Farinelli
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Movie Reviews of Farinelli
Movie Review: The Exotic History Of Opera: Farinelli The Great
Summary: 5 Stars
This DVD comes equipped with English translation from the Italian that this movie was made in. There are also subtitles in French and Spanish, as well as scene selections. French director Gerard Corbiau decided to make a lush film about the life of Farinelli, the greatest castrato singer in all history, portrayed by Italian actor Stefano Dionisi. On DVD, this film looks exquisite. It's a film of adult material (nudity and sex) and for specialized interests. Opera buffs will want to take a glimpse back to the early days of Baroque Opera when the castrati were the music idols of their day, enjoying rockstar status and great wealth. Everything about this film is really engaging to look at. The authentic historic costumes and the precise European locations provide the film with an immediacy and virtual historic escape. We are there in 17th century Italy following this dramatically heightened take on the career of Farinelli. Stefano Dionisi does a great performance, though his effiminate looks, mischief and diva temperament reveals something of a homosexual but this notion is taken into question when we see him in the love scenes with the many beautiful women that are his groupies and loyal admirers of his voice.This drama may not be entirely true. The story of how the two brothers who are at conflict (one brother reaps the benefits the other is left frustrated and obscure) may be a deliberate attempt to resemble Milos Forman's Amadeus.Farinelli came from a family of musical ambitions and when he was about to hit puberty he wanted to be castrated for the sole purpose of making millions of money and acquiring world fame as a singer. Castrating male youth so as to keep their high-pitched soprano range was an Italian custom, which died out in the 18th century where women began to enjoy more prominet roles in opera, such as the operas of Mozart. Farinelli was the greatest castrato singer of his day. He was incredibly rich and enjoyed the company of royalty. After his many theatrical performances in operas by Handel and other composers, he gave up the stage to sing in the private chambers of Spanish King Phillip V. He lived in luxury there for the rest of his life.
The film is exotic and beautiful to look at and to listen. The music of Handel is prominent, since it was Handel who most wrote for the castrati voice. Impressive are the scenes at the opera, where Farinelli dazzles and mesmerizes his audience against the colorful and elaborate Baroque stage sets. In one scene early in the film, he sings what looks like the sun god Apollo, in a feathered helmet, and is briefly interrupted by a young lady's turning the pages to a libretto. He continues his singing and finishes with an elongated note that is impossible to hold for any tenor or soprano nowadays. Today, the castrati vocal sound is extinct. Perhaps close to it, and even this by a little off, is the male countertenor or a highly developed falsetto. I find that the female mezzo soprano voice is the closest to castrati singing, especially Cecilia Bartoli. Her singing in the recent Salieri Album comes dangerously close to sounding like castrati.
In the movie, creative editing and synthesizing combined a tenor's lung power and a soprano's high top register to effectively portray the sound of a castrati, which sounded like a weird blend of male and female voices, with the female being the stronger range. With that voice, coloratura is unleashed with freedom, agility and high-flung acrobatics.
Movie Review: Incredibly brilliant even with a few things I wish they had done differently!
Summary: 5 Stars
I love this film and have watched it many times. The richness of the world of 18th century music is wonderfully done, the singing is breathtakingly gorgeous, but best of all is the complex portrayal of the young castrato Farinelli (whose real name was Carlo Broschi) in all his brilliance, moodiness, exhausting and exacting art, his lovingness and artistic arrogance, wit, tenderness and deep sadness....and his amazing relationship with his brother Riccardo, a mediocre composer who has given his life in service to Carlo's gift and also taken Carlo's life by having him secretly castrated as a child so that his boyhood soprano voice might always sing Riccardo's music...something that Carlo does not know but will learn in the course of the film.
I am myself a historical novelist (MARRYING MOZART from Viking Penguin) and the question is always present for me of how far historical fact should be nudged for the sake of drama. Certainly in my studies of Mozart for my book, I thought many times of how, in the movie AMADEUS, the character of Salieri was badly maligned and worse, the character of Mozart himself was presented as a foul-mouthed child, taking a very small part of Mozart's real behavior (a handful of youthful smutty letters to a cousin) and making it the measure of the man!
So saying, I wish the writer/director of FARINELLI had not made Handel such a cruel, insensitive pig. Handel is so gratuitously insulting to the young Farinelli when they first meet, so taunting and disdainful when Farinelli is nothing but polite, that when Farinelli spits in Handel's face, the viewer wishes he'd done much more. This is no way to recruit a young genius singer to come work for you! Each time we see Handel in the movie he gets crueler until at the end he is seen having some sort of physical collapse when he hears Farinelli sing Handel's great opera "Rinaldo" with great beauty...and vows never to write opera again! Oh, why was the composer of "The Messiah" portrayed as such a horror?
Farinelli's seduction of women was also a bit overdone. However, when his brother comes in to make such seductions a ménage á trois, Stefano Dionisi's Farinelli is brilliant...he looks exhausted, bewildered, wistful, as if wondering how he ever got into such an arrangement and what he is doing there and what his place is indeed off the stage, being as he is, a man who is idolized for his singing voice and at the same time mocked for the lack of procreative powers which has made that glorious voice possible.
Yet even with these things said, I would give it six stars if I could! Oh what a portrait it is of an artist made an idol against his will and the relationship of brothers, so grievous when broken, so difficult to mend!
Movie Review: baroque slice of life
Summary: 5 Stars
Lavish, lusty, imaginative, free-wheeling bio-pic about the life of opera singer Farinelli, one of the great superstars of the 18th century. The sets and costumes are appropriately extravagant. The Baroque aesthetic is flamboyantly genuine. As Carlo and Riccardo Broschi, Stefano Dionisi and Enrico Lo Verso are both darkly beautiful and splendidly sexy.
The Church prohibited women from singing in Rome and, in its infinite wisdom, condoned the castration of talented boys to provide treble voices for the Sistine Chapel. Families would send a musical son to a conservatory for this purpose just as they might send another to a seminary for the priesthood. The great castrati, far from being greeted with the aversion of a modern sensibility, were venerated. Women wept, swooned, fainted at their performances, and they lived lives of great comfort.
Born Carlo Broschi, Farinelli was a musical genius with a voice of extraordinary facility, power, and beauty; his older brother Riccardo is portrayed here as a second-rate composer whose notoriety is entirely dependent upon the genius of his younger brother. This is just one of the historical facts that have been altered or exaggerated for the sake of dramatic effect.
Riccardo was a successful, if minor, composer. Their brotherly disputes were the subject of much gossip, but not for the reason promulgated in the film. Carlo took his stage name to honor a benefactor named Farina. He was reportedly not much interested in sex, but many castrati were highly sensual as Farinelli is depicted in the film. He never sang for Handel but the composer was a jovial man and treated musicians with respect. The decision to portray him as an ogre is the film's greatest, and most unnecessary, distortion.
The star of the film, ultimately, is the resplendent music. The voice of Farinelli (miraculously synthesized from a soprano and a counter-tenor) is glorious. The performances are joyously Baroque. And, considering the extraordinary beauty of Stefano Dionisi and Enrico Lo Verso, it is a luxurious feast for eyes as well as the ears.
Movie Review: a voice teacher and early music fan
Summary: 5 Stars
EXPERT FUSING OF TWO VOICES CREATES A SEMI-CASTRATO SOUND!
This film is an excellent portrayal of the famous castrati singer 'Carlo Broschi (Farinelli), whose castration occured when he was a young child, and supposedly was his older brother Riccardo's doing; Riccardo being several years older and more or less in charge of his younger brother as both parents were dead.
It shows the method of castration often used at that time,but there were many other methods also used. Carlo wows friends and foes alike with his larger than life stage presence and strong, beautiful singing in 18th century Europe. He sings the mediocre opera compositions of his underachieving older brother Riccardo, who rides the coattails of his more talented and popular younger brother. Although Riccardo tries to prevent Carlo from going to London (because he knows that once Carlo hears the music of Handel, that would be the end for his mediocre efforts). And that is exactly what happins. Carlo begins singing Handel arias and the 2 brothers are separated for many years; Carlo actually throws Riccardo out because he finds out that Riccardo had him castrated!
The soundtrack of 'Farinelli', which features the recreation of the castrato voice using a digitally 'morphed' mixture of a counter-tenor (Derek Ragin) with a soprano voice (Ewa Godlewska), was directed by Christophe Rousset, director of Les Talens Lyriques. The recreation of the voice of Farinelli, with its superhuman quality was the greatest challange faced by Gerard Corbiau.
There is really no accurate existing recording of the great castrati singers. One cannot classify the disc of the late Alessandro Moreschi, dating from 1902 as a true picture of that glorious voice described by the listener historians of the 18th century. Thus the fusing of 2 voices to obtain the vocal range of a castrato (three and one-half octaves). In my opinion, the whole thing comes together very accurately and pleasantly; and has a great mixture of Handel opera arias.
Movie Review: Helpful suggestion to new viewers
Summary: 5 Stars
This film left me cold when I first saw it; I almost think I was watching a different film. But recently I've revisited it and its excerpts on YouTube, and I have been completely captivated by the story and music. And although this "biography" is reportedly more fiction than fact, it is still too lush, fascinating, tragic, and beautiful to be overlooked. (Music of the Baroque Era is my favorite genre, Handel my favorite composer; I'm certainly biased in favor of both.)
Here's my suggestion: If you watch this movie, be sure to find the lyrics at least to "Lascia ch'io pianga" and to follow them during that sequence. Better yet, stock up with all the lyrics; they're easy to find on the Web. Just search for the arias' titles.
Here's why: For viewers like me who speak only one language, the subtitles on the DVD of this film don't include the lyrics to the music. Without the lyrics, you can't fully appreciate the richness of the story: the relationship between the brothers Carlo (the younger, stage name Farinelli) and Riccardo Broschi (the older); the tormented position of the castrato in society (loved, lauded, exploited, denied, and reviled); and of the era itself.
These conflicts are particularly revealed in the "Lascia ch'io pianga" sequence. In that aria, the imprisoned hero of the opera (sung by Farinelli) mourns the loss of his freedom, while the intertwined flashbacks reveal how he really became a castrato. Carlo/Farinelli has always been told his castration was the result of a tragic accident. We learn in the preceding sequence and we see in the flashbacks that Farinelli's (Carlo's) own brother had him castrated while the child Carlo was drugged, to ensure that Carlo's splendid voice would endure to grace Riccardo's own music -- music unworthy of the sacrifice. But the betrayal that stole Carlo's freedom to choose his fate preserved his art. How can Carlo reconcile himself to such betrayal and loss -- and yet gain?