Immagine dell'autore.

Patrick Barbier

Autore di Gli evirati cantori

14+ opere 151 membri 3 recensioni

Sull'Autore

Patrick Barbier is a Professor at the West Catholic University in Angers and is an expert on operatic history. He has also published a biography of Farinelli, the most famous of the castrati.
Fonte dell'immagine: Patrick Barbier en 2012

Opere di Patrick Barbier

Gli evirati cantori (1989) — Autore — 88 copie
Vivaldi's Venice (2002) — Autore — 22 copie
Opera in Paris 1800-1850: A Lively History (1987) — Autore — 19 copie
Pauline Viardot (2009) — Autore — 3 copie
La Malibran : Reine de l'opéra romantique (2005) — Autore — 3 copie
Voce Sola (1996) 1 copia
Gaspare Spontini (2017) 1 copia
VENECIA DE VIVALDI, LA (2006) 1 copia

Opere correlate

Nantes (2013) — Collaboratore — 1 copia

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I’d enjoyed both the movie Farinelli and the Anne Rice historical novel about castrati, Cry to Heaven, so when I saw this book there I decided to learn more about the topic.

Though it looked like it would be scandalous and juicy (as the movie Farinelli was) the execution was on the dry side. I think someone would need a grounding in the history of opera seria (Italian opera) first to really “get” it. Certainly they’d need to be familiar with the Italian musical terms used to describe operatic singing. Though I picked up these from the text, it was a struggle for me not knowing what the singing the author was describing sounded like, or was meant to sound like. Which is of course true, as there are no castrated men singing opera today and making recordings for listeners to hear them. But even a glossary of terms would have been nice. The author is a professor of the history of opera so why he didn’t, I can’t guess.

I don’t think the overly academic approach helped the subject matter either. He divided the book into chapters based on a castrato’s life: childhood castration, conscription into an Italian music school, early performances, performing at the opera, etc. and then he would give myriad examples of how all the major castrati went through these passages. The problem with that it was very easy to get all these singers mixed up so they became a castrati zupa. I'd rather he'd just concentrated on a few singers to go in-depth on and make anecdotes out of all the others. What worked with this method, though, was describing the background history, and some of that was very fascinating, like how it was customary for Italians to talk loudly, eat, and socialize as they watched that week’s opera with no regard for the performers.

Everything about that world of the 1600s and 1700s was so dramatic and colorful, it seems a shame more pictures weren’t included to make it more of a coffee-table book.

The entire era was a glorious yet disquieting one in European music, for the boys who were castrated to feed the mania had no choice in the matter, and of course some of them died from the operation or never developed decent voices even after many years of grueling schooling. And grueling lessons they were, concentrating on breathing and developing the lungs, larynx and ribcage to the hit the supernaturally high notes so beloved of the Italian public. These singers were truly athletes; in the days before electrical amplification voices had to reach into the highest seats of the theater, the upper recesses of the church. Though they were the cossetted pop stars of their day they were produced in a manner similar to the endless stream of boy bands coming out of the US or Korea, created to fill a need that, even at its height, was always questionable, and questioned, for reasons of taste and morality.

In the end, I enjoyed did enjoy learning about early opera but, being there are no castrati around today who can recreate those sounds, the whole book was like a what-if.
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Cobalt-Jade | 1 altra recensione | Aug 24, 2022 |
When I studied in Naples at the Biblioteca Nationale Napolitana, I could hear opera practice in the San Carlo wing of the Spanish Palazzo Reale (large four-floored opera house built in 7 months in 1737). When I descended five floors from the B&B on the Via Carraciolo, overlooking the bay, I would sit outside the nextdoor bar where I qualified to order pizza napolitana by quoting "Chi va per chisti mare..." a Neapolitan proverb* which the chef in white hat completed. But his daughter was astonished that someone my age did not know all the processional songs and those for feste. (Yes, I could belt out "O Sole Mio," written on the Black Sea.) So I picked up this book hoping to fill in folk culture, though it mainly covers high culture, grandeur, admitting some barbaric street customs.

Barbier covers from 1708 to 1764, largely under Charles de Bourbon who was given Naples by his father Philipe V of Spain. Charles made Naples independent, no longer directly under Spain, and with her independence Naples flourished as the third city of the world, after London and Paris, in population and in arts, particularly music. The castrati throve, often tall —though playing sopranos, women— also famous and rich, the Michael Jacksons and Mick Jaggers of the day. (See my review of Barbier’s “World of the Castrati,” written two decades earlier.)

The Neapolitan aristocrats supported music and the arts, entertained foreigners from various rulers, whether Spain or the Austrian Emperor. This contrasts to the Venetian aristocrats, who were forbidden to entertain non-aristocrats.(52) Likewise, the Venetian music schools (vocal) were in a convent, the orphans behind screens on the second floor. In Naples, the four conservatoires were largely open, also supported openly by members of society including aristocrats.

Foreign tourists (deliciously, “voyageurs,” as if Canadian explorers) all judged Naples the grandest city they’d seen, though they usually contrasted the tangle and poverty of the street people, the “lazzaroni.” One, Rotrou, warned it was the most beautiful he would ever see, so travelers should wait till they’d seen all others, “devraient la voir la dernière pour éviter le dégoût des autres”(24).

In contrast to its beauty of site on the bay and amongst easy-growing olives, grapes and grain are its mob of unemployed, often homeless, fed by church charity, soup and bread. One De Merville said this city is “un Paradis habité par des diables”(35). Montesquieu does not judge, but analyzes that the land is similarly cultivated as the Papal lands just north, but that even the aristocrats under the various foreign rulers were treated as serfs of the crown. And the people were demoralized, saw no benefits from their labor, had no civilian rights (28).

But despite their plight, most Neapolitans are joyous, voluble, expansive and gesticulating. Their fêtes are the best, though not as long or sumptuous as those in richer towns like Venice and Rome. Abbot Coyer says the “Neapolitains vivant plus par des oreilles que par tout autres sens”(38).

Four Sundays a year, during Carnival, and on great occasions—new king, royal marriage, visit of another king— the street people dined in streets hung with cheeses and ham, but also on chickens killed in the street. Barbarically, not just chickens, also “vache,” beef, they “massacre les animaux vivants à coup des couteau”(44). Many ladies on palace balconies watched out of duty, but fainted from the horror.

De Sade records a pitiable event worthy a murder mystery. Two men with knives competed for the hind quarters of beef, but one fell covered with blood, some his own. “Mais le vainqueur ne jouit pas longtemps sa victoire.” The rung on which he’d stepped to cut slipped under his feet, and he fell under the bloody carcass—and onto that of his rival.

These “cocagnes,” with elaborate raised, painted staging, were performed to honor, say, a new royal wife, and to express the generosity of the king. In 1738, the new wife Marie-Amélie stopped the horror for several days; however, not the monarch nor his vice regent Tanucci, could eliminate this custom. They did manage to move it out of the sight of the King, to Piazza Municipia before Castel Nuovo. Then in 1778 they banned it.

The early carnival featured wagons decorated like Mars, or Diana and Endymion, piled with pyramids of food. Some of these wagos held conservatory singers and musicians, and some held masked singers in dialect.*

Charles de Bourbon was short, with a sad smile, and a big nose, but gracious, cordial, even humble except where ritual was performed--men approached him on their knees. (He also kept the outdated hand-kissing ritual, for an hour, men on their knees, then kissing his hand...same for women and his wife.) Upon arrival, unmarried, a Te Deum was sung at the Church of San Lorenzo; upon his marriage, a Te Deum at the Duomo (San Gennaro). Lorenzo was the patron saint of Spaniards, Gennaro of Neapolitans. All his life Charles spoke and understood Italian (but not Neapolitan, comme moi), often spoke in Spanish, but wrote to his parents in French. His father had, like him as a young man, taken rule over an entirely new country: Fillipe V, grandson of Louis XIV, took reign in Madrid at 17, while Charles reigned in Napoli at 18. The extrovert Neapolitans were the opposite of him, but they came to appreciate, even love him. (He writes his father about having sex twice a night--not sheerly a dynastic note.)
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AlanWPowers | Jan 19, 2020 |

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1
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151
Popolarità
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ISBN
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