You’re a young boy in Italy in 1700 who shows very promising musical talent at a very early age. You live in Europe and hear beautiful music in church every Sunday. Something like the opera is far out of reach, but music is your passion. At church, you hear men singing with incredibly high voices, and hear them referred to as “castrati”, though at your tender age, you don’t know exactly what that means. You know they’re very famous and sing in opera houses around Europe, and they are very tall.
You also can sneak peeks into the local orphanage, and hear them playing beautiful instruments. You can’t see the children you know are inside, but are captivated by the heavenly sounds coming from the windows.
You want more than anything to become a musician yourself. However your family is extremely poor and can’t afford the kind of training you would need in order to pursue music seriously.
Do your parents:
a) opt to have your castrated by the local barber so you can keep your high singing voice, and be sent to a castrati school?
or
b) give you up to a religious order with an orphanage that has a promising musical program?
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B seems the most likely to let you raise not just the family name, but also the family line, out of poverty.