Customer Reviews

Farinelli

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is possibly my favorite movie, and I was shocked to see bad customer reviews of it on Amazon.com. To set matters right: The film is amazing, both as a look at 18th-century attitudes towards music, and as a story about the many different incarnations love takes. The film's sex scenes are probably some of the most beautiful around, and those that feel they are unnecessary to the film are probably looking at the past through puritanical filters. (The twentieth century did not, in fact, invent good sex...)

Castrati were, in fact, very much sex symbols in their time and farinelli, when in the service of the spanish king, was summoned ot him "most nights to sing until one or two o'clock in the morning," interptet it as you will. For more information on Castrati, see "Eunuchs and Castrati, a Cultural History" and also The chapter on castrati in "Singers of Italian Opera".

As far as authenticity is concerned, the film portrays baroque audiences, with theior liveliness and level of involvement, beautifully, and I find the director's portrayal of Farinelli quite satisfactory. The machinery and decadence of the opera of the time is conveyed to perfection, and much research has obviously gone into the film.

Handel's music, of course, speaks for itself. It can be easy to get lost in a Handel opera sometimes, among Da Capo arias, but this movie reminds us that this is, in fact, some of the most beautiful music ever written.

As a female, I wept buckets when watching this movie. The melodrama was, perhaps, a bit exaggerated but not to the point of losing emotional poignancy. The acting was, generally, quite good, including the singing scenes. Yes, the lip-synching was noticeable, but people who complain should try caraoke-ing the simplest coloratura piece in front of a mirror to see how well they would do! They'd notice that they were lucky just to stay within the tempo. From the standpoint of history, the movie is inaccurate. Handel's Rinaldo was composed and staged well before Farinelli ever got to England, while the movie implies that the score stolen by Farinelli's paramour was new. Likewise, I doubt that Handel ever promised Farinelli to never compose another opera ever again, because Handel continued composing afterwards. From the musical standpoint, the movie is also inaccurate. For example, Farinelli is shown singing both "Cara sposa," Rinaldo's aria, and then "Lascia ch'io pianga," the "sposa's" aria, in the same performance. Obviously, no single performer would sing both lead roles on stage at the same time. But this is really not important. The music was there to give flesh to Farinelli's sacrifice for the sake of art. Thus, "Lascia ch'io pianga" (Let me cry over my cruel fate) was there as a symbolic expression of Farinelli's pain, and not simply as a musical vignette. Pity, that it wasn't translated in the subtitles for the ones who don't know much about baroque opera. As a final point, although the soundtrack was pretty impressive, I know of a couple of countertenors who (without any electronic morphing) could do better justice to the legend of Farinelli. Dominique Visse would be my first choice.

Director Gerard Corbiau's Farinelli won Best Picture of 1995. The foreign film, mixed Italian and French, retells the story of the famous and greatest castrato singer Carlo Broschi. The film is exotic, intensely emotional and loaded with beautiful music of the Baroque Era (1600-1750). With all the good things about this movie, comes some things that might be rather disturbing or inappropriate for a younger audience. This is assuredly an adult film. There are two explicit sex scenes at the beginning and end of the film. This is a movie for an adult who is interested in the period, in the life of the castrati and in opera at this time. The opening introduces Carlo Broschi as a little boy singing in the church choir. Another young lad has been castrated to preserve his voice and is so mortified he leaps to his death. Eventually Carlo's brother Riccardo is obligated to do the same to his brother. We don't learn until later in the film that it was Riccardo and not Carlos' brother that conducted the castration. Here, Farinelli is usually quite ill and is forced to take opium as medicine. Farinelli does not seem to think highly of his brother's operas, which are written exclusively for his voice. Instead, he believes the greatest composer of this time is George Frederic Handel, played convincingly by Jerome Krabbe. In a dinner party, in which the Nobles insult Handel, Farinelli is outraged and declares that Handel will long be remembered and not the Nobles and their operas. This ends up being true since Handel is considered one of the greatest composers of this period togeter with Johann Sebastian Bach.

The movie has some inaccuracies and are not historically true. Naturally, this being a costume drama, there are some elements which were entirely fictional created for the sake of sensationalism. Although it is true Riccardo Broschi did compose operas for his brother Farinelli, there is no real evidence they "shared" the women they bedded. In the movie, a Countess is so enamored with Farinelli that she jumps into bed with him only to discover he's castrated. Thus, Riccardo plants the seed and Farinelli only lures the women into bed and seduces them. This is fabricated material to "sex up" the movie. In real life, Farinelli I'm inclined to believe was chaste. He sung many times for religious services and was a devout Catholic. He may not have been at all bitter for his castration since he lived like a king all his life, surrounded in luxury. He was well acquainted with European royalty, all of Europe loved him and he died after years of singing in the chambers of King Phillip of Spain. The rivalry between the Nobles Theatre Opera and Handel's opera company is true. In fact, it remains the only true thing about this movie. The English in London disliked the German foreigner Handel and his prominence in London. He was so beloved that even King George and Queen Anne protected him. The Nobles schemed endlessly to get rid of Handel. The portrayal of Handel as a musical genius, a man of stubborn, perfectionist character is all true. I think the most moving scenes are those with Handel, such as the scene in which Farinelli is overhearing him play the organ in the church and is moved by the music and the scene of Farinelli singing "Lascio Chio Pianga" from Rinaldo which ultimately moves Handel to tears. All the scenes of opera and Farinelli singing in his majestic costumes in this movie are stunningly beautiful. Finally, this movie's soundtrack is incredible. It contains the combined voices of tenor Derek Rogin and soprano Ewa Mallas as the singing voice of Farinelli. The arias sung here are taken from Riccardo Broschi's operas Idaspe and Artaserse and from Handel's Julius Caesar and Rinaldo. A superb film and a must see for fans of Baroque opera.

I have eclectic tastes--I watch Fellini, Altman, Halstrom, Eastwood, and Campion with equal enjoyment. But I have never been more impressed with a film than with "Farinelli."

This is a character-driven story, not a plot-driven one. In "Farinelli" the essential debate in all art is fully played out on film: From whence does artistic beauty spring? From the interpretive vehicle or the creative one? From the source of the inspiration or from the one who is inspired? It even dares to ask whether there is an element of destruction in the act of creation. The triangles outlining this debate abound. Handel-Broschi-Farinelli is underscored by the relationships between Farinelli-Broschi-Alexandra and between Performer-Composer-Audience. I have seen this film 6 or 7 times and I still rediscover parallels along these themes. It is an impressive achievement to use art to outline art's own tensions without ever once losing sight of the overriding storyline or forcing your actors into unnatural posturing for the sake of making a debate point.

Others have praised the sets, acting, music, lighting--in short, the ambience and opulence of the film. All that is here. And yet all that is also in "Amadeus" and "Immortal Beloved." What this offers that the others does not is the insider's take: If you watch this movie, you will feel Farinelli's emotions, Broschi's emotions and Handel's emotions as they strive for recognition through their art. This is not a movie from which you walk away sympathizing with one character or another. This is a movie from which you walk away knowing you have lived someone else's experience for a brief time.

Visually opulent, and with a stunning soundtrack, this film could have been so much better if it didn't take completely unnecessary--and foolish--liberties with the story of the real Farinelli. Unfortunately, much of the plot is just plain silly. Whether or not a castrato would have been capable of sexual relations (and it is believed that they were), it is absurd how the film proposes that Farinelli would have sex with a woman, but then had to turn her over to his uncastrated brother to finish her off, as it were. I doubt that a man's ability to ejaculate has much to do with a woman's sexual satisfaction. And the portrayal of the composer George Frideric Handel is just plain ridiculous. When I saw this film in a theater with three friends, the scene where Handel hears Farinelli sing and nearly has a heart attack, with his wig falling off, prompted all four of us to laugh out loud. (In reality, Handel didn't have as high an opinion of Farinelli's singing as some, and chose not to hire him for his own opera troupe.) The film also depicts Farinelli plotting to sing Handel's music by having a maid steal a manuscript from Handel's apartment. The result is Farinelli singing "Lascia ch'io pianga" from the opera Rinaldo--which makes no sense at all, since that aria was written for a woman soprano, not an alto castrato, and Farinelli didn't perform travesty roles. Besides, by the time of the incident portrayed, the score of Rinaldo had been published and Farinelli could have simply purchased a copy. The main attraction of this film is the soundtrack. We really have no idea what the castrati sounded like (yes, I know there is a recording of "the last castrato" made in 1902, but it's a terribly weak representation of what the great ones must have sounded like), so for the film they concocted a unique voice by digitally combining the sounds of a woman soprano and a male falsettist. The result is dazzling; my recommendation is to buy the soundtrack. The best elements of the film are the beautiful costumes and camera work. The staging of opera scenes is beautiful enough that you wish they had included complete excerpts, instead of frustratingly brief teases; at least the musical selections are complete on the soundtrack CD.

Lavish, lusty, imaginative, free-wheeling bio-pic about the life of opera singer Farinelli, one of the great superstars of the 18th century. The sets and costumes are appropriately extravagant. The Baroque aesthetic is flamboyantly genuine. As Carlo and Riccardo Broschi, Stefano Dionisi and Enrico Lo Verso are both darkly beautiful and splendidly sexy.

The Church prohibited women from singing in Rome and, in its infinite wisdom, condoned the castration of talented boys to provide treble voices for the Sistine Chapel. Families would send a musical son to a conservatory for this purpose just as they might send another to a seminary for the priesthood. The great castrati, far from being greeted with the aversion of a modern sensibility, were venerated. Women wept, swooned, fainted at their performances, and they lived lives of great comfort.

Born Carlo Broschi, Farinelli was a musical genius with a voice of extraordinary facility, power, and beauty; his older brother Riccardo is portrayed here as a second-rate composer whose notoriety is entirely dependent upon the genius of his younger brother. This is just one of the historical facts that have been altered or exaggerated for the sake of dramatic effect.

Riccardo was a successful, if minor, composer. Their brotherly disputes were the subject of much gossip, but not for the reason promulgated in the film. Carlo took his stage name to honor a benefactor named Farina. He was reportedly not much interested in sex, but many castrati were highly sensual as Farinelli is depicted in the film. He never sang for Handel but the composer was a jovial man and treated musicians with respect. The decision to portray him as an ogre is the film's greatest, and most unnecessary, distortion.

The star of the film, ultimately, is the resplendent music. The voice of Farinelli (miraculously synthesized from a soprano and a counter-tenor) is glorious. The performances are joyously Baroque. And, considering the extraordinary beauty of Stefano Dionisi and Enrico Lo Verso, it is a luxurious feast for eyes as well as the ears.

Corbiau's Farinelli is a great film in many ways. Beautifully done from a visual point of view, as well as the aural. Hearing the scenes of musical performance in the nicely done DTS surround sound was just as nice as listening to a concert performance on dvd!

The only reason I did not give this review the full 5 stars is as a protest to the rather gross distortion of the historical character's personality and the facts of his life. Not much of what goes on the film actually occured. Also, Riccardo Broschi gets a Salieri-a-la-Amadeus treatment. No, he won't be replacing any of the giants of the baroque, but getting to hear some of his music (previously unavailable anywhere else) was one of the most interesting things to me in the film.
On the other hand, Porpora probably WOULD topple the musical world, if it wasn't for the saddening fact that much of his music has been lost...

In conclusion, despite the above, the film is really quite fantastic - I whole heartedly recommend it - only bear in mind that you are not really watching history unfold.
I look forward to more such films from Corbiau.

I love this film and have watched it many times. The richness of the world of 18th century music is wonderfully done, the singing is breathtakingly gorgeous, but best of all is the complex portrayal of the young castrato Farinelli (whose real name was Carlo Broschi) in all his brilliance, moodiness, exhausting and exacting art, his lovingness and artistic arrogance, wit, tenderness and deep sadness....and his amazing relationship with his brother Riccardo, a mediocre composer who has given his life in service to Carlo's gift and also taken Carlo's life by having him secretly castrated as a child so that his boyhood soprano voice might always sing Riccardo's music...something that Carlo does not know but will learn in the course of the film.

I am myself a historical novelist (MARRYING MOZART from Viking Penguin) and the question is always present for me of how far historical fact should be nudged for the sake of drama. Certainly in my studies of Mozart for my book, I thought many times of how, in the movie AMADEUS, the character of Salieri was badly maligned and worse, the character of Mozart himself was presented as a foul-mouthed child, taking a very small part of Mozart's real behavior (a handful of youthful smutty letters to a cousin) and making it the measure of the man!

So saying, I wish the writer/director of FARINELLI had not made Handel such a cruel, insensitive pig. Handel is so gratuitously insulting to the young Farinelli when they first meet, so taunting and disdainful when Farinelli is nothing but polite, that when Farinelli spits in Handel's face, the viewer wishes he'd done much more. This is no way to recruit a young genius singer to come work for you! Each time we see Handel in the movie he gets crueler until at the end he is seen having some sort of physical collapse when he hears Farinelli sing Handel's great opera "Rinaldo" with great beauty...and vows never to write opera again! Oh, why was the composer of "The Messiah" portrayed as such a horror?

Farinelli's seduction of women was also a bit overdone. However, when his brother comes in to make such seductions a ménage á trois, Stefano Dionisi's Farinelli is brilliant...he looks exhausted, bewildered, wistful, as if wondering how he ever got into such an arrangement and what he is doing there and what his place is indeed off the stage, being as he is, a man who is idolized for his singing voice and at the same time mocked for the lack of procreative powers which has made that glorious voice possible.

Yet even with these things said, I would give it six stars if I could! Oh what a portrait it is of an artist made an idol against his will and the relationship of brothers, so grievous when broken, so difficult to mend!

This DVD comes equipped with English translation from the Italian that this movie was made in. There are also subtitles in French and Spanish, as well as scene selections. French director Gerard Corbiau decided to make a lush film about the life of Farinelli, the greatest castrato singer in all history, portrayed by Italian actor Stefano Dionisi. On DVD, this film looks exquisite. It's a film of adult material (nudity and sex) and for specialized interests. Opera buffs will want to take a glimpse back to the early days of Baroque Opera when the castrati were the music idols of their day, enjoying rockstar status and great wealth. Everything about this film is really engaging to look at. The authentic historic costumes and the precise European locations provide the film with an immediacy and virtual historic escape. We are there in 17th century Italy following this dramatically heightened take on the career of Farinelli. Stefano Dionisi does a great performance, though his effiminate looks, mischief and diva temperament reveals something of a homosexual but this notion is taken into question when we see him in the love scenes with the many beautiful women that are his groupies and loyal admirers of his voice.

This drama may not be entirely true. The story of how the two brothers who are at conflict (one brother reaps the benefits the other is left frustrated and obscure) may be a deliberate attempt to resemble Milos Forman's Amadeus.Farinelli came from a family of musical ambitions and when he was about to hit puberty he wanted to be castrated for the sole purpose of making millions of money and acquiring world fame as a singer. Castrating male youth so as to keep their high-pitched soprano range was an Italian custom, which died out in the 18th century where women began to enjoy more prominet roles in opera, such as the operas of Mozart. Farinelli was the greatest castrato singer of his day. He was incredibly rich and enjoyed the company of royalty. After his many theatrical performances in operas by Handel and other composers, he gave up the stage to sing in the private chambers of Spanish King Phillip V. He lived in luxury there for the rest of his life.

The film is exotic and beautiful to look at and to listen. The music of Handel is prominent, since it was Handel who most wrote for the castrati voice. Impressive are the scenes at the opera, where Farinelli dazzles and mesmerizes his audience against the colorful and elaborate Baroque stage sets. In one scene early in the film, he sings what looks like the sun god Apollo, in a feathered helmet, and is briefly interrupted by a young lady's turning the pages to a libretto. He continues his singing and finishes with an elongated note that is impossible to hold for any tenor or soprano nowadays. Today, the castrati vocal sound is extinct. Perhaps close to it, and even this by a little off, is the male countertenor or a highly developed falsetto. I find that the female mezzo soprano voice is the closest to castrati singing, especially Cecilia Bartoli. Her singing in the recent Salieri Album comes dangerously close to sounding like castrati.
In the movie, creative editing and synthesizing combined a tenor's lung power and a soprano's high top register to effectively portray the sound of a castrati, which sounded like a weird blend of male and female voices, with the female being the stronger range. With that voice, coloratura is unleashed with freedom, agility and high-flung acrobatics.

Admittedly, I did not know a lot about opera or Farinelli before seeing this movie, so whatever historical inaccuracies it might contain were not noticeable or distracting to me. With this disclaimer made, let me say that when the movie was over, I was immediately moved to learn more about this legendary singer and the opera he performed.

This move is gorgeously shot, beautifully acted and never slow. For those reviewers who complain that Farinelli is portrayed as being ashamed of his castration, I would argue that an early scene in the film, when Farinelli sees another castrato being made fun of in front of an audience and gets up on stage to defend him and show off his own beautiful voice, is proof that the castration itself is not a source of shame for Farinelli. He is certainly proud of his talent. I think the movie is more concerned with Farinelli's ambivalence toward his brother and his strong desire to be a father. He is not ashamed of his catsration, but rather feels pained that he cannot start a family of his own, and that he must be so dependent on his brother.

As another reviewer mentions, the real tension of the movie is between the brothers, who both help and constrain one another terribly, with Farinelli being especially held back by Riccardo.

This tension simmers throughout the movie and finally explodes in various climactic scenes. You will be enthralled to see how the relationship between these two men develops, changes and eventually disintegrates.

The actor who plays Farinelli is perfectly androgynous as a true castrato would be, and though he has some trouble with the lip-synching, he puts so much emotion into his part that it doesn't distract too much. Also, I did not find the sex scenes to be over-the-top as others have suggested. Remember, this is a European movie about a young, stirring European man, and the attitude toward sex in Europe is far less prude than ours tends to be in the U.S. This is definitely an erotic and passionate film, so be prepared for that.

This is a deep, complicated, beautiful movie about relationships, dependency, art, and music. It won the Golden Globe in '94 for best foreign film and was nominated for the Oscar in the same category. Enjoy.