Episode 1
A baby boy is born to a humble family in a remote Tuscan hill town. As he grows up, the purity of his unbroken voice offers him an opportunity for social mobility.
Helen Berry's astonishing new portrait of Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci, the celebrated 18th century castrato, and his love affair with a young Irish girl, Dorothea Maunsell.
In today's episode, a baby boy is born to a humble family in a remote Tuscan hilltown. As he grows up, his evident talent for music and the purity of his unbroken voice offer him an opportunity for social mobility. But it's an opportunity that will require a very brutal kind of sacrifice.
Read by Greta Scacchi
Abridged by Viv Beeby
Produced by Emma Harding
'The Castrato and His Wife' is published by Oxford University Press.
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- Mon 3 Oct 201109:45BBC Radio 4 FM
- Tue 4 Oct 201100:30BBC Radio 4
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