ABSTRACT
Dr. Charles Burney’s account of the battle between two sets of lungs holds a key to understanding the frenzied popularity of the eighteenth-century Italianate opera, and the public adulation lavished on its jewel-less jewels, the castrati. The stories of the opera seria that were written to frame the battles of the castrati both reinforced the competitive nature of their performances and masked the less-than-noble ego battles that arose between the star singers. The popularity of the castrati was heavily in decline. And, rather than validating their virility, the satirical images of the castrati emphasize their femininity, and especially their castratedness. The public response to the castrated body represents precisely the same excess-embarrassment pattern outlined by Eve Sedgwick and Moon in relation to the fat female body. Since the decline of the castrati at the end of the eighteenth century, opera historians have perpetuated excess embarrassment by developing a blind spot toward the castrati.
