FARINELLI

PROGRAMME:

Orquestra Barroca Casa da Música

Vivica Genaux mezzo-soprano

Huw Daniel violin and artistic direction

Thomas Geerts musical direction

Farinelli, film by Gérard Corbiau

Music by Riccardo Broschi, Nicola Porpora, Georg Friedrich Händel, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Johann Sebastian Bach, Henry Purcell and Antonio Salieri If you have always wanted to know what opera looked and sounded like live in the eighteenth century, this is your chance. Farinelli - the stage name of the eighteenth-century Italian castrato Carlo Broschi - was unquestionably one of the greatest singers in the history of opera, with a range and technique that very few singers have ever equalled. Together with his brother, the composer Ricardo Broschi, Farinelli enjoyed immense fame at the royal courts and in the concert halls of Europe, idolised and adored like a true eighteenth-century rock star.