This conference formed part of ‘Farinelli's Paths’, an ambitious two-year project run by Stefano Aresi, director of Stile Galante, an Amsterdam-based ensemble specializing in eighteenth-century Italian music (see the report by Aresi himself in Eighteenth-Century Music 15/2 (2018), 257–258). The project encompasses a series of conferences, recordings, exhibitions, workshops and other events that seek to shed further light on the celebrated castrato. The specific motivation behind this conference was a planned recording by Stile Galante of ‘The Farinelli Manuscript’, an autograph set of six arias copied by the singer in 1753 and dedicated to Empress Maria Theresa (or possibly Emperor Francis I), which contains detailed performance annotations (A-Wn Mus. Hs. 19111). The conference included a special exhibition of the manuscript at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

Livio Marcaletti (Universität Wien) sought to extrapolate from this manuscript insights into Farinelli's typical mode of performance, primarily by comparing its embellishments with those written out for him by Antonio Caldara in 1732, in the oratorios La Morte d'Abel and Sedecia. Stefano Aresi's paper also addressed the manuscript, in a meticulously researched investigation into matters of performance in Farinelli's chamber repertory for the Spanish court.

Maintaining the theme of performance practice, Walter Kurt Kreyszig (University of Saskatchewan and Conservatorio Niccolò Paganini, Genoa) reversed the usual method of comparing treatises with scores by discussing Farinelli's influence on Johann Joachim Quantz's Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (Berlin: Voß, 1752). Quantz first encountered Farinelli in Parma and Milan in 1725. Kreyszig made a persuasive case that Quantz had based several important observations in his treatise on the singer's performance, having earlier praised the beauty of his trills, the effortlessness of his runs and his improvised embellishments in the Adagio.

Therese de Goede (Conservatorium van Amsterdam) offered a novel perspective on Farinelli's accompanists during his stay at the court in Madrid from 1737 to 1759. As is well known, Domenico Scarlatti taught both Princess Maria Barbara and her husband Prince Ferdinand to play the keyboard. They personally accompanied Farinelli, even after Ferdinand ascended the throne. De Goede speculated that they learned their skills by way of a method similar to that set out in a treatise by José de Torres, Reglas generales de acompañar en órgano, clavicordio y harpa (Madrid: Imprenta de Música, 1702; second, enlarged edition, 1736). It contains many examples of galant figures and harmonies drawn from the Italian theatrical style.

Other papers on performance practice looked beyond published treatises to more basic pedagogical sources. Marco Pollaci (Università di Pavia) and Paolo Sullo (Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali Pietro Mascagni, Rome) discussed the few surviving solfeggi by Farinelli, in particular a manuscript collection of ten lessons, each containing an Adagio–Allegro pair of melodies without bass (US-SFsc, Frank V. de Bellis Collection, M2.5 v.71). After casting doubt on the manuscript's provenance, Sullo raised questions concerning its purpose: was it meant for Farinelli's own practice or for teaching students? In my paper (Nicholas Baragwanath, University of Nottingham) I showed how these solfeggi were underpinned by simple cantus firmi, of the sort tackled by apprentices in their very first lessons in score reading. In this respect, the underlying stepwise cantus firmus, solmized note for note, and its elaborately embellished version, replete with vocalized ornaments, would have been regarded at the time as the same solfeggio, sung by two musicians with very different levels of skill.

Farinelli's art went far beyond singing with virtuosic graces: he was actively involved in the process of composition. Berthold Over (Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz) showed how he completely remodelled the operas for his Venetian debut at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in 1728–1729. For his roles in Leo's Catone in Utica and Porpora's Semiramide riconosciuta, he inserted arias by his brother (Riccardo Broschi), Leonardo Vinci and others in a deliberate strategy calculated to display himself to best advantage. Giovanni Andrea Sechi (Università di Bologna) went further in his account of Porpora and Rolli's pasticcio Orfeo (1736), suggesting that Farinelli actively collaborated with the composer. Newly discovered sources in Zurich testify to his involvement and demonstrate that his decisions to insert ‘suitcase arias’ were the result of careful deliberation.

Not all papers were devoted to performance issues. Several placed Farinelli in dialogue with webs of cultural, historical and social factors. Daniel Martín Sáez (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), for instance, provided a survey of the singer's treatment in the press following his retirement. Gianluca Stefani (Università di Firenze) surveyed the caricatures and portraits dating from Farinelli's early career in Rome and Venice, especially those by Pier Leone Ghezzi, Marco Ricci and Anton Maria Zanetti, and argued that their fascination with his physique can shed light on the theatrical convenienze of the day. Paologiovanni Maione (Conservatorio di Musica San Pietro a Majella, Naples) assessed the young virtuoso's career in sacred music, while Tina Hartmann (Universität Bayreuth) explored Farinelli's reception in literature. He first appeared one hundred years after retiring from the stage, as a tenor in Desforges's Farinelli, ou le bouffe du roi (Paris, 1835). Eugène Scribe and Daniel Auber next chose to portray him through a trouser role in La part du diable (1843). Hartmann contrasted this with more recent portrayals of Farinelli as a countertenor to explore definitions of social masculinity and the emergence of sexual binaries associated with the singing voice.

Francesco Lora (Università di Bologna) investigated the origins of the single most important source for Farinelli's biography: Giovenale Sacchi's Vita del cavaliere Don Carlo Broschi (Venice: Coleti, 1784). Correspondence shows that Sacchi relied heavily upon Padre Martini for his information, and Lora concluded that both men had conspired to present an image that would befit a good Catholic. Delving deeper into Farinelli's friendship with Padre Martini, Elisabetta Pasquini (Università di Bologna) gave a fascinating account of their Spanish correspondence. Citing many recently discovered letters, she showed how Farinelli was closely involved with the publication of the first volume of Martini's Storia della Musica (1757). Their correspondence also sheds light on Farinelli's life at the Spanish court, and the qualities of ‘cordialità, ingenuità ed efficacia’ (cordiality, candour and efficacy), as Anton Raaff put it in a letter to Martini, that helped to secure his social position (Raaff to Giambattista Martini, 13 December 1758 (I-Bc, I.33/1, fols 285r–286r)).

Some papers sought to place Farinelli within wider historiographical constructs. Kurt Markstrom (University of Manitoba) noted a ‘mini opera reform’ that took place during Farinelli's final collaboration with Porpora at the ‘Opera of the Nobility’ in London, between 1734 and 1737. As with Gluck some forty years later, the resulting operas appear simplified in texture and melodic style. Valentina Anzani (Università di Bologna) exploded the myth of the so-called Bolognese singing school. In 1727, when Farinelli was performing in Bologna, he met the renowned singing master Antonio Bernacchi. Legend has it that the old castrato bested the young challenger in a competition, before condescending to teach him. Anzani argued persuasively that the anecdote was concocted as propaganda for the Bolognese musical establishment over their Neapolitan arch-rivals.

One issue that has exercised recent English-language studies is patronage, specifically the ability of castratos to take advantage of a hybrid economic system involving aristocratic gift-bestowment and bourgeois mercantilism. Anne Desler (University of Edinburgh) added several new primary sources to this debate in her exploration of Farinelli's Italian patrons between 1729 and 1732, in particular Count Sicinio Pepoli in Ferrara and Vienna. She painted a complex picture in which aristocratic support networks were essential while rank and status were important, keenly felt and fluid. Aneta Markuszewska (Uniwersytet Warszawski) looked in detail at Farinelli's connection with the Teatro d'Alibert in Rome and its patrons James III Stuart, pretender to the English throne, and his wife the Polish Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska. She concluded that the Carnival operas staged there between 1722 and 1724 encoded political propaganda for the benefit of the patrons. Rosa Cafiero (Università Cattolica di Sacro Cuore, Milan) and Angela Romagnoli (Università di Pavia) offered a similarly detailed account of Farinelli's patrons at the court of Maria Theresa in Vienna.

Several papers focussed on the performance histories of individual works. Anna Ryszka-Komarnicka (Uniwersytet Warszawski) traced the progress of Pietro Pariati and Apostolo Zeno's Zenobia in Palmira from Barcelona (1708) to an updated galant version in Naples (1725). Countertenor Randall Scotting traced the history of the aria ‘Son qual nave’ from 1707 to 1734, stressing the importance of singers and performing traditions in its development.

Finally, there were a couple of papers on the physiology of the castrato voice. Brazilian tenor Daniel Issa Gonçalves (Sorbonne Université) looked to contemporary ‘meta-operas’ – in particular, those that satirized and parodied Farinelli's singing – to obtain new insights into his vocal technique and delivery. Marco Beghelli (Università di Bologna) posited the radical idea that castratos retained their natural baritone or tenor range, saving it for special effect during private entertainments.

Altogether, this conference provided new insights into Farinelli's biography, reception, and social and historical contexts, as well as into matters of performance practice. And there was more to come: lectures and workshops in Bern, and another conference under the auspices of Stile Galante entitled ‘Quei vostri inaspettati e brillanti gruppetti: Debunking Myths in Historically Informed Performance’ (Naples, 13–14 September 2019).