Kurt and the Castrati
by aishuu
Kurt wasn't much of a history fan, although there were a couple of notable exceptions. He was an expert when it came to the history of fashion (it was best to see what faux pas had been committed in the past, and what might come back around since style tended to be cyclical), but he also loved music history.
Some days, he and Rachel would spend hours trying to stump each other with obscure musical theater history. They were fairly evenly matched; Kurt preferred the classics, while Rachel could ramble on and on about what was currently on Broadway. He didn't particular like her (no one did, with the possible exception of Finn, who was too stupid to dislike anyone), but he had to admit the girl knew her musicals.
But unlike Rachel, who only had her eyes on Broadway fame, Kurt was more of a generalist. There weren't many roles created specifically for male sopranos, and those that were tended to be very camp. Having to rearrange every song he wanted to perform was beyond aggravating, so he did what any American teen would do: he Googled for music written for his vocal type.
That, naturally, led him to discovery the castrati.
When Kurt's voice broke three years ago, it didn't really break. Throughout his childhood, he'd possessed a fine, childish treble that could always hit the highest notes. Somewhere along the way, his voice began to deepen, but he was never subject to the embarrassing cracks that had destroyed the careers of his peers. Instead, he noticed a slight expansion in his lower range, and an inability to hit the highest notes without having to resort to using his falsetto. He sometimes suspected he'd maintained an unnaturally high range because he'd pushed himself by singing the soundtrack from Wicked over and over again.
Most of the work written for male sopranos – or "countertenors" as they were called – was in the classical line of work. While Kurt liked classical as much as the next gay kid, he much preferred popular music. So that explained the tremendous gap in his education.
Kurt had long been subject to jokes about his masculinity, but he'd always viewed the standard insults from the plebeians that he was unfortunately forced to associate with at school. But as he found the music written for the castrati, he realized there was more to the joke than he'd realized.
He'd known that castration had been a practice in the past, but he'd never known that the Catholic Church used to encourage it to gain fine male sopranos for its choirs. The practice had fallen out of fashion almost one hundred fifty years ago, but the body of music remained, featuring some notes so high that Kurt wouldn't be able to hit them. Some of the notes were even outside of Rachel's vocal range.
Listening to a recording of Alessandro Moreschi – the only castrato who'd lived long enough to be recorded – Kurt realized that his smugness about his voice was premature. Moreschi's voice was inhumanely high, but the performance left Kurt with chills running down his spine. The music sounded peculiar to his modern ears, but Kurt was musician enough to recognize that even in his twilight years, Moreschi had been something special. This was the pinnacle of a male soprano, and Kurt would never be able to match that.
Not that he wanted to. To have the "voice of an angel" required a sacrifice of his masculinity. The very thought made him cross his legs uncomfortably. Kurt might be more flaming than the sun in July, but he liked his body just the way it was.
But it did offer him a different perspective. As challenging as his life was, things could still be so much worse.
The next time the jocks grabbed him to throw him into the dumpster, he smiled at them and insulted their intelligence, ignoring the inevitable damage they would do to the Ozwald Boateng ensemble he was wearing.
Kurt Hummel might sing soprano, but he had more balls than all of his tormentors combined.