This Farinelli tribute rather drops the ball

FA R I N E L L I

Cecilia Bartoli Decca

A striking, androgynous photograph of a bearded, naked-shouldered

Cecilia Bartoli features on the cover of her latest recording, devoted to music associated (sometimes by lore rather than fact) with the legendary 18th-century castrato Farinelli.

Born in Puglia in 1705, Farinelli studied under the composer Nicola Porpora, who subsequently wrote a series of operas tailored to his pupil’s abilities. Farinelli’s sensational 13year stage career extended all over Europe between 1724 and 1737. In London he became a major celebrity, commemorated as a figure in Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress and besieged with female admirers – during one of his performances, a noble lady famously stood up and shouted: “One God, one Farinelli!”

Later he moved to the court of Philip V in Madrid, where he spent two decades combining his position as court singer (repeating the same aria nightly to assuage the monarch’s insomnia) with an additional pooh-bah portfolio of administrative responsibilities. Gracious in his manners and dazzlingly handsome, he was possessed of superb vocal technique that combined phenomenal breath control with unearthly beauty and steadiness of tone.

Bartoli, with several albums devoted to music by Handel and Vivaldi behind her, has long been obsessed with Farinelli’s era. The virtuosic music that the castrati’s unique hormonal imbalance allowed them to sing holds no fears for her, and even though she is now in her early 50s and the ivory timbre of her voice is wearing thin, she has retained remarkable flexibility, firing off the runs and roulades with terrific panache, as well as enunciating the text with impeccable clarity and the phrasing with imagination. Yet despite her expertise and the lively accompaniments provided by Il Giardino Armonico directed by Giovanni Antonini, this remains very dull stuff – arias from longforgotten operas by Hasse, Giacomelli, Caldara, Broschi and Porpora that are every bit as formally conventional and thematically predictable as

Sixties pop songs or Victorian hymns, either relentlessly jaunty or droopily melancholy. Only one aria, the muted “Questi al cor finora ignoti” from Caldara’s oratorio La Morte d’Abel, struck me as authentically inspired; everything else is following a formula that Bartoli’s championing has made all too familiar.

Those who like this sort of thing – they are numerous, I admit – will like this very much indeed: the rest of us will be stifling a yawn.

Arias included here are every bit as predictable as Sixties pop songs

TERRIFIC PANACHE Ceclia Bartoli has long been obsessed with Farinelli’s era