A Tear in Each Note

April 21, 1922 - The last castrato died.

Alessandro Moreschi, castrated as a child under murky circumstances, spent decades as the star soprano of the Sistine Chapel Choir in Rome. His voice—preserved in a handful of eerie early recordings—is the only known example of what a castrato actually sounded like.

By the early 1900s, the world had moved on. The Church had banned the practice. Moreschi’s voice was fading. But before it was gone, he stepped in front of a phonograph horn and sang into the future.

What survives is strange, wavering, and almost ghostlike—a sound from a vanished tradition that no one can recreate.

The last echo of a voice that history itself erased.