Customer Reviews

Arias for Farinelli

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This recording has fascinated me ever since I first heard the original release in 2002. The music is hauntingly beautiful of course, but there is more to its spell. I remember one sumptuous August night when this album prompted my husband, whose own feelings toward Baroque opera are, well, lukewarm on a generous day, stop in his tracks and remark: `It sounds different in twilight. This music belongs to twilight time.' So true! There is something wondrously indefinite, even aloof, about this selection and this interpretation. Many have commented on the masculine hue of Vivica Genaux' voice on this album. I am not so sure. Her approach is not masculine or feminine or queer or whatever one might pick from the contemporary lexicon blandly intent on labelling everything. It does not fit into any of these categories. Baroque music does not either. It predates modern understandings of sensuality. It was explicitly written for sensuous pleasure, but it was not molded into a regime of truth that emerged much later. This recording creates an emotional atmosphere that is deeply concerned with beauty and pleasure and fundamentally unconcerned with core essences. There are other ways of performing this music--Cecilia Bartoli's hyper-feminine spectacle and intense commitment in `Opera Proibita' is as astounding, albeit in a different way. The selection here is more understated and more tightly stylized, and it is perhaps more hypnotizing as a result.

This is an album to which to pause in your tracks and let the everyday deliquesce: to take pleasure in and learn from a different era.

Two issues confront us here: 1) Is this a good album?, and, more controversially, 2) Does this sound like what Farinelli must have sounded like? The answers:

1) Indubitably. As other reviewers have noted here, this recording is pure pleasure from beginning to end, as much for the wonderful accompaniment of Rene Jacobs and the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin as for Ms. Genaux herself.

2) In recent years I've greatly enjoyed the performances of various modern countertenors (Bowman, Chance, Daniels, Ragin, Scholl, Fouchecourt, et al. and Jacobs himself) in baroque castrato roles. But in an accompanying essay to this recording, Jacobs makes the case that countertenors can't cover these roles the way a good mezzo of a certain color and weight (such as Ms. Genaux) can. While I'm not 100% persuaded, recordings such as this have me leaning strongly in this direction. Genaux's combination of flexibility and power make it easy to imagine that, indeed, Farinelli may have sounded something like this. All the arias here are heavily ornamented, just as a bravura castrato would have done. The CD begins with two arias by Nicola Porpora, the Neapolitan composer and singing instructor of Farinelli (Carlo Broschi), that are the most beautiful on the disc. (Note to baroque conductors: MORE PORPORA OPERA RECORDINGS NOW. The Handel lode is nearly played out, and Porpora, Handel's competitor in London for a brief period, has many works which are almost if not equally as sublime.)

I heard this lady live a few months ago, and decided I ** had ** to have one of her CDs. A totally unique voice -- almost "unisex", really belonging to another age. And she totally conquers the extremely difficult and ornate Baroque literature. Fascinating listening.

Como profana que soy (y cada vez mas mayor)...una se va acercando a lo clásico a estas alturas. Soy aficionada al cine y a sus bandas sonoras de ahi conocí a Vivica Genaux.
Esta selección de arias consigue tenerme tumbada en el sofá haciendo solamente.....Nada, disfrutando de la música, de las notas, de la voz, de la potencia de las arias, de transportarme a un estado casi onirico casi ausente. (supongo que es el principio de mi calma)

No os lo perdais

Marta