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WORK TITLE: The Castrato
WORK NOTES: trans by Jonathan Ellis
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 7/28/1962
WEBSITE: http://www.joycepool.nl/
CITY: Texel
STATE:
COUNTRY: Netherlands
NATIONALITY: Dutch
https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/the-castrato/ * https://theidlewoman.net/2016/10/13/the-castrato-joyce-pool/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born July 28, 1962, in the Netherlands.
EDUCATION:Pedagogical Academy, Leiden, Netherlands.
ADDRESS
CAREER
High school teacher in Texel, North Holland, Netherlands.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Born July 28, 1962, Dutch writer Joyce Pool writes historical fiction and contemporary stories. She studied at the Pedagogical Academy in Leiden. On the island Texel in the province of North Holland, she teaches high school.
Turning to young adult fiction, Pool published The Castrato in 2016. In 1698 Florence, twelve-year-old Angelo Montegne is the son of a poor tanner, but is also a beautiful soprano singer who sings in church. When his father dies and the family is desperate for money, Angelo agrees to study music at the Florentine Conservatory against his father’s wishes. Deceived, Angelo learns the ultimate price of keeping his voice childlike—castration. Despite the drastically altered future ahead of him, with no chance for a wife and children, the now adolescent young man sings beautifully and attracts the attention of the Florentine elite, including the city’s most wealthy family, the de Medici. If he refuses the lecherous advances of Ferdinando de Medici, his singing career would be over. Angelo also falls in love with Rosa, the daughter of the composer Alessandro Scarlatti. His romantic future complicates his life of fabulous wealth and fame and his sexual future.
Writing in Voice of Youth Advocates, Deanne Boyer commented that the modern dialogue contrasts with the Renaissance setting, but noted that with the focus on Angelo’s ability to love someone sexually and emotionally, “readers can identify with Angelo’s struggle to understand himself, his sexuality, and his place in the world.” Online at Foreword Reviews, Susan Waggoner praised the book for presenting a fresh and original point of view of post-Renaissance Italy, yet acknowledged that “Some scenes go on for too long, padded with red herrings and detours… and pensive Angelo is sometimes unrealistically naïve.”
On the Idle Woman website, a reviewer found “the English translation renders it a clumsy piece of work, full of inappropriate modernisms, awkward dialogue and contextually inappropriate use of Italian” and added, “This book may be ‘young adult’ but that doesn’t mean it can’t be accurate.” The reviewer added: “The characterisation is shallow and, even in the later stages, the characters too frequently behave like children rather than the adults they would have been by the standards of the time.” Nevertheless, Booklist reviewer Anne O’Malley said: “This is a disturbing and fascinating glimpse into the dark side of Renaissance music.” In Publishers Weekly, a contributor noted that Pool doesn’t shy away from Angelo’s sexual desires despite his condition and also “convincingly depicts the sensory aspects of the lives of the poor and the wealthy in that era.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 1, 2016, Anne O’Malley, review of The Castrato, p. 52.
Publishers Weekly, September 26, 2016, review of The Castrato, p. 95.
Voice of Youth Advocates, December 2016, Deanne Boyer, review of The Castrato, p. 66.
ONLINE
Foreword Reviews, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (November 15, 2016), Susan Waggoner, review of The Castrato.
Idle Woman, https://theidlewoman.net/ (October 13 2016), review of The Castrato.
Joyce Pool Website, http://www.joycepool.nl (July 1, 2017), author profile.*
in Dutch
JOYCE POOL (1962) studied at the Pedagogical Academy in Leiden. She lives on the island Texel where she teaches high school. Pool has written both historical fiction and contemporary stories. The Castrato is her first young adult novel.
Pool, Joyce. The Castrato
Deanne Boyer
39.5 (Dec. 2016): p66.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
3Q * 2P * S * NA
Pool, Joyce. The Castrato. Lemniscaat USA, 2016. 284p. $12.95 Trade pb. 978-1-93595441-5.
At twelve years old, Angelo's pure voice attracts the attention of the padres of the Florentine Conservatory. Against his dead fathers wishes, Angelo agrees to learn music at the conservatory without understanding the cost--castration. As a castrato, he is angry at the padres for their deceit, but quickly becomes their best singer along with his friend, Paolo. When Angelo and Paolo sing at a funeral for the wealthiest family in the city, their beautiful voices are noticed by Prince de Medici who invites them to his home to sing in a concert. The prince is captivated by Angelo's voice and presents him with another offer he cannot refuse. Angelo is forced to decide between his career as a singer and the freedom to love whom he chooses.
The Castrato is an historical fiction novel that follows a story line which has little representation in young adult literature. Although set in 1600s Italy, the dialogue is modern and can seem disjointed with the book's setting. The book's focus, however, is not the history of this period, but rather Angelo's main dilemma, which is his ability to love another, both sexually and emotionally, as a castrato. With this focus, readers can identify with Angelo's struggle to understand himself, his sexuality, and his place in the world--Deanne Boyer.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Boyer, Deanne. "Pool, Joyce. The Castrato." Voice of Youth Advocates, Dec. 2016, p. 66. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA474767954&it=r&asid=a1a9dd8e23ed76cfed37810fce6fc255. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A474767954
The Castrato
Anne O'Malley
113.5 (Nov. 1, 2016): p52.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
The Castrato. By Joyce Pool. Nov. 2016. 285p. Lemniscaat, paper, $12.95 (9781935954415). Gr. 8-11.
Angelo's exquisite voice catapults him to the top of his choir in Italian Renaissance Fiesole and attracts attention from the prestigious conservatory in Florence. Perhaps sensing a hidden danger, Papa refuses to let him go. But after Papa's untimely death, the conservatory becomes a realistic option for the orphaned Angelo. Readers will sense an ominous note as he is led away by Padre Battista--and straight to a brutal castration "surgery," a not-uncommon practice in earlier centuries to preserve a young boy's soprano voice. Angelo, filled with regret about the price he has paid for his talent, desperately calculates how he can devote his life to music and still have a somewhat normal life as a "half-man." When he attracts the attention of a Medici prince, a sexual predator who will bankroll Angelos career amid a life of luxury, the desperation intensifies. This is a disturbing and fascinating glimpse into the dark side of Renaissance music. Angelo's story will tug at readers' heartstrings as he tries to find his way.--Anne O'Malley
O'Malley, Anne
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
O'Malley, Anne. "The Castrato." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2016, p. 52. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471142917&it=r&asid=173113b631edfa85e5a2130e5871fa83. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A471142917
The Castrato
263.39 (Sept. 26, 2016): p95.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
The Castrato
Joyce Pool, trans. from the Dutch by Jonathan Ellis. Lemniscaat USA (IPS, dist.), $12.95 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-1-935954-41-5
Pool's sexually charged story opens with the dramatic aftermath of the castration of 12-year-old Angelo Montegne, an impoverished tanner's son with an exquisite singing voice in Fiesole, Italy, in 1698. Although Angelo's father vehemently turns down a priest's invitation for his son to join the oldest conservatory in Florence ("the price is too high"), Angelo is persuaded by his sister and aunt to accept, after his father's death. Traumatized by the unexpected castration, he now understands his father's objection, but it is too late: over the years Angelo becomes one of the conservatory's rising sopranists and catches the eye of the lecherous Prince de Medici. Pool doesn't shy away from describing Angelo's erotic desires (including those for Rosa Scarlatti, defiant daughter of the famous composer), his horror and disgust at his condition, or the sexual encounters between the young men in the conservatory, but she also convincingly depicts the sensory aspects of the lives of the poor and the wealthy in that era. Readers will be swept up into Angelo's life and rejoice with him at the happy ending. Ages 15--up. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Castrato." Publishers Weekly, 26 Sept. 2016, p. 95. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465558320&it=r&asid=815f360aba34a9bff0a18ae3ed21a281. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A465558320
The Castrato
Reviewed by Susan Waggoner
November 15, 2016
The Castrato is an enjoyable portrait of post-Renaissance Italy told from a fresh and original point of view.
Florence in 1698 is the backdrop for Joyce Pool’s The Castrato, a sensitive tale of the joys and sorrows of life as a castrato.
Twelve-year-old Angelo Montegne, gifted with a golden voice, thinks he’s made a good bargain. In return for education and the training, he will sing for the church at masses, funerals, and on demand for wealthy patrons. Only when he wakes with a searing pain in his groin does he begin to realize the true cost of his bargain, a mutilation performed against his will.
The story leaps ahead four years to find Angelo, still in training, renowned as one of the best sopranos in Florence. Soon he attracts the attention of Prince Ferdinando de Medici, attention that will ultimately force him to choose between a life of fame and luxury as the Prince’s pet, and the life he would choose for himself.
The story is at its best when showing Angelo’s attempts to balance his passion for music with his ruined self-image. Angelo is sterile but still sexual; women appeal to him, but he fears his inability to have children, combined with the elongated limbs common to castrati, rule out hope of marriage. Nevertheless, he finds comfort in flirting with a shy housemaid and, later, something deeper with Rosa Scarlatti, daughter of the famous composer.
Rosa’s willingness to accept him as he is seems powerful enough to pull Angelo away from the Prince’s offer, but powerful counterweights are posed by his obligation to care for his impoverished sister and the knowledge that refusing a Medici will end his career in Florence.
Some scenes go on for too long, padded with red herrings and detours. An initial flashback of the days leading up to Angelo’s castration also slows the pace, and pensive Angelo is sometimes unrealistically naive; the repeated insistence that love-interest Rosa is impudent and impetuous can be grating.
The Castrato is an enjoyable portrait of post-Renaissance Italy told from a fresh and original point of view.
The Castrato: Joyce Pool
October 13, 2016
The Castrato
Joyce Pool
★★
When I saw that this book was available for advance review, I jumped on it immediately. In theory, this story of a young castrato studying in Florence in the twilight years of the Medici dynasty couldn’t have been further up my street if it had tried. The protagonist is even offered the lead in a Scarlatti setting of Arminio! I looked forward to being immersed in the sensual splendour of Florence circa 1698, rich with art and texture and music, but alas that didn’t happen. In fact, the book turned out to be such a slog that I doubt I’d have finished it if I didn’t have to review it. More unfortunately, I suspect that the real problem here is that of the translator, not the author.
The Castrato is the translation into English of a Dutch historical novel first published in 2013. The author, Joyce Pool, has written extensively for the young adult market, at which this novel is also aimed, and I suspect that if I had been able to read the Dutch version I would have found it a far more successful piece of work. Indeed, the Dutch original was shortlisted for a literary prize in 2013. Unfortunately, the English translation renders it a clumsy piece of work, full of inappropriate modernisms, awkward dialogue and contextually inappropriate use of Italian. I don’t know who is responsible for this, but they have done Pool no favours, adding further issues to a book that has some integral problems of its own.
When we first meet Angelo Montegne, he’s twelve years old and lives in Fiesole with his father, a tanner, his aunt Ignatia and his sister Mariana. Most of Angelo’s time is spent helping his father in their shop, but he is also a core member of the church choir, where his beautiful voice has drawn the attention of the master. When tempted with the chance to sing solo for the Pope, who will visit Fiesole later in the year, Angelo auditions in front of an audience of distinguished visitors. Among them are two teachers from the conservatorio in Florence. When Angelo’s family circumstances change for the worse, these teachers are there to offer him a way out: come to Florence, they say; live comfortably; study singing. What they don’t tell him is that his agreement will mean an irrevocable sacrifice on his part, which will secure his lovely voice forever but also strip away his chances ever to have a wife and children. As Angelo progresses in his studies, he discovers that the life of a castrato can lead to unimaginable luxury – but is he prepared to make the necessary further sacrifices? Should he follow wealth and submit to the advances of the effeminate Ferdinando de’ Medici, or follow his heart and succumb to the charms of the effervescent Rosa, daughter of the composer Alessandro Scarlatti?
Indulge me with some pedantry for a moment. This book may be ‘young adult’ but that doesn’t mean it can’t be accurate. Ferdinando de’ Medici is constantly referred to as ‘Prince De Medici’, when if anything he should be addressed as ‘Prince Ferdinando’. There’s no contextual information about this ‘prince’ and you could easily come away from this book imagining that the Medici were the monarchs of Florence rather than Grand Dukes. Ferdinando was merely the heir of the Grand Duke, with the courtesy title of Grand Prince. We don’t get any sense of the family around him, nor of the strangely intense character of Florentine culture in these years, which was captured so disturbingly in Secrecy. Ferdinando’s genuine and deep knowledge of music is given lip-service with the presence of Bartolomeo Cristofori, the inventor of the pianoforte, but really comes across as little more than a front to get handsome young men into his bed. Yes, there was that too – in real life he had a liaison with a Venetian castrato – but in the book this complex character is reduced to little more than a two-dimensional lecher, the debauched man trying to lure our hero away from his wholesome girlfriend. Some of the names don’t quite ring true (surely it should be Ignazia rather than Ignatia; Giuseppe rather than Josepho?). And everyone constantly refers to the castrati as ‘sopranists’ whereas in fact I think the polite term at the time was ‘virtuosi’.
But it’s not just my pedantry (which may in any case be mistaken). The characterisation is shallow and, even in the later stages, the characters too frequently behave like children rather than the adults they would have been by the standards of the time. The translator has introduced modern slang, which grates horribly: ‘okay’ and ‘mate’ make regular appearances and one of the castrati boasts that ‘we can sing the pants off them’, which isn’t just modernised but Americanised (can you imagine Caffarelli saying that?). I’m not saying that historical fiction has to be written in Shakespearean English, but I’m a firm believer that even lively writing has to be true to the spirit of its historical period, unless it’s actually trying to be comic or anachronistic. Beyond the fact of them being castrati, the pupils at this conservatorio sound like modern schoolboys. Punctuation is erratic and occasionally entirely absent within a sentence: the book could have done with another very good editor. As I said above, there’s little sense of historical place or context, beyond the Etruscan theatre in Fiesole and the Arno in Florence (as a place for people to throw themselves into). Where is the richness of the liturgical calendar, the grandeur of the Duomo and all the personality of Baroque Italy? And finally, who is this novel actually written for? The publisher’s guide suggests it’s aimed at ages 15-18, but while the content is inappropriate for younger readers, the book’s style is far too childlike for its target age group. At fifteen I was already a committed Anne Rice fan and nowadays readers will have been through The Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, or whatever series is the flavour of the moment, presenting a dark, emotionally intense and gritty world. By contrast, The Castrato is extremely naive – bordering on coy – for a novel that’s essentially about young men having their testicles cut off.
For example, let’s focus for a moment on the challenges of finding words for part of the male body. Those of a sensitive nature should skip this paragraph. In an effort to avoid the word ‘penis’ (it’s occasionally necessary) the translator takes refuge in some truly schoolroom slang that made me wince. ‘Pecker’ is already bad but I can just about accept it; but has anyone really used the word ‘willie’ [sic] since they were eight years old and giggling in the corner of the playground? It’s just painful. Once again I find myself wondering why we can’t just call a spade a spade – or, failing a spade, a ‘prick’ or a suitably robust Anglo-Saxon alternative? Perhaps the translator felt that the word ‘cock’ would scare the horses, but if readers aren’t ready for that at the age of fifteen, they presumably won’t be ready for scenes of masturbation or attempted gay ravishment either. Just a thought. And if they are, for heaven’s sake, they should just go straight on to Anne Rice.
And that’s the elephant in the corner of the room. Anyone who writes a novel about castrati in this period has to be aware of the hugely influential Cry to Heaven – or, if they aren’t, that suggests they haven’t done any reading around the subject. For many of us, that book was our introduction to the castrati, and I don’t think there’s any point in tackling this theme unless you’re confident that you have something to say which is sufficiently original and different. Pool’s book unfortunately feels like a watered down version, rather than drawing on the robust, challenging and subversive qualities which have characterised some of the very good young adult fiction I’ve read – and which would be so appropriate for this topic. In contrast, Rice’s novel is melodramatic, sensitive, erotic, rich with Venetian sensuality, woven through with the love of music and stuffed with purple prose: it suits the subject perfectly, and I’m afraid that The Castrato doesn’t quite cut it (no pun intended).