The Castrato and His Wife

Name: The Castrato and His Wife
Price: 27.95 AUD
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ISBN: 9780199655267

Helen Berry (Reader in Early Modern History, Newcastle University)

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Paperback

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English

Oxford University Press
18 September 2012

Opera; Individual composers & musicians, bands & groups; Biography: arts & entertainment; History; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900; Social & cultural history

The opera singer Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci was one of the most famous celebrities of the eighteenth century. In collaboration with the English composer Thomas Arne, he popularized Italian opera, translating it for English audiences and making it accessible with his own compositions which he performed in London's pleasure gardens. Mozart and J. C. Bach both composed for him. He was a rock star of his day, with a massive female following. He was also a castrato. Women flocked to his concerts and found him irresistible. His singing pupil, Dorothea Maunsell, a teenage girl from a genteel Irish family, eloped with him. There was a huge scandal; her father persecuted them mercilessly. Tenducci's wife joined him at his concerts, achieving a status as a performer she could never have dreamed of as a respectable girl. She also wrote a sensational account of their love affair, an early example of a teenage novel. Embroiled in debt, the Tenduccis fled to Italy, and the marriage collapsed when she fell in love with another man. There followed a highly publicized and unique marriage annulment case in the London courts. Everything hinged on the status of the marriage; whether the husband was capable of consummation, and what exactly had happened to him as a small boy in a remote Italian hill village decades before. Ranging from the salons of princes and the grand opera houses of Europe to the remote hill towns of Tuscany, the unconventional love story of the castrato and his wife affords a fascinating insight into the world of opera and the history of sex and marriage in Georgian Britain, while also exploring questions about the meaning of marriage that continue to resonate in our own time.

By: Helen Berry (Reader in Early Modern History Newcastle University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 196mm, Width: 131mm, Spine: 26mm
Weight: 374g
ISBN: 9780199655267
ISBN 10: 019965526X
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 18 September 2012
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Prelude 1: The Pig Man Arrives in Monte San Savino 2: Schooling Angels in Naples 3: The Castrato in London 4: Fancying Tenducci 5: A Dublin Scuffle 6: The Elopement 7: Married Life 8: The Trial 9: Legacy Coda Notes A Note on Sources Appendix: Deposition of Tomasso Massi Select Bibliography Index

Reviews for The Castrato and His Wife

Helen Berry's history of the famous 18th-century castrato Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci and his young wife, Dorothea, is steeped in its period, but has the natural allure of a novel. * Sally Cousins, The Sunday Telegraph {Seven} *