Capon Capon A capon (from ) is a cockerel (rooster) that has been castrated to improve the quality of its flesh for food and, in some countries like Spain, fattened by forced feeding. In the United Kingdom, birds sold as capons are chemically or physically castrated cocks. The origins of caponised chickens are contested. They were known in ancient China as well as in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. An early record of caponisation is found under the Roman Republic: the Lex Faunia of 162 BC forbade fattening hens to conserve grain rations, so the Romans instead castrated roosters, which resulted
The Golden Cockerel The Golden Cockerel The Golden Cockerel (, "Zolotoy petushok") is an opera in three acts, with short prologue and even shorter epilogue, composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Its libretto written by Vladimir Belsky derives from Alexander Pushkin's 1834 poem "The Tale of the Golden Cockerel". The opera was completed in 1907 and premiered in 1909 in Moscow, after the composer's death. Outside Russia it has often been performed in French as "Le coq d'or". Rimsky-Korsakov had considered his previous opera, "The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya" (1907) to be his final artistic statement in the