Farinelli

This remarkable film remains one of my favourites. The story line at first left me wondering why the director had chosen to make the film in the first place. Luscious scenery, beautiful costumes, sets, extravagant, but historically accurate stagings for the opera scenes, great language and dialogue - but why make a film about an all but forgotten singer from almost three centuries ago? Nothing in the film seemed to give a clue as to why anyone would go to all the bother of reconstructing a marvelous voice so painstakingly, and choose one of the great performers of our time to oversee the performances of the music. Repeated viewings did not seem to throw any light on the vexing question that, despite all the lushness and splendour I was still missing some point to the whole exercise. It was only on the third or fourth viewing that I noticed in the opening credits a small remark - in French - "to the memory of my daughter . . "name"". Suddenly the whole thing made sense. This marvelous and true story of the castrato is, perhaps, the directors attempt to describe his impotence in the face of the loss of his beloved child. Viewed in this light the ending of the film and the sequences in London between Farinelli and Benedict finally begin to have a poignancy and a sadness that is truly stunningly and sensitively achieved whilst adding to the story line. I love this film and cannot possibly recommend it enough. Any lover of Early Music should revel in it, but it has been lifted out of the ordinary and into the universal and sublime by that one small realization. Superlatives cannot do it justice.

Visually and sound-wise this is a beautiful film that can be recommended. The flash-backs when Ricardo looks back on childhood are good, showing the tight links between the two brothers. But, one is waiting through the whole film for the continuation of the early scene where Carlo (Farinelli) does not try to prevent the soldiers from taking Ricardo away by force. There is too much focus on the brothers' conquests and maybe too little on the singing. But the songs that we hear are beautiful and when one knows the amount of work that has been put into the reconstruction of Farinelli's unique voice (covering one octave more than any singer alive today) one should probably not complain.

Farinelli is not nearly as awful as I feared it would be. It's similar in many ways to Amadeus. Like Amadeus, it has glorious music beautifully performed. Like Amadeus, it tells a good (if melodramatic) story. Like Amadeus, it has a marvelous period feel. Like Amadeus, the characters in this story have the names and occupations of real people, but their portrayal on the screen is not even caricature: a caricature necessarily starts with something recognizeable.

Farinelli was famous in history not merely for a phenomenal voice and outstanding musicianship and musical connoisseurship, but for poise, dignity, and perfect-pitch judgement of human character; he is portrayed throughout as a hysteric. Handel is shown as a pompous, bullying nervous wreck verging on the psychotic, quite at variance with all reliable accounts of his humor, sturdiness, practicality, and reputation for scrupulous probity toward his musicians and singers.

Handel could not have said, to Farinelli, during the latter's first sensational season with the Opera of the Nobility, that he would never write another opera, and not just because Handel was no faux-Freudian opera queen: Lady History inconveniently discloses that after that 1733-34 season Handel composed and presented Ariodante, Alcina, Atalanta, Giustino, Arminio, Berenice, Faramondo, Serse, and Imeneo; his last opera, Deidamia, went unperformed, but several in that list were significant successes, and some were revived more than once.

The two rival opera companies in London went down the drain more or less simultaneously, notwithstanding the enormous draw of Farinelli for the Nobility company, and notwithstanding the high quality of the music of its principal composers (Porpora, Hasse, undervalued today) and the stupendous quality of Handel's music (also undervalued); rather, the people with the money to afford the (by our standards) enormous ticket prices had simply lost interest.

One commentator here is skeptical about many "period" details. And rightly: for starters, that's not the way boys were castrated, but you don't need to know the truth. Relax, just enjoy the music and the costumes and the actors chewing the scenery.

'Farinelli' is a film well worth seeing for its memorable visual imagery and its unique soundtrack. Mid-film scenes set against the decadence of 17th-century European court life make for charming costumes and sets. Contrasting visuals of rural Italy provide their own pastoral allure that is no less charming. Moreover, the film rises admirably to the daunting technical and artistic task of reproducing the tone of a castrato voice, considering that the musical world has not seen or heard a castrato singer for more than a century.

'Ah,' you say, 'sounds gorgeous...but what's it about?' Enter Carlo and Riccardo Broschi, Italian brothers who share musical aspirations: Riccardo composes, and Carlo sings what he writes. Carlo is a gifted castrato, but Riccardo is a mediocre composer at best. In time, Carlo becomes the renowned Farinelli while Riccardo struggles with his lack of talent/recognition as well as the troublesome fact that Carlo is his meal ticket.

The simple story line masks rich potential (think 'Amadeus'), but 'Farinelli' is hampered by shallow character development and its inexplicable tendency to substitute all-too-frequent sex scenes for emotional power. Without the full realization of the characters or the ramifications of the plot, the film struggles to keep a viewer engaged, at least in my own case. The beautiful pageantry of 'Farinelli' fails to compensate for its hollow dramatic core.

In short? Not bad, but a better music movie is 'Amadeus'(among others), and a better movie with beautiful Italian visuals is 'A Room With A View' (among others).

This movie is about Farinelli, one of the famous Castro Singers during the 18th century. He had the voice of an angel when he was a boy and since his family was very poor, an operation of castration was done to him in order to preserve his voice and help his family out in poverty. There were some strange parts during this film such as when he got older he and his brother Riccardo traveled together and never left each other. His brother was there during Farinelli's lovemaking in order to complete and finish the task that his brother could not do since he had been castrated. And then there was the white horses that Farinelli saw every time danger was present or near. This warning was not clearly explained in the film. The acting was very good. I enjoyed the variation of languages of French and Italian with a little bit of English thrown in. The costumes were excilent and the way the actors portrayed the characters during that past time period were done good. One makes you feel sorry for Farinelli because of what he did lack and also makes you feel for him because everybody would make a specticle of him because of his castration and the fact that he could not complete the task of lovemaking (personally..... I do not think that he really needed that, he was good being his own person anyway). Farinelli's popularity had worn down during the middle of his career due to his excessive use of opium in which his brother provided for him in order for him to sleep and get rid of any pain or stress. During the end of the movie we find that it is Riccardo that turned his little brother in because of his ability to sing and thus help his poor familiy. Not much is mentioned of his familiy but in the beginnig of the movie we do know that his family was poor and Farinelli offered himself as well as his voice because his voice was all that he did have in order to stay alive. This movie was a good film and I give it about a 7. There were several parts in the film that were not clearly explained and that was the only flaw.