¹ My translation from the authors’ Italian original. One of the many excellent features of this book is that whilst in the body of the text all quotations are in Italian, non-Italian original versions are given in the footnotes.

² Haböck, Franz, Die Gesangskunst der Kastraten (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1923)Google Scholar

³ Franceso Tosi, Observations on the Florid Song (Bologna: 1723; English translation by John Ernest Galliard, first published in London: 1743)Google Scholar

⁴ Contralto sopranile and la voce doppia are terms rarely encountered outside Italian usage, but the former, ‘a soprano-like contralto’ used the latter ‘double voice’ to achieve the wide ranges the authors describe, sounding very contralto in her lower range and very soprano at the other extreme, with often little attempt being made to hide any register ‘breaks’.

⁵ Giazotto, Remo, Maria Malibran (1808–1836): una vita nei nomi di Rossini e Bellini (Torino: ERI, 1986)Google Scholar

⁶ Giambattista Velluti gave his last stage performance in Meyerbeer's Il Crociato in Egitto at the Teatro la Pergola in Florence during May 1833.

⁷ Monaldi was only three years old when Pasta gave her last public performance, so could hardly have spoken of her singing from direct experience.

⁸ Gino Monaldi, Cantanti celebri del secolo XIX, (Rome: Nuova Antologia, 1907)Google Scholar

⁹ H F Chorley, Thirty Years’ Musical Recollections, vol II (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1862): 9–10Google Scholar

¹⁰ Julian Budden, The Operas of Verdi, vol II, (London: Cassell, 1978): 68–69)Google Scholar

¹¹ Taken from his film Opera Fanatic (Pars Music DVD 101813)

¹² I realise only too well that such terminology is itself the subject of enormous and contentious discussion; for a concise and, in my opinion, excellently sensible guide to such matters, see Richard Miller, The Art of Singing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996): 75–8.

¹³ Clapton, Nicholas, Moreschi and the Voice of the Castrato (London: Haus, 2008)Google Scholar