KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Izzy Adkins The movie is surprisingly subdued in its pacing, its characterizations, and its go-for-broke sensibilities.

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

gavin6942 Farinelli is the artistic name of Carlo Broschi, a young singer in Handel's time. He was castrated in his childhood in order to preserve his voice. During his life he comes to be a very famous opera singer, managed by his mediocre brother Riccardo.Although this is the story of a real person, it relies very little on facts. Just a few notes: the ambiguous relationship between the Broschi brothers, the stormy one with rival composer Handel, and Farinelli's own amorous escapades and over-the-top "rockstar" attitude are totally spurious. But I don't think this makes the film bad, because it is not intended to be a true story.It is somewhat hard to believe that this used to be a real practice... the purposeful destruction of a child just to have him sing high notes. Whatever was the point?

rasmus-carlin This movie has made a bigger impact on me than any other movie, music, book, you name it,- has ever had!It was shown to me by my teacher in culture history in a lecture a few years ago. Before showing this movie, he talked a little bit about what "castrati" means and is about, which I think everybody should know before seeing it so I highly recommend to read about it before watching this movie, to achieve best understanding.I only saw 20 minutes of the film because after 20 minutes of seeing it, my vision had gotten intensively impaired and was getting worse by the second! Then my throat started to close up, similar to asthmatic attacks which I do not have, and other students in the classroom noticed my odd behavior and before I knew it, all eyes were on me... I managed to stand up only to recklessly wander out in the hall, bouncing back and forth on the walls! Within seconds I lost consciousness and fell to the ground! I hadn't ever lost consciousness before so the feelings just before loosing consciousness was new to my mind and normally, I would be terrified and panicking but I was calm as a flower in windless weather! All I thought about, whilst freaking out other kids in the halls as if I was a drunk rapist, was this movie! The power of it! The beauty of it! The seductive tantalization of it! The school nurses and an educated doctor, couldn't find any cause why this would happen since I'm a healthy eating/living guy! But I knew all along, the hours on the hospital was in vain because it wasn't physical... It was...Farinelli...

h-sterckx He was born in Puglia to a family of minor nobility. His father, Salvatore, was a governor of Marate and Cisternino from 1706 to 1709. He was castrated as a boy to preserve his beautiful voice into adulthood.Following in the tradition of those before him he was sent to a 'conservatory', a place reserved for the training of castrati. These places gave the boys extensive voice training, lessons on composing and also provided them with the opportunity to improvise, hence the reports of Farinelli as elaborating on the composed pieces he was given, much to the delight of his audiences. He gave himself the stage name Farinelli, after an Italian magistrate.Under the instruction of Nicola Porpora, Farinelli acquired a voice of marvellous beauty. He became famous throughout southern Italy as il ragazzo ("the boy"). At the 1720 performance of Porpora's Angelica e Medoro, Farinelli sang in a public venue for the first time. In 1722, he made his first appearance at Rome in his master's Eumene, creating the greatest enthusiasm by surpassing a popular German trumpet player, for whom Porpora had written an obbligato to one of the boy's songs, in holding and swelling a note of prodigious length, purity and power, and in the variations, roulades and trills which he introduced into the air. In operas he often sang the leading woman role in Porpora's Adelaide.In 1724, Farinelli appeared at Vienna, and at Venice in the following year, returning to Napoli shortly afterwards. He sang at Milan in 1726, where Johann Joachim Quantz heard him and wrote of his singing:"Farinelli had a penetrating, full, rich, bright and well-modulated soprano voice, with a range at that time from the A below middle C to the D two octaves above middle C. ... His intonation was pure, his trill beautiful, his breath control extraordinary and his throat very agile, so that he performed the widest intervals quickly and with the greatest ease and certainty. Passage work and all kinds of melismas were of no difficulty to him. In the invention of free ornamentation in adagio he was very fertile."Farinelli sang at Bologna in 1727. It was there that he first met and acknowledged himself vanquished by the singer Antonio Bernacchi (fifteen years Farinelli's senior), to whose instruction he was much indebted. With ever-increasing success and fame, Farinelli appeared in nearly all the great cities of Italy; he returned a third time to Vienna in 1731.He modified his style (it is said) on the advice of Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, from mere bravura of the Porpora school to one of pathos and simplicity. He visited London in 1734, arriving in time to lend his powerful support to the faction which, in opposition to Handel, had set up a rival opera with Porpora as composer and Senesino as principal singer. Not even Farinelli's aid could make the undertaking successful.His first appearance at the Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre was in Artaserse, much of the music of which was by his brother, Riccardo Broschi. His success was instantaneous. Frederick, Prince of Wales and the court loaded him with favours and presents. Having spent three years in England, Farinelli set out for Spain, staying a few months on the way in France, where he sang before Louis XV. In Spain, where he had only meant to stay a few months, he ended by passing nearly 25 years. His voice, employed by the queen to cure King Philip V of his melancholy madness, acquired for him an influence with Philip which eventually gave him the power, if not the name, of prime minister.For two decades, Farinelli was required to sing the same songs to the king. Shortly after the ascension of King Ferdinand VI, Farinelli was appointed director of theaters in Madrid and Aranjuez, and most of the operas he put on had texts by Pietro Metastasio. He was knighted in 1750 and decorated with the cross of Calatrava. He utilized his power at court by persuading Ferdinand to establish an Italian opera. He also collaborated with Domenico Scarlatti, a fellow Neapolitan living in Spain. The musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick acknowledges Farinelli's correspondence as providing "most of the direct information about Scarlatti that has transmitted itself to our day." After the accession of Charles III, Farinelli retired to Bologna with the fortune he had amassed, where he spent the remainder of his days with Metastasio, dying a few months after him. His estate included gifts from royalty and valuable musical instruments, such as a Stradivarius violin.Farinelli not only sang, but he also played keyboard instruments and the viola d'amore. He occasionally composed, writing the text and music of a farewell to London aria, and an aria for Ferdinand VI, as well as keyboard sonatas.This entry was originally based on the entry in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.This is one off the best movies I have ever seen !!!! Tip for consumption : 1) smoke joint 2) lay back 3) put volume up 4) Enjoy !!!! :-)

alsihler Farinelli is not nearly as awful as I feared it would be. It's similar in many ways to Amadeus. Like Amadeus, it has glorious music beautifully performed. Like Amadeus, it tells a good (if melodramatic) story. Like Amadeus, it has a marvelous period feel. Like Amadeus, the characters in this story have the names and occupations of real people, but their portrayal on the screen is not even caricature: a caricature necessarily starts with something recognizeable.Farinelli was famous in history not merely for a phenomenal voice and outstanding musicianship and musical connoisseurship, but for poise, dignity, and perfect-pitch judgement of human character; he is portrayed throughout as a hysteric. Handel is shown as a pompous, bullying nervous wreck verging on the psychotic, quite at variance with all reliable accounts of his humor, sturdiness, practicality, and reputation for scrupulous probity toward his musicians and singers.Handel could not have said, to Farinelli, during the latter's first sensational season with the Opera of the Nobility, that he would never write another opera, and not just because Handel was no faux-Freudian opera queen: Lady History inconveniently discloses that after that 1733-34 season Handel composed and presented Ariodante, Alcina, Atalanta, Giustino, Arminio, Berenice, Faramondo, Serse, and Imeneo; his last opera, Deidamia, went unperformed, but several in that list were significant successes, and some were revived more than once.The two rival opera companies in London went down the drain more or less simultaneously, notwithstanding the enormous draw of Farinelli for the Nobility company, and notwithstanding the high quality of the music of its principal composers (Porpora, Hasse, undervalued today) and the stupendous quality of Handel's music (also undervalued); rather, the people with the money to afford the (by our standards) enormous ticket prices had simply lost interest.One commentator here is skeptical about many "period" details. And rightly: for starters, that's not the way boys were castrated, but you don't need to know the truth. Relax, just enjoy the music and the costumes and the actors chewing the scenery.