What are some examples of human cruelty?

For hundreds of years, in the choirs of the Vatican, the Pope and his buddies were quite fond of great singing voices. There was just one problem with a beautifully voiced youth — they’d hit puberty and age out of it. Your balls drop, your voice drop, and poof! It’s gone. Gone is the magic. What a waste of great acoustics in all those beautiful cathedrals, no?

Someone discovered that in men who were castrated at an early age, the voice tends to remain high-pitched. But just a shrill voice alone won’t do — it has to be a trained voice, belonging to a trained singer. Someone who naturally has a large ribcage and a large lung capacity. Choir masters began to seek out the most talented boys, and promise them and their parents a glorious, financially secure future… surely their careers would last forever, if they kept that youthful timbre? There was but one condition…

The boy would have to be castrated. Many of the young, talented singers were convinced. There was a lot of money to be earned, and many came from poor families… the money was just too good to refuse. Whether the boy agreed or not mattered little; the parents had the final say. There were often many more siblings to feed and clothe and the choice seemed easy enough. So the boy would be tied up and emasculated.

I can’t imagine the horror… you’re eight years old, ten, maybe eleven at most. You’re a good little Christian boy, you sing in the Church choir, you try your hardest to please your parents, please the pastor, the priests. Obey, obey, and obey. Be ever so obedient, ever so useful, and so pious. You can’t really say no. A great sacrifice is demanded, and did God not sacrifice His only son?

You’d agree to it. Or you wouldn’t. It would make no difference — your nads would be gone. So would any chance to ever have a child of your own. And no, it wasn’t quite like the priests and their celibacy; they still had a choice, after all, and you didn’t. Many priests had secret lovers, you, however, were done for.

Not all castrato singers made it big. Despite the promises of great wealth, many of them remained mediocre at best or never quite reached the heights they dreamed of reaching… as middle age set in, their appearances grew ever-more bizarre, their limbs overly stretched, ribcages overgrown, fingers long and slender. They developed man-boobs. Brittle bones. No body hair, no facial hair, no testosterone, often no erections and being unable to perform sexually.

The few, who did become successful, often became fabulously successful. Men like Farinelli were the Michael Jackson’s of their era. Their fame lasted for decades. Their wealth was great. But the price was high, far too high. When the authorities began to crack down more on the practice, excuses were invented, families would claim the boys were operated on “due to an accident”, being bitten by a dog or boar or because of a disease… for decades more they found loopholes to continue the sick practice.

Eventually the Vatican officially forbade the practice somewhere in the 19th century, but not before many young lives were forever destroyed. All that pain and suffering just for a damn choir… Alessandro Moreschi, who died in 1922, was the last castrato singer of the Vatican.