Haydn's Voice Changed
When Haydn was 15 his voice changed.
"The elder Haydn boy sings like a crow," complained the Empress Maria Theresa. Like all Viennese of the mid-18th century, the empress was crazy about music, and she took a special interest in the choir that sang mass daily in St. Stephen's Cathedral. Herr Reutter, the skinflint Kapellmeister (music director) who was in nominal charge of the choirboys' education, had a solution: with a simple surgical operation, young Sepperl could go on to a career as a male soprano, perhaps becoming a great opera star.
Times, however, were changing, and there were many who believed that the moral repulsiveness of the idea of the castrato singer outweighed the musical advantages. (Castration ensured that a man's voice stayed in the high, soprano register, while his deep chest cavity allowed him to produce effects beyond the power of women singers.) Sepperl's father came racing from the countryside to put a stop to Reutter's scheme. After a couple of years, Reutter got rid of the lad anyway: Sepperl mischievously cut off the pigtail of the boy singing in the row in front of him, and Reutter seized the opportunity to thrash him soundly and kick him out of the choir. Young Haydn went penniless into the streets of Vienna to start his painful climb toward a glory greater than that of the most admired male soprano. Robert Wernick