet Moreschi s story extends far beyond him. It opens up intrigues, politics, and histories of the Vatican, everyday histories of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Rome, the world of Roman opera, the city s unique melange of sacred and vernacular tropes, and representations of Rome by iconic film director Federico Fellini. Moreschi and Fellini turn out to have been related by marriage, but also to share synergies grounded in Rome s persistent inclination to vernacularize the sacred. Far from telling of one anomalous figure, Feldman s gripping history convinces readers that Moreschi, like Fellini, can be read as an improbable index of Roman consciousness, both during his own life and well beyond. FORMATHardcover CONDITIONBrand New Revie

• Binding: Hardcover
• ISBN: 9781945861130
• Condition: Fine

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.