By John Flower

The unfortunate lad who displayed talent had little choice; the Catholic church, and later opera houses, provided a ready home and an income for a poor family willing to sacrifice a son. And was the result - the clarity of a boy's voice with the strength of a man's body - worth it? Alas, we may never know. The last castrato, Alessandro Moreschi, director of the Sistine chapel choir, died in 1922. What we can do, however, is listen to a counter tenor, a man who sings soprano or alto in falsetto.

Baroque opera was written for a castrato, to be a glittering showcase for a virtuoso, who would be idolised, be paid vast sums, and, sometimes, would end in crash-and-burn style (just like a modern film star); the film Farinelli gave an entrancing glimpse of such a life.

One Sunday lunchtime in November, the Hackney Empire proms concert season set out to recreate this 18th century world in music, words and images. Battuta are an informal ensemble of the authentic performance movement, playing baroque music as it was intended to be heard. Led by Hackney-born George Crawford conducting on violin as done in the period, they featured Persephone Gibbs on violin, Louise Hogan on viola, Joe Crouch on cello, and Matthew Halls, on a splendidly pillar-box red harpsichord. Singing the castrato part was Iestyn Davies, a counter tenor who began as a boy chorister and choral scholar at Cambridge, before an international career that has included singing on the soundtrack of Ridley Scott's crusader epic, Kingdom of Heaven.

The performance began at 11.30am in a well-filled auditorium and relaxed atmosphere of coffee and pain au chocolat. Family groups were in evidence, and a refuge room with audiovisual link was provided for restless children and accompanying parents; at times, however, one might wish it was made more use of.

The concert, mainly pieces by Handel and Vivaldi, explored their world, and that of the famous Italian castrato Senesino, with George Crawford giving history and anecdote, and contemporary illustrations projected behind the stage. Handel composed his most outstanding works of opera seria for Senesino, but it was an all-too-brief partnership. The star singer was poached by a rival London company, while the tragic plots were too florid and high-minded for opera house audiences. Mozart later moved on to a more pleasing mix of tragedy and comedy; in London, Handel was upstaged by John Gay's Beggar's Opera, in English.

The baroque works, and the modest ensemble of instruments, offered an intimate yet stately style that at once harked back to the formality and austerity of Renaissance church worship, while suggesting what was to come in the ease and magnificence of an Enlightenment orchestral performance. Unlike the castrati, whose stature grew with age into tall creatures with barrel-like chests, Iestyn Davies was a slight, boyish figure, in open white shirt, black suit and spikey hair. His singing was delicate, precise and understated. It breathed vocal life and passion into the noble sentiments and agonised feelings of arias such as 'Cara sposa' (Where are you, my dear beloved') from Handel's Rinaldo. It was a journey back to an age and a music whose enthusiasms and virtues, so different from those of today, should not be forgotten.

The Hackney Empire proms continue on Sunday lunchtime, December 11, with an expanded Battuta in a concert of baroque Christmas concertos.

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