Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani

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Roger Freitas (Dr, University of Rochester, New York)

Portrait of a Castrato

Name: Portrait of a Castrato
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ISBN: 9780521885218

Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani

Roger Freitas (Dr, University of Rochester, New York)

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Hardback

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English

Cambridge University Press
14 May 2009

Baroque music (c 1600 to c 1750); Individual composers & musicians, bands & groups

Series: New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism

This book explores the fascinating life of the most documented musician of the seventeenth century. Born in 1626 into a bourgeois family in Pistoia, Italy, Atto Melani was castrated to preserve his singing voice and soon rose to both artistic and social prominence. His extant letters not only depict the musical activities of several European centers, they reveal the real-life context of music and the musician: how a singer related to patrons and colleagues, what he thought about his profession, and the role music played in his life. Whether Atto was singing, spying, having sex, composing, or even rejecting his art, his life illustrates how music-making was always also a negotiation for power. Providing a rare glimpse of the social and political contexts of seventeenth-century music, Roger Freitas sheds light on the mechanisms that generated meaning for music, clarifying what music at this time actually was.

By: Roger Freitas (Dr University of Rochester New York)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Volume: 19
Dimensions: Height: 255mm, Width: 180mm, Spine: 27mm
Weight: 1.050kg
ISBN: 9780521885218
ISBN 10: 0521885213
Series: New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism
Pages: 452
Publication Date: 14 May 2009
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Roger Freitas is Associate Professor in the Department of Musicology, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.

Reviews for Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani

'The book includes a survey of Atto's cantatas, polished, efficient exemplars of a fashionable new Italian genre, but in the end far less important to their creator than the wordly advancement their performances brought with it. Richly documented, this whole extraordinary chronicle of the eunuch as self-made man is one of the most absorbing studies in its field to have appeared in recent years.' The Times Literary Supplement