United States or Iceland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The physicians at first ordered Farinelli to sing in an outer room; and for the first day or two this was done, without producing any effect on the royal patient.
Hearing one day an old veteran officer complain that the King ignored his thirty years of service while he enriched "a miserable actor," Farinelli secured promotion for the grumbler, and, giving the commission to the abashed soldier, mildly taxed him for calling the King ungrateful. According to another anecdote, he requested an embassy for one of the courtiers.
Melancholy was the punishment imposed by Nature on the despots of the Western decadence. When a king had any artistic predispositions, like Fernando VI., instead of tasting the joy of life he nearly died of weariness listening to the airs on the guitar feebly tinkled by Farinelli.
"When Farinelli arrived, the Queen arranged a concert at which the monarch could hear the great singer without being seen. The effect was remarkable, and Farinelli gained the respect, admiration, and favor of the whole court.
Out of the many enthusiastic descriptions of his singing, that of Mancini, after Porpora the greatest singing-master of the age, and the fellow pupil with Farinelli under Bernacchi, will serve: "His voice was thought a marvel because it was so perfect, so powerful, so sonorous, and so rich in its extent, both in the high and low parts of the register, that its equal has never been heard.
Senisino and Carestini had each twelve hundred pounds, and Cuzzoni two thousand, for the season. Toward the end of what may be called the Handel season nearly all the singers and nobles forsook him, and supported Farinelli, the greatest singer living, at the rival house in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Farinelli, the famous singer, was sent for to Madrid to try the effect of his magical voice on the king of Spain. His Majesty was absorbed in the deepest melancholy; nothing could excite an emotion in him; he lived in a state of total oblivion of life; he sat in a darkened chamber, entirely given up to the most distressing kind of madness.
Your majesty once condescended to write to Farinelli and THAT act won us the friendship of the King of Spain and of his sons; THAT letter will be the means of placing an Archduchess of Austria on the throne of Naples." "Would have been," said Maria Theresa, heaving a sigh. "The bride of the King of Naples is no more! My poor Johanna! My beautiful child!"
The Doric sweetness and simplicity of old ISAAC WALTON, the angler, were reflected in a mind as clear and generous, when CHARLES COTTON continued the feelings, rather than the little work of Walton. METASTASIO and FARINELLI called each other il Gemello, the Twin: and both delighted to trace the resemblance of their lives and fates, and the perpetual alliance of the verse and the voice.
When Gabrielli was on her way to England in 1765, she sang for a few nights in Venice with the celebrated Pacchierotti, a male soprano singer who took the place of Caffarelli, even as the latter filled that vacated by Farinelli. Gabrielli was inspired by the association to do her utmost, and when she sang her first aria di bravura, Pacchierotti gave himself up for lost.
Word Of The Day