
The Castrato and His Wife
Helen Berry(Author)
Oxford University Press
1st Edition
Published on 6. September 2012
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-0-19-965526-7 (ISBN)
Description
The opera singer Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci was one of the most famous celebrities of the eighteenth century. In collaboration with the English composer Thomas Arne, he popularized Italian opera, translating it for English audiences and making it accessible with his own compositions which he performed in London's pleasure gardens. Mozart and J. C. Bach both composed for him. He was a rock star of his day, with a massive female following. He was also a castrato.
Women flocked to his concerts and found him irresistible. His singing pupil, Dorothea Maunsell, a teenage girl from a genteel Irish family, eloped with him. There was a huge scandal; her father persecuted them mercilessly. Tenducci's wife joined him at his concerts, achieving a status as a performer she could never have dreamed of as a respectable girl. She also wrote a sensational account of their love affair, an early example of a teenage novel. Embroiled in debt, the Tenduccis fled to Italy, and the marriage collapsed when she fell in love with another man. There followed a highly publicized and unique marriage annulment case in the London courts. Everything hinged on the status of the marriage; whether the husband was capable of consummation, and what exactly had happened to him as a small boy in a remote Italian hill village decades before.
Ranging from the salons of princes and the grand opera houses of Europe to the remote hill towns of Tuscany, the unconventional love story of the castrato and his wife affords a fascinating insight into the world of opera and the history of sex and marriage in Georgian Britain, while also exploring questions about the meaning of marriage that continue to resonate in our own time.
Women flocked to his concerts and found him irresistible. His singing pupil, Dorothea Maunsell, a teenage girl from a genteel Irish family, eloped with him. There was a huge scandal; her father persecuted them mercilessly. Tenducci's wife joined him at his concerts, achieving a status as a performer she could never have dreamed of as a respectable girl. She also wrote a sensational account of their love affair, an early example of a teenage novel. Embroiled in debt, the Tenduccis fled to Italy, and the marriage collapsed when she fell in love with another man. There followed a highly publicized and unique marriage annulment case in the London courts. Everything hinged on the status of the marriage; whether the husband was capable of consummation, and what exactly had happened to him as a small boy in a remote Italian hill village decades before.
Ranging from the salons of princes and the grand opera houses of Europe to the remote hill towns of Tuscany, the unconventional love story of the castrato and his wife affords a fascinating insight into the world of opera and the history of sex and marriage in Georgian Britain, while also exploring questions about the meaning of marriage that continue to resonate in our own time.
Reviews / Votes
Helen Berry's history of the famous 18th-century castrato Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci and his young wife, Dorothea, is steeped in its period, but has the natural allure of a novel. * Sally Cousins, The Sunday Telegraph {Seven} *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
All those interested in the history of opera, eighteenth century Britain, and the history of love and sex
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
8pp black and white plates
Dimensions
Height: 193 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
386 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-965526-7 (9780199655267)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Helen Berry
The Castrato and His Wife
Book
09/2011
Oxford University Press
€32.40
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Helen Berry is Reader in Early Modern History at Newcastle University. She is the author of numerous articles on the history of eighteenth-century Britain, and is the co-editor (with Elizabeth Foyster) of The Family in Early Modern England (2007). This is her second book.
Content
Prelude ; 1. The Pig Man Arrives in Monte San Savino ; 2. Schooling Angels in Naples ; 3. The Castrato in London ; 4. Fancying Tenducci ; 5. A Dublin Scuffle ; 6. The Elopement ; 7. Married Life ; 8. The Trial ; 9. Legacy ; Coda ; Notes ; A Note on Sources ; Appendix: Deposition of Tomasso Massi ; Select Bibliography ; Index