When Alessandro Moreschi died on 21 April, 1922, the world thought it had felt the last stubbleless kiss of the voice of an angel on Earth — the boy castrato. The castrato tradition dictated that the talented boy singer was castrated before he reached puberty so that his larynx was not transformed by age and his angelic voice was preserved into adulthood. Castrati sang with a range equivalent to that of a female soprano, and the absence of testosterone as they grew resulted in unusually long ribs which gave them an almost superhuman lung power.
By the time Michael Jackson was 11 years old, he was the keystone to the earning power of a Motown juggernaut with an unprecedented string of consecutive number-ones. And his voice was about to break.
This week at his memorial, his brothers and sisters gathered to support and to mourn the passing of their talented sibling. In the photos of those difficult times, it is immediately apparent that whatever it was that was different about Michael, it probably wasn’t genetic. His eldest brother Jackie is a thick-set man with broad shoulders, Tito has a solid, masculine figure, Jermaine shares the manly physiques of his older brothers and combines it with a chiselled jaw, Marlon and Randy have similar builds and Marlon usually wears a thick moustache.
The surviving images of the great castrati of history suggest that castrati do not physically develop in the same way as other boys. The absence of testosterone as they grow not only affects their ribs, it also prevents them developing the other typical physical characteristics of grown men — body hair, broad shoulders and most significantly, a manly voice. A study in mice also found that castrating mice leads to depigmentation of their skin. Although this finding is hardly conclusive, it provides an intriguing explanation for the significant depigmentation of his skin.
The lack of women (or men) who claim to have slept with Michael Jackson seems surprising given his level of celebrity, and it appears that none of his children were naturally conceived. Michael Jackson kept his private life intensely private, which was his prerogative. But is it possible that his unusual love and s-x life was as much a result of a physical inability to engage in sexual intimacy as it was about sexual preference? He clearly enjoyed the company of children.
Could this have been the result of a preference for the simpler, more honest level at which children communicate, free of the temptations and complications of sexual desire? Perhaps children were more his physical and emotional equals than the adults in his life. They at least spoke with similar voices.
Carlo Broschi, who died in 1782, had legendary three-octave vocal range and could reputedly hold a note for a full minute. Another great castrato, Farinelli, had a voice that was likened by critics to that of a god. It seems the world appreciates the purity and agility of the castrato voice, even though they may wince at the methods behind its creation. Whatever it was that altered the trajectory of Michael Jackson’s adult life, it almost certainly happened before he reached puberty.
Money and superstardom are powerful motivators to do extreme things. We will never know what conversations took place in the rooms backstage in the months leading up to Michael’s puberty, and whether the possibility of him losing the voice that had made him and a lot of other people fabulously wealthy was discussed at all. But it might have been. And if so, was there a solution proposed?
Could it be that the explanation for Michael Jackson’s unquestioned uniqueness lay in a hidden childhood shame? Whether or not it was the case, he undoubtedly sacrificed a lot for our entertainment, and, as he always said, the world was not willing to accept him for who he was. The question remains, was he the great castrato of our time?
Jack Ellis is a graduate in Composition of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and studied Phase Composition at the Royal Conservatorium, The Hague.
107 thoughts on “Michael Jackson: was he a castrato?”
evidently
July 23, 2009 at 10:39 pmDavid Sanderson
I have not posed any lessons in logic nor have put forward anything other than a request for you and the MJ fanclub to put forward something to back up your arguments.
You sir are the annoying fluff that seems to adorn virtually every turn of any decent debate with your fevered language that seems always to contain something unnecessarily abstract and visually unattractive.
To me you offer inane and juvenile argument and I wish you would come back with just something worth listening to, and hopefully something that offers your side the credence to criticise the author, the editor, the whole magazine and those of us who are not so quick to condemn original theory. We are all still waiting for the evidence to the contrary of the author… Hello?
David Sanderson
July 23, 2009 at 11:48 pmHello Evidently,
I do apologise for the “visually unattractive” language. I don’t know what comes over me sometimes. A pompous, foolish bore comes along and, all of a sudden, ugly tomcats spring up and spray their last all over my usually impeccable prose.
I’m sorry too about the visually unattractive garden shears that made a gory debut in my earlier comments. I believe I also made a visually unattractive reference to you own wee member in that context and I deeply regret the shrivelling effect that had.
We must all do our best to make this a more visually attractive world and I am sure that your enthusiasm for emasculation could be a wonderful help in that regard. Done right it could make all the males of the world a lot neater and, most importantly, much more visually attractive.
Earnestly yours,
David Sanderson
P.J.Ward
July 24, 2009 at 9:21 amJack Ellis’s thoughtful hypothesis will please a few elderly gents like me with an inner Poirot and an interest in human motive. It could explain why Jackson hated his father so much, and his father’s protest that he was never ‘physically abused’. It could explain why Jackson turned white, identified with Peter Pan, befriended young children, didn’t engender children himself in the normal way, never grew up huge and hairy like his brothers, sang with high voice all his life, was resolutely defended as a harmless platonic friend by Macaulay Culkin and acquitted by a white jury on nine counts of pederasty, had difficulties with two wives and called his ranch Neverland.
Raised a Jehovah’s Witness by a greedy slave-driving male parent with sons to spare and millions to make before sunset and possessed of a priceless high prepubertal voice, he could have been secretly injected with temporary sterilising chemicals and then, two years later, been quietly persuaded to undergo the equivalent of a vasectomy which leaves (as I understand it) the testicles intact and theoretically reconnectable. At the same age, fourteen, when many other young men resolve to become suicide bombers or Olympic swimmers or astronauts, he may have agreed to this dodgy proposition in the heat of the moment and later regretted it after medical complications and romantic frustrations and have become thereafter the reclusive nose-chopping hysteric who charmed the western world. Nothing in the above story rings false in any detail, as Poirot would silkily say, and one feels for him now the sympathy one felt for the castrati of other centuries, past martyrs to fine music and money-hungry parents and religious nutters in charge of cathedral choirs.
Why all the fuss? No such anger greeted the theory that Frank Sinatra was freakishly well-hung, Bing Crosby a violent parent, Pavarotti a rat with women, Cole Porter a closet homosexual or John Lennon a heroin addict. What’s the problem? It’s worth knowing what a great musician’s art springs from, isn’t it? Why hide anything?
mbyrnes
July 24, 2009 at 10:22 amThe fuss arises from the sloppy, ham-fisted way in which the analysis has been undertaken by the author. Contrary to what some assert, that is the issue, not some misguided, sycophantic desire to protect a dead star’s reputation. Incidentally, for those who believe this is some sort of new thesis, it was the source of schoolyard speculation in the 1980’s and has also been canvassed on numerous threads on-line. Sad to say that analysis is often more sophisticated than that presented in this thread. It’s as old and cliched as various theories about Jamie Lee Curtis (born without certain organs) and Walt Disney (frozen after death).
What Ellis has done is akin to speculating about the strong influence Tim Buckley had on Jeff Buckley’s early life and how that affected his music, and not mentioning the fact they only ever met once when Jeff Buckley was 8. It’s akin to speculating about how Frank Sinatra will tour next year, and not mentioning that he died in 1998. It’s speculation that ignores the best, direct, readily available evidence about the matter.
In this case that evidence is the 1993 examination of Jackson’s private area undertaken by law enforcement officials. I’m not going to venture into the graphic detail here. It is available from myriad sources accessible through a quick search. I believe it is fatal to the hypothesis.
Even if you don’t accept it is game, set and match to the non-castrato brigade, the lack of mention of the 1993 examination leaves open an inference that the author was not even aware of it. That ignorance, and other mistakes, speak volumes about how sloppy and lazy research for this article was.
Consistent with this, he makes errors in the identity of key castrati, asserts wrongly that no man or woman has come forward to claim physical intimacy with Jackson ( Lisa-Marie Presley has been consistent that she was) and ignores that jackson’s vocal range is inconsistent with that of castrati.
Please spare us the patronising third rate psychoanalysis manifesting itself in comments such as “Jackson lover” and “cognitive dissonance”. This is about a misconceived, poorly resarched article that is not worthy of this site. I raised the spectre of Max Gogarty to account for it. The editor has said he considers it a piece of whimsy. Perhaps it is that which informed the poor decision to publish it without further fact checking.
David Sanderson
July 24, 2009 at 10:37 amMBYRNES, I look forward to your PhD on the subject. You are wise not to choose a small topic on which to exercise your intellectual mastery.
Peter Nicholson
July 24, 2009 at 10:41 amI’m open minded about this and Jack Ellis and PJ Ward put forward plausible speculation. I just don’t see how M Byrnes can say that since the fatal contrary evidence is available from a myriad of sources, he won’t tell us where or what it is.
This has been done to death and nothing’s changed, it’s speculation that is supported by a range of circumstantial factors, but no real evidence.
Alison Turner
July 24, 2009 at 10:56 amWow! You guys are STILL going? This is better than the cricket.
David Sanderson
July 24, 2009 at 10:58 amOpen mindedness in the abstract is a very good thing. Open mindedness in this particular instance is akin to a mental vacuum. This is junk brain food therefore you need to find something to think about that is a little larger than a cheerio sausage.
ACE
July 24, 2009 at 11:01 amMBYRNES,
Please enlighten us as to how the 1993 investigation is ‘fatal to the hypothesis’. We are not convinced.
And YOU ‘assert wrongly’ that the author wrote ‘no man or woman has come forward to claim physical intimacy with Jackson’. He wrote ‘the lack of’. Considering Michael was the most famous man in the world, there are surprisingly few women out there who have claimed to have sexual experiences with him. And anyway, did Presley ever actually talk about her and MJ getting physically intimate?
mbyrnes
July 24, 2009 at 11:20 amThe Smoking Gun, Vanity Fair articles, range of sources available on-line. I’m not going to explore the very graphic and explicit detail here. You’re all intelligent and resourceful enough to use Google to find it and form your own views if so inclined.
Ace, I understand you don’t believe the examination to be fatal to the argument. Even accepting that, the omission of any reference to it in the article spotlights the lack of research.
Presley did talk about intimacy. The 1995 Diane Sawyer inteview is one such example. She then affirmed it in subsequent interviews at the time she was promoting her first album.
Incidentally, the fact the underlying sybject matter is considered trivial does not excuse the lack of rigour. It is a source of irritation that reporting on popular culture issues is often so poor because checking facts and research are considered less important in that sphere. Even the editor here seems to concede in his one post on the issue that a different standard was applied. in this instance because it was considered a piece of “whimsy”.