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Several of the songs, however, were composed by Riccardo Broschi, the singer's brother, especially for him, and these interpolations illustrated the powers of Farinelli in the most effective manner.
Actuated by this modest ambition he had completed an opera, Farinelli, for which he had also written the libretto, with no other aspiration than that of attaining the same reputation as his brother-in-law Lortzing. He brought this score to me, and begged me it was his first visit before he had heard one of my operas in Dresden to play him something from Rienzi and the Fliegender Hollander.
It was in 1864 that he became the idol and the pet of the young king, Ludwig II. of Bavaria, who sent a courier ransacking Europe almost in vain for the fugitive, and, at last finding him, dumbfounded him with fairy promises, presented him with a villa, and treated him to a splendour few musicians have ever known, except perhaps Lully, and Farinelli, who became the vocal prime minister of the truly good king Ferdinand VI. of Spain.
The singers of this period, Nicolini, Senesino, Cuzzoni, Faustina, Caffarelli, Farinelli, Carestini, Gizziello, and Pacchierotti, devoted their study years to preparing their voices for the display of a certain definite kind of florid music. They had nothing else to learn. As a consequence they were expected to be particularly efficient.
When he was asked by the grateful monarch to name his own reward, he answered that his best recompense would be to know that the King was again reconciled to performing the active duties of his state. Philip considered that he owed his cure to the powers of Farinelli.
Among the remarkable male singers of Gabrielli's time was Caffarelli, whom his friends indeed declared to be no less great than Farinelli. Born in 1703, of humble Neapolitan parentage, he became a pupil of Porpora at an early age. The great singing-master is said to have taught him in a peculiar fashion. For five years he permitted him to sing nothing but scales and exercises.
Everybody has heard of the vulgar circus tricks performed by the most famous of the sopranists, Farinelli how at one time he beat a famous German trumpeter in prolonging and swelling his notes, and how, at another time, he began an aria softly, swelled it by imperceptible degrees to such an astounding volume, and then decreased it again in the same way to pianissimo, that the public wildly applauded him for five minutes.
Farinelli's influence as a politician was always cast on the side of national honor and territorial integrity. When the new King, Charles III., ascended the throne, being even then committed to the Franco-Neapolitan imbroglio, which was such a dark spot in the Spanish history of that time, Farinelli left Spain at the royal suggestion, which amounted to a command.
Handel still clung to the operatic speculation; and when he had to leave the Haymarket Theatre, which was given up to another Italian company with the famous Farinelli, from Lincoln's Inn Fields, undauntedly he changed to the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, and there commenced again.
Then there was the singer Senesino, and Farinelli, whose heart and brain were real though his voice was artificial. He became finally a sort of vocal prime minister to Spain. To start one of these romances of singers would be like throwing a match in a fireworks factory.
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