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The castrato as history

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Katherine Bergeron
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Extract

One of the final scenes of Farinelli, Il Castrato, dir. Gerard Corbiau (Sony Pictures Classics, 1994), shows a solar eclipse witnessed, eighteenth-century style, by members of the court of Philip V of Spain around 1740. Restless spectators squint through pieces of tinted glass prepared in the smoke of a small fire. It is a precious visual detail, a jot of history in this sumptuously though often inaccurately detailed film that offsets the melodrama to follow. Without warning, a wind, helped along by corny, time-lapse photography, ushers in a sea of Goya-like clouds. A murmur passes through the entourage; eerie blackness falls on the court.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , July 1996 , pp. 167 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Herriot, Angus, The Castrati in Opera (New York, 1974), 189–99.Google Scholar

2 Heartz, Daniel, ‘Farinelli Revisited’, Early Music, 18 (1990), 430–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 To name a few: Barnett, John, Farinelli, a serio comic opera, in two acts (London, 1839);Google ScholarBreton, Tomas, Farinelli, opera en un prologo y tres actos (Madrid, 1902);Google ScholarDupin, HenriFarinelli, ou La pièce de circonstance (Paris, 1816);Google ScholarSaint-Georges, Henri, Farinelli, ou Le bouffe du roi, comedie historique en trois actes (Paris, 1835);Google ScholarVazquez, Mariano, Farinelli: zarzuela historica en tres actos (Malaga, 1855);Google ScholarZumpe, Herman, Farinelli: Operette in 3 Aden (Hamburg, 1888).Google Scholar

4 Burney, Charles, The Present State of Music in France and Italy (London, 1771), 206.Google Scholar

5 From a look at the sources of Artaserse, Robert Freeman concludes that ‘the attribution of this aria by Burney and others to Riccardo Broschi is probably in error‘. See ‘Farinello and his Repertory’, in Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Music in Honor of Arthur Mendel, ed. Marshall, Robert (London, 1974), 327, note 69.Google Scholar

6 Translated by Samber, Robert as Eunuchism Display'd, Describing All the Different Sorts of Eunuchs (London, 1718).Google Scholar

7 Rice, Anne, Cry to Heaven (New York, 1982).Google Scholar

8 Burney (see n. 4), 301–2.Google Scholar

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11 Mojon, 16.Google Scholar

12 Illustration reproduced in Heartz (see n. 2), p. 431.Google Scholar

13 The story is related in Moore, Jerrold N., A. Voice in Time: The Gramophone of Fred Gaisberg (London, 1976), 66–70.Google Scholar

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16 One can hear performances of both versions of the aria on an extremely innovative recording, produced in 1991 by Mundi, Harmonia and featuring the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, together with the Chamber Chorus of the University of California at Berkeley, under the joint direction of Nicolas McGegan and Philip Brett (Harmonia Mundi: HMU 907050–907052). The ambitious plan was to record, on to a single set of discs, all the extant versions of Messiah known in Handel's lifetime. With some skilful programming of a CD player, a listener can now compare the settings from different years and thus make judgements, purely by ear, about Handel's compositional choices. On this recording William Parker sings the 1742 version for solo bass; the countertenor Drew Minter does a more than respectable job playing the role of Guadagni.Google Scholar

17 According to Robert Freeman's statistics, this seems to be one work Farinelli never performed. See Freeman (n. 5), 324–30.Google Scholar

18 Cited in Barthes, Roland, S/Z: An Essay, trans. Howard, Richard (New York, 1974), 239.Google Scholar

19 See Heartz (n. 2), 441.Google Scholar

20 Legrand, Emmanuel, ‘Soundtrack for “Farinelli” Film Becomes Hit in France’, Billboard, 107, No. 17 (29 04 1995), 50.Google Scholar

21 The Crying Game may not be such a bad analogy, in fact, given that the ‘secret’ that circulated about its plot had something to d o with the mistaking of one character's gender identity. In Farinelli, of course, the mistaken thing is an unnaturally high male voice. That this unusual feature could inspire a similar curiosity is clear from the recent rise in popularity of countertenors – those rarified products of the decades-old early music movement. Such singers today attract a following beyond the typical early music audience, a fact that may have at least something to d o with the delicious compromise they reflect – as vocal cross-dressers. For evidence we need look no further than a recent issue of a popular American fashion magazine, which featured an ultracampy photo essay on six newsworthy countertenors decked out, à la Wilde, in silk smoking jackets and feather boas. Ragin himself, sporting a cane, was pictured with three dalmatians in tow.Google Scholar

22 A summary of the procedure can be found in a recent issue of IRCAM's house journal Resonance. See Depalle, Phillipe, Garcia, Guillermo and Rodet, Xavier, ‘A la recherche d'une voix perdue’, Résonance, 15 (1995), 14–15.Google Scholar

23 On the subject of ‘passing’, it is worth noting that one of the tracks from the Farinelli CD actually makes it onto a legitimate early music disc also distributed by Auvidis. It is a 1994 anthology called La Musique au temps des Castrats (Astree E 8552) that features performances by the countertenors James Bowman and Gérard Lesne, among others. On the disc's final track, slipped in without any indication of foul play, we find the morphed Ragin–Mallas-Godlewska performance of the aria ‘Son qual nave’, offered as just one more early music voice.Google Scholar