Castrato (12 of 23)

Castrato

Visitors, relatives, friends, but he was alone.
Farinelli died, immensely wealthy but alone, at the age of 78.
Soon after, his original grave was destroyed.
Although his great-niece arranged a re-burial, nobody knew where this new grave was, until recently, when a remarkable discovery was made in a Bolognese cemetery.
There he is! My word.
At last we find him.
How very wonderful.
And it was a great discovery, because nobody...
Nobody knew anything about it.
So where actually is Farinelli's body? Er, is here.
It 's actually there? Yes, it will be here.

And there is a project for opening the grave, for palaeopathologic...
Oh, yes, palaeopathology.
So you will measure his bones and see whether he really was long and tall? Yes.
How very interesting.
SOLEMN CHURCH MUSIC Well, a castrato in the 18th century was successful on the opera stage, but there wasn't room for all of them.
There were so many that a lot of them found employment in the church.
Lacrima-a...
As a result of that, you get a repertoire that's exactly the same.
This Porpora aria could easily be one of betrayed love from an opera.
The Catholic church's ambiguous attitude to castrati continued throughout the 18th century.