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Farinelli portrait
of
Farinelli
by
Some 200 years after his death, one
of the greatest singers of any age, Farinelli, returned
to the spotlight (played by Italian actor Stefano
Dionisi) in Gerard Corbiau's 1994 film, Farinelli
voce Regina. (The
title seems to be a deliberate, bizarre pun on the real
Farinelli's nickname "Singer to the Kings". Voce
regina does mean "regal voice", yes, but in
Italian and the original French the title may also be
read as "Queen of Singers". Since Farinelli was a eunuch
soprano, and since we all know what a "queen" is—
well...ha-ha... (See the linked item, above, for a
mention of modern male sopranos, termed "sopranists.") The film centers on the singer's
rivalry with and antipathy towards the German composer
Haendel when both were in London in the mid 1730s trying
to organize competing opera companies. The interesting
thing about the film is the soundtrack. Since they don't
make castrati anymore, the filmmaker had to rely
on the audio wizardry of the
French IRCAM (Institut de
Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique)
to splice together and otherwise unify the voices of
male counter-tenor Derek Lee Ragin and female
coloratura Ewa Mallas Godlewska such that the finished
product sounded as if it came from a single voice of
incredible power and range. It works, although the
lip-synching could be better. The film also perpetuates
the claim that young Broschi couldn't remember having
been castrated because he had been too young at the time
and, thus, believed his brother that the operation had
been done to treat a horse-riding accident at a very
young age. (Children meant to become castrati
were generally castrated at the age of 8 to 10.) There are a few books about
Farinelli. One is Farinelli the Castrato, by Andrée Corbiau (presumably related to
the director of the film) from 1994.There is, also
from 1994, Farinelli,
mémoires d'un castrat by Marc
David, and from 1943 Farinelli, le chanteur des Rois. There is, from 1960, a private printing of
Farinelli in Spain by Anthony Richards that looks particularly
interesting (though I have not read it) since it
covers the most fascinating period in Farinelli's
life, the time he spent in Spain, the years when he
sang the depressed king of Spain to sleep every night.
There are a few others, as well. Unlike many male
children with good voices—whose parents chose to have
them castrated as a way out of poverty—Carlo Boschi
was from a well-off family. He was born in 1705 in
Andrea, a small town in Puglia in what was then the
Kingdom of Naples. He was castrated and sent to Naples
to study music. (Alternately,
sent to Naples to be castrated and study music. I
don't know.) He studied with Porpora, one of the most
important members of the so-called "Neapolitan
School," which has given us A.
Scarlatti, Pergolesi,
Piccinni, Cimarosa, etc. He first performed at
the age of 15 in a work composed by Porpora called Angelica e Medoro.
There was nothing noteworthy about the event (or the
opera) except that Farinelli met another former
child-prodigy who was living and working in Naples and
who was destined to revitalize text in Italian opera
and eventually be regarded as the one of the greatest
names in Italian literature of the 1700s, Metastasio. The singer
and the librettist/poet became such fast and lifelong
friends that they commonly referred to the other as
"brother". Farinelli sang in
Venice in 1728 and his career took off. He toured
Europe and became known as "Singer to the Kings". In his History of Music, Charles
Burney (1726-1814) recounts an episode during a
rehearsal in London when the musicians in the
orchestra could barely concentrate on their parts,
amazed, as they were, to distraction by the power and
brilliance of Farinelli's voice. In 1737 he accepted
an offer to go to Spain and be the private singer for
that particular king, Phillip
V, an individual beset by severe bouts of depression
and who was apparently greatly helped by the sound of
Farinelli's voice. They say that Farinelli sang the
same six songs at bedtime to
Phillip, night after night, for ten years. Thus,
Farinelli gave up the public life of an acclaimed
singer and devoted himself for the next 25 years to
service to the Spanish throne, first Philip and then
Ferdinand IV. Farinelli was the Private Counsellor to
Phillip, and in such good grace with the monarch that
his influence was believed to extend beyond the
musical and general cultural life of Spain into
diplomacy and affairs of state. Eventually, Farinelli
was knighted. When Charles III, first Bourbon King of Naples abdicated to return to Spain in 1759, Farinelli left and returned to Italy to live in Bologne. His generosity was proverbial; he left his estate to servants and those relatives who had helped take care of him towards the end of his life.
Bizarre but
scientific—I
guess—update, July 2011: Farinelli was exhumed
in 2006 so that his skeleton could be studied.
Investigators at the University of Bologna identified
two unusual features. Like those of other castrati,
Farinelli's limb bones were unusually long. And the
front of his skull had grown inwards in a lumpy mass,
in places twice as thick as unaffected bone. This is
called hyperostosis frontalis interna (HFI). It is
thought to be caused by hormonal disorders,
particularly too much estrogen, which explains why it
is normally found in post-menopausal women and is rare
in men. HFI was thought to be harmless but is now
linked to behavioral disorders, headaches and
neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's. Such
symptoms probably would not have affected Farinelli
until late in life.
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There is a separate
item on "Castrati" in the Around Naples Encyclopedia
that you may read