1-624-613 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Berenstat, Cuzzoni and Senesino' c1725. The Italian opera singers Gaetano Berenstadt (c1687-1735), Francesca Cuzzoni Sandoni (1700-1770) and Francesco Bernardi, known as 'Senesino' (c1686-1758) performing Handel's opera 'Flavio'. Berenstadt and Senesino were 'castrati' - male singers who were castrated before puberty in order to maintain a high singing voice. Illustration from Social Caricature in the Eighteenth Century ... With over two hundred illustrations by George Paston [pseudonym of Emily Morse Symonds], (London, 1905).