audio cleaned and improved as much as possible by me. This project consists of rejuvenating the voices of the singers of that time and cleaning them. Bearing in mind that the last castratis in the churches were already adults, and their voices over the years had fallen drastically
After the unification of Italy in 1861, castration for musical purposes became illegal (the new Italian State had adopted a French legal code that prohibited the practice). In 1878, Pope Leo XIII forbade the hiring of new castrati by the church: only in the Sistine Chapel and in some other papal basilicas of Rome were castrati allowed to stay. A photo of the choir of the Sistine Chapel taken in 1898 shows that by then there were only six (besides the Perpetual Direttore, Domenico Mustafa), and in 1902 a sentence from Pope Leon established that no more castrato would be admitted. The official end of the castrati arrived on St. Cecilia's day, November 22, 1903, when the new Pope, Pius X, issued a motu proprio, entitled Tra le Sollecitudini, in which he established the use of children in the papers used to the castrati.
