Great Singers, First Series | Page 8

for ever, and accepted a salary
of fifty thousand francs to sing for the King, as David harped for the
mad King Saul. Farinelli told Dr. Burney that during ten years he sang
four songs to the King every night without any change." When
Ferdinand VI., who was also a victim to his father's malady, succeeded
to the throne, the singer continued to perform his minstrel cure, and
acquired such enormous power and influence that all court favor and
office depended on his breath. Though never prime minister, Farinelli's
political advice had such weight with Ferdinand, that generals,
secretaries, ambassadors, and other high officials consulted with him,
and attended his levee, as being the power behind the throne. Farinelli
acquired great wealth, but no malicious pen has ever ascribed to him
any of the corrupt arts by which royal favorites are wont to accumulate
the spoils of office. In his prosperity he never forgot prudence, modesty,
and moderation. Hearing one day an old veteran officer complain that
the King ignored his thirty years of service while he enriched "a
miserable actor," Farinelli secured promotion for the grumbler, and,
giving the commission to the abashed soldier, mildly taxed him for
calling the King ungrateful. According to another anecdote, he
requested an embassy for one of the courtiers. "Do you not know," said
the King, "that this grandee is your deadly enemy?" "True," replied
Farinelli; "and this is the way I propose to get revenge." Dr. Burney
also relates the following anecdote: A tailor, who brought him a
splendid court costume, refused any pay but a single song. After long
refusal Farinelli's good nature yielded, and he sang to the enraptured

man of the needle and shears, not one, but several songs. After
concluding he said: "I, too, am proud, and that is the reason perhaps of
my advantage over other singers. I have yielded to you; it is but just
that you should yield to me." Thereupon he forced on the tailor more
than double the price of the clothes.
Farinelli's influence as a politician was always cast on the side of
national honor and territorial integrity. When the new King, Charles III.,
ascended the throne, being even then committed to the
Franco-Neapolitan imbroglio, which was such a dark spot in the
Spanish history of that time, Farinelli left Spain at the royal suggestion,
which amounted to a command. The remaining twenty years of his life
he resided in a splendid palace near Bologna, where he devoted his
time and attention to patronage of learning and the arts. He collected a
noble gallery of paintings from the hands of the principal Italian and
Spanish masters. Among them was one representing himself in a group
with Metastasio and Faustina Bordoni, for whose greatness as an artist
and beauty of character he always expressed the warmest admiration.
Though Farinelli was all his life an idol with the women, his
appearance was not prepossessing. Dibdin, speaking of him at the age
of thirty, says he "was tall as a giant and as thin as a shadow; therefore,
if he had grace, it could only be of a sort to be envied by a penguin or a
spider."
To his supreme merit as an artist we have, however, overwhelming
testimony. Out of the many enthusiastic descriptions of his singing, that
of Mancini, after Porpora the greatest singing-master of the age, and the
fellow pupil with Farinelli under Bernacchi, will serve: "His voice was
thought a marvel because it was so perfect, so powerful, so sonorous,
and so rich in its extent, both in the high and low parts of the register,
that its equal has never been heard. He was, moreover, endowed with a
creative genius which inspired him with embellishments so new and so
astonishing that no one was able to imitate them. The art of taking and
keeping the breath so softly and easily that no one could perceive it,
began and died with him. The qualities in which he excelled were the
evenness of his voice, the art of swelling its sound, the portamento, the
union of the registers, a surprising agility, a graceful and pathetic style,

and a shake as admirable as it was rare. There was no branch of the art
which he did not carry to the highest pitch of perfection.... The
successes of his youth did not prevent him from continuing to study,
and this great artist applied himself with so much perseverance that he
contrived to change in some measure his style, and to acquire another
and superior method, when his name was already famous and his
fortune brilliant."
V.
Let us return from the consideration of Faustina's most brilliant
contemporary to Hasse and his wife. We have already seen that this
great prima donna retired from the stage