On the internet, his interpretation of the
Ave Maria
by Gounod is approaching 4 million views.
Followed by that of the “air of the Queen of the night” by Florence Foster Jenkins.
The latter, whom generations of musicians and music lovers have enjoyed mocking in the same way as Alessandro Moreschi - sometimes with cruelty, sometimes with compassion - has already had two films to his glory.
Will Alessandro Moreschi ever receive the same honours?
His life worthy of a novel deserves it in any case largely.
Because if his seventeen recordings, made between 1902 and 1904 on flat discs, today offer a poor testimony of what could have been, 150 to 200 years earlier, the great era of the castrati, they should not make us forget the fascinating destiny of the one who will forever go down in history as the very last castrato of the Vatican.
A destiny retraced in 2004 by the British countertenor Nicholas Clapton in his vibrant book
Moreschi.
The last castrato
(translated for Buchet-Chastel in 2008)…
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