Definition of "castrato" [cas•tra•to]

• A male singer castrated before puberty so as to retain a soprano or alto voice. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In many ways, the castrato is the corporeal manifestation of Longinus 'theory of the sublime, in which hypsous requires a synthesis of nature and art that cannot be reduced either to capacity or to will."
• "A male singer who has, between the approximate age of six and twelve, undergone a surgical procedure to impede the "breaking" of his voice that would normally take place during puberty, the castrato is a male soprano, soprano meaning, literally, higher."
• "Such escape tactics, in which the image of the castrato is wrenched from the sound of his voice in the name of delicacy or comfort is significant both to the study of the castrato specifically and to the study of image/sound relations in romanticism more generally."