The recording of the last european castrato is definately different. The top G leaves something to be desired but it's quite impressive otherwise.

It belongs to the pre microphone days where a true boy's voice wouldn't be powerful enough to fill a large space. It's an interesting aside that as modern bodies have grown bigger the voices of choirboys have grown more powerful, the flipside being that their voices break earlier so they don't get the experience to sing really well before the voice breaks.

Steve