In the Catholic Church during the Renaissance, St Paul's admonition ""mulieres in ecclesiis taceant"" ("let the women keep silence in the churches") still prevailed, and women were banned from singing in church services. Countertenors, though rarely described as such, therefore found a prominent part in liturgical music, whether singing a line alone or with boy trebles or altos. (Spain had a long tradition of male falsettists singing soprano lines). However, countertenors were never used for roles in early opera, the rise of which coincided with the arrival of a fashion for castrati. For example, they took several roles in the first performance of Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" (1607). Castrati were already prominent by this date in Italian church choirs, replacing both falsettists and trebles; the last soprano falsettist singing in Rome, Juan de Santos (a Spaniard), died in 1652. In Italian opera, by the late seventeenth century castrati predominated, while in France, the modal high tenor, called the "haute-contre", was established as the voice of choice for leading male roles.