Bonus Content
The Castrato and His Wife
The Pig Man Arrives in Monte San Savino
The town of Monte San Savino is situated in a long, wide valley,
the Valdiciana, one of four that make up the Terra di Arezzo,
the Arezzo region of Italy. Today, as far as the eye can see, the
valley is a mosaic of fields, vineyards, and olive groves, with a horizon
patrolled by lines of tall green cypress trees. Set against the sloping
fields are hill towns capped in bright Tuscan red, a lasting remnant of
the early medieval process of incastellamento, whereby hilltop villages
were gradually fortified with high walls to ward off would-be attackers.1
At the focal point of each scattered settlement is a church tower, and at
regular intervals the sound of bells echoes across the valley.
Some features of this place have remained the same for centuries.
Only nine thousand people live there today: in the eighteenth century
it was smaller in size, with most of its citizens living behind the
medieval walls. St Catherine’s fair took place annually in late November,
when local peasants stocked up on the goods needed for their
homes that they could not produce themselves, together with valuable
items such as tools, clothes, and cattle.2 The grandeur of some
of Monte San Savino’s municipal buildings, fronted by solid stone
loggia capped with imposing Corinthian columns, and the scale of
the palaces inhabited by its leading citizens, complete with formal
gardens and shaded inner courtyards, are lasting indications of the
town’s one-time wealth and administrative importance.
Monte San Savino was a centre of feudal government in the area
during centuries of struggle over its control by competing local potentates.
It was originally under the control of the Sienese, who became
overlords in the fourteenth century. During the sixteenth century, the
town made its own contribution to the Italian Renaissance—one of its
most famous sons was the poet and architect Andrea Sansovino.
(Sansovino distinguished himself through many achievements and
one failure: he tried unsuccessfully to carve something out of the
immense and impossibly hard marble block from which Michelangelo
eventually succeeded in making his statue of David.)
In 1644, the town was seized finally by the Medici family: the Grand
Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand II, granted lordship to his brother Mattias
de’Medici. Feudal jurisdiction was transferred in the female line to
Vittoria della Rovere, upon whose death in 1694 it was absorbed into
the Florentine state under the jurisdiction of a special Commissioner
(Commissario) nominated by the Grand Duke.3 From this time to the
mid-eighteenth century, the medieval office of podestà or local justice
was united with that of the Commissario, who dispensed his rule from
the Palazzo Pretorio.
By the year 1748, Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci’s father was employed
as a servant to the Commissario of Monte San Savino.
Copyright © 2011 Oxford University Press
The Castrato and His Wife
Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci, a native of Siena, Italy, was a veritable superstar of grand opera—and one of the 18th century’s most renowned international celebrities, a flamboyant heartthrob with a massive and impassioned female following. He was also a castrato. And, surprisingly, his remarkable life story has never before been the subject of a book.
More than a biography, Helen Berry’s The Castrato and His Wife is a “microhistory” setting Tenducci’s life and career within a wider context of Baroque opera, sex and marriage in Georgian Britain. Ranging from the grand opera houses and the salons of the aristocracy to the remote hill towns of Tuscany, Berry’s compelling account of this unconventional love story offers fascinating insights into 18th-century Europe.
Tenducci was born in poverty to a devout Catholic family, and his only plausible avenue for upward mobility lay within the church. Entering Holy Orders at age 11, around 1746, he sang in the choir and, soon after, underwent illegal castration to preserve his clear, angelic, prepubescent voice. He was subsequently admitted to one of Naples’ leading music conservatories, where the great tutor Caffarelli taught him the esoteric arts of note production, enunciation and gesture.
By 1758, Tenducci had toured Europe with his increasing repertoire of grand operas, captivating critics and building his reputation as a virtuoso of bel canto singing. This was the year in which the young castrato undertook his first season in London—the city in which he would meet his wife. In the years to come, his fame mushroomed. Mozart and Bach both composed for him. Gainsborough painted his portrait. And women flocked to his concerts, losing their hearts to his bell-like voice and boyish countenance.
Berry reveals that contrary to the popular conception of castrati, they were far from immune to the desires of the flesh. Eventually, his teenaged singing pupil, Dorothea Maunsell, succumbed to his forbidden charms and eloped with him, scandalizing her family. Dorothea achieved a status she could never have dreamed of as a respectable girl; she later wrote a sensational, semi-fictionalized memoir of their love affair.
Embroiled in debt, the Tenduccis retreated to Italy, where their marriage collapsed when she fell in love with another man. There followed a highly publicized marriage annulment case in the London courts. Everything hinged on whether the husband was capable of consummation, and what exactly had happened to him as a small boy in a remote Tuscan hill village decades before.
Telling the remarkable story of Tenducci for the first time, The Castrato and His Wife is both an exhilarating read and a perceptive commentary on the meaning of marriage, one that continues to resonate in our own time.
Hardcover : 288 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Inc. ( December 01, 2011 )
Item #: 13-479391
ISBN: 9780199569816
Product Dimensions: 5.25 x 8.5 x 0.76inches
Product Weight: 14.0 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Good as long as it lasts 
January 31, 2012
The topic of the book is quite interesting and the author clearly did some research; however, the book is overly short due to the lack of a meatier theme. It would have made a better short story; there is just not enough to keep one interested.
Reviewer: Elizabeth R
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