Cecilia Bartoli could have followed the path of least resistance. When the Italian mezzo-soprano burst onto the opera scene in the early '90s with a standard repertoire of Rossini and Mozart, she ...

ROMEROME — Long before botched plastic surgery ruined a movie star’s career, they were the original showbiz victims. Castrati were young opera singers in past centuries castrated to preserve a ...

Back in the 18th century, it was the infamous castrati who ruled the theatrical stages of Europe. Tall, gangly eunuchs, they ...

Over 250 years after Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice presented opera in a new way, an acrobatic staging aims to do the same. Iestyn Davies, whose Orpheus will be amid the tumblers, dancers and acrobats, ...

For a solid portion of musical history, castrato singers or ‘castrati’ had a prominent role in operas, churches and courts across Europe. But why were young boys forced to undergo the gruesome ...

Everyone knows what a toll the rock-star lifestyle can exact. Drugs and alcohol are de rigueur, sexual promiscuity often comes with the territory, and loss of hearing is yet another occupational ...