Let’s face it, we will never know what an 18th-century castrato really sounded like, since our only recordings, from the beginning of the last century – (Moreschi in the Sistine Chapel) – are misleadingly limited and bland. We know castrati made people weep, faint and thrill to their elemental sound. That’s not quite the result here from Roberta Invernizzi’s recital, since her tone is brilliant and pure, especially at the top of the register, but lacks raw power. Her model, the Roman singer Domenico Gizzi, was oddly sometimes described as a tenor rather than a castrato, though his range would have put Pavarotti to shame. The music by Feo, Vinci, Scarlatti and others is intermittently compelling, with Porpora’s Adelaide of 1723 emerging as an opera worth exploring.
