Francesco Bernardi, known as Senesino, was a celebrated Italian contralto castrato, particularly remembered today for his long collaboration with the composer George Frideric Handel. He was also involved in a public scandal with the soprano Anastasia Robinson in 1724 which was circulated widely by the satirist Jonathan Swift, and inspired a number of anonymously written obscene, misogynistic, and at times sexually subversive epistles written between 1724 and 1736 which have become a topic of study among scholars of Restoration literature.
Senesino c. 1720
Senesino in 1735, by Van Haecken after Hudson
Portrait of the contralto castrato Francesco Bernardi, better known under his stage name Senesino; at the same time a parody of the castrati and their singing – and the wealth they earned with it. The lines beneath the portrait read, in Italian and English: "Renown'd Sienna gave him birth and name / Kind Heaven his Voice and Harmony his Fame / While here the Great and Fair their Tribute bring / The Deaf may wonder whence his Merits spring / But all think Fortune just, that hear him sing".
A castrato is a male singer who underwent castration before puberty in order to retain singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto. The voice can also occur in one who, due to an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.
The great 18th-century castrato Farinelli, painted by Bartolomeo Nazari
A Byzantine castrato from the 11th century
A caricature of Farinelli in a female role, by Pier Leone Ghezzi, 1724
The castrato Carlo Scalzi, by Joseph Flipart, c. 1737
