Farinelli
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Farinelli (January 24, 1705 – September 16, 1782), whose real name was Carlo Broschi, was one of the most famous Italian soprano castrato singers of the 18th century.
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[edit] Early years
Broschi was born in Andria (now in the Italian region of Puglia) into a family of musicians. His father Salvatore was also governor of Maratea and Cisternino from 1706 to 1709. Broschi was castrated as a boy to preserve his young voice into adulthood. As was often the case, an excuse had to be found for this always illegal operation, and in Carlo's case it was said to have been necessitated by a fall from a horse.
In 1711, Carlo's family moved to Naples, where the young singer later studied with the famous composer and singing-teacher Nicola Porpora. He made his public debut in 1720 in Porpora's Angelica e Medoro, and soon becoming famous throughout Italy as il ragazzo ("the boy"; the origin of his stage name of Farinelli is unclear, though a possible explanation is that three rich Neapolitan music-loving brothers by name Farina sponsored Carlo in his studies). In 1722 he made his first appearance at Rome in his master's Eumene and was received with enormous enthusiasm. From about this time there dates an almost legendary story that he had to perform an aria with trumpet obbligato, which evolved into a contest between singer and trumpeter. The latter thought he had achieved prodigies of technique and ornamentation, only for Farinelli to surpass him so much that he "was at last silenced only by the acclamations of the audience" (to quote the music historian Charles Burney — this account cannot be verified one way or the other, since no surviving work which Farinelli is known to have performed at this time contains an aria for soprano with trumpet obbligato). In common with many young castrati, Farinelli, in the early stages of his career frequently sang women's roles, including the title-role in Porpora's Adelaide.
[edit] Career in Europe
In 1724, Farinelli first appeared at Vienna, spending the following season in Naples. In 1726, he also visited Parma and Milan, where Johann Joachim Quantz heard him and commented: "Farinelli had a penetrating, full, rich, bright and well-modulated soprano voice, with a range at that time from the A below middle C to the D two octaves above middle C. ... His intonation was pure, his trill beautiful, his breath control extraordinary and his throat very agile, so that he performed the widest intervals quickly and with the greatest ease and certainty. Passagework and all kinds of melismas were of no difficulty to him. In the invention of free ornamentation in adagio he was very fertile."
Farinelli sang at Bologna in 1727. There he met and acknowledged himself vanquished by the singer Antonio Bernacchi (twenty years Farinelli's senior), to whose instruction in finer points of technique he was much indebted. With ever-increasing success and fame, Farinelli appeared in nearly all the great cities of Italy. Handel was keen to engage him for his company in London and while in Venice in January 1730, tried unsuccessfully to meet him.
In 1731, Farinelli visited Vienna for a third time. There he was received by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI, on whose advice, according to the singer's first biographer, Giovenale Sacchi, he modified his style, expanding his affective repertoire to include pathos and simplicity alongside bravura. After further seasons in Italy, and another visit to Vienna, during which he sang in oratorios in the Imperial chapel, Farinelli came to London in 1734. He had been engaged by "The Opera of the Nobility", a company, supported by Frederick, Prince of Wales in opposition to Handel, that had Porpora as its composer and Senesino as principal singer. Farinelli's first appearance, at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, was in Artaserse, a pasticcio opera for which his brother Riccardo Broschi had composed some of the music. Though his success was instantaneous and enormous, neither the Nobility Opera nor Handel's company was able to sustain the public's interest. Farinelli, nonetheless, was still under contract in London in the summer of 1737 when he received a summons, via Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, Secretary of the Spanish Embassy there, to visit the Spanish court.
[edit] At the court of Spain
Apparently intending to make his continental visit only a brief one, Farinelli called at Paris on his way to Madrid, singing at Versailles to King Louis XV on 9 July. On 15 July he left for Spain, arriving about a month later. Probably influenced by contemporary theories on the usefulness of music as a therapeutic device passed on to her by her personal physician, Giuseppe Cervi, the Queen of Spain, Elisabetta Farnese, had come to believe that Farinelli's voice might be able to cure the severe depression from which her husband, King Philip V, had long suffered, to the severe detriment of affairs of state. Having sung before the King, on 25 August 1737 Farinelli was named "Chamber musician to their Majesties, quitting the public stage" — indeed he never sang again in public, but his trip to Spain lasted twenty-two years. Though his singing cannot be said to have cured the King, this early music therapy certainly had some success: Farinelli became a royal favourite, and very influential at court. For the remaining nine years of Philip's life, Farinelli gave nightly private concerts to the royal couple, and also sang to other members of the royal family. He also organised private performances by them, and by professional musicians in the royal palaces. In 1738 he arranged for an entire Italian opera company to visit Madrid, beginning a real fashion for opera seria in the Spanish capital. The Coliseo of the royal palace of Buen Retiro was remodelled, and became Madrid's only opera house.
On the accession of Philip's son, Ferdinand VI, Farinelli's influence became even greater: Philip was a keen musician, and his wife, Barbara of Portugal, little short of a musical fanatic (as long ago as 1728 she had appointed Farinelli's fellow Italian, Domenico Scarlatti, as her harpsichord teacher; the musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick acknowledges Farinelli's correspondence as providing "most of the direct information about Scarlatti that has transmitted itself to our day"). The relationship between singer and monarchs was personally close: he and the queen sang duets together, and the king accompanied him on the harpsichord. Extravagant Italian opera productions continued, and Farinelli was, in 1747, named Director of the theatres at Buen Retiro and another royal palace, Aranjuez. Italian musicians worked there in large numbers, the composers were Italian, and the libretti they set were often by Farinelli's life-long friend Pietro Metastasio, now court poet at Vienna. In 1750 the King made the singer a Knight of the Order of Calatrava, an honour of which he was enormously proud. Although much courted by diplomats, Farinelli seems to have managed to keep out of politics, but history eventually caught up with him.
[edit] Retirement and death
In 1760, Ferdinand was succeeded by his half-brother Charles III in 1760, who was no lover of music. Charles was the son of Elisabetta Farnese, who had never forgiven Farinelli for his (professionally entirely understandable) decision to remain at court on the death of Philip V, rather than following her into internal exile. Retaining a generous royal pension, Farinelli retired to Bologna, where as long ago as 1732 he had acquired a property. Though rich and still famous, much feted by local notables and visited by such famous figures as Burney, Mozart and Casanova, his was a lonely old age. He continued his correspondence with Metastasio, dying a few months after him. In his will, Farinelli asked that he be buried in his mantle of the order of Calatrava, and was interred in the cemetery of the Capuchin monastery of Santa Croce in Bologna. His estate included gifts from royalty, a large collection of paintings, including works by Velázquez, Murillo, and Ribera, and valuable musical instruments, among them a Stradivarius violin. His original place of burial was destroyed during the Napoleonic wars, and in 1810 Farinelli's great niece Maria Carlotta Pisani had his remains transferred to the cemetery of La Certosa in Bologna. She was buried in the same grave in 1850.
[edit] Farinelli's other musical activities
Farinelli not only sang, but like most musicians of his time, was a competent harpsichordist. In old age, he learned to play the viola d'amore. He occasionally composed, writing a cantata of farewell to London (for which he also wrote the text), and a few songs and arias, including one dedicated to Ferdinand VI.
[edit] Farinelli Study Centre
Farinelli lived in Bologna from 1761 until his death. The Farinelli Study Centre (Centro Studi Farinelli) was opened in Bologna in 1998. Major events and achievements include:
- The restoration of Farinelli’s grave in the Certosa of Bologna (2000)
- An historical exhibition Farinelli a Bologna (2001 and 2005)
- The inauguration of a City Park in the name of Farinelli, near the site where the singer lived in Bologna (2002)
- An international symposium Il Farinelli e gli evirati cantori on the occasion of Farinelli’s 300th anniversary of his birth (2005)
- An official publication Il fantasma del Farinelli (2005)
- The disinterment of Farinelli at the Certosa of Bologna (2006)
[edit] Disinterment
Farinelli's remains were disinterred from the Certosa cemetery on 12 July 2006. The stacking of the bones had degraded the condition of Farinelli's remains, but these included his jawbone, several teeth, parts of his skull and almost all of the major bones. Florentine antiquarian Alberto Bruschi and Luigi Verdi, Secretary of the Farinelli Study Centre, co-ordinator and general manager of the project, promoted the exhumation. The next day Carlo Vitali of the Farinelli Study Centre stated that the major bones were "long and sturdy, which would correspond with Farinelli's official portraits, as well as the castrati's reputation for being unusually tall." Maria Giovanna Belcastro of the Anthropology Institute of Bologna University, Gino Fornaciari, paleoanthropologist of the University of Pisa and engineer David Howard of York University are charged with deriving such new data on Farinelli and his lifestyle, habits and possible diseases, as well as the physiology of a castrato, as can be retrieved from these remains. Their research methods will include X-rays, CAT scans and DNA sampling.
[edit] In popular culture
A film, Farinelli, directed by Gérard Corbiau, was made about Farinelli's life in 1994. This takes considerable dramatic licence with history, emphasising the importance of Farinelli's brother and reducing Porpora's role, while Handel becomes an antagonist; the singer's time in Spain is ignored almost entirely. Farinelli's supposed sexual exploits are a major element of the film's plot. Though cinematically effective, they have no basis in reality.
The film is not the first dramatic work to take Farinelli's life as its source material. He appears as a character in the opera La Part du Diable, composed by Daniel Auber to a libretto by Eugène Scribe, and has the title-role in an opera by the English composer John Barnett, first performed at Drury Lane in 1839, where his part is, oddly, written for a tenor (this work is itself an adaptation of the anonymous Farinelli, ou le Bouffe du Roi, premiered in Paris in 1835). More recent operas include Matteo d'Amico's Farinelli, la voce perduta (1996) and Farinelli, oder die Macht des Gesanges by Siegfried Matthus (1998).
In L.E. Modesitt's Spellsong Cycle, the soprano sorceress Anna names her horse (a gelding) Farinelli.
In the background of Blink 182's music video, Dammit, a poster advertising the film Farinelli can be seen.
[edit] References
- this entry was originally based on that in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica
- article on Farinelli in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie (2001)
- Heriot, A: The castrati in Opera (London, 1956), pp 95–110
- Cappelletto, S: La voce perduta (Turin, 1995); the most recent biography of the singer
- Pérez Samper, M A: Isabel de Farnesio (Barcelona, 2003), pp 387–397
- Farinelli (British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies; vol 28, no 3 (Oxford, 2005); the most recent collection of articles about the singer
- Crow, C: Orchestration… Or Castration (History Today, September 2006; vol 56, no 9, pp 4–5)
