Arias for Farinelli

Performer:	Vivica Genaux	Click Image To See Full Size Pic
CD Title:	Arias for Farinelli
Composer:	Various
CD INFO:	Harmonium Mundi HMC 901778
Reviewer:	Ward Botsford
Notes:	Academie Für Alte Musik – Berlin, conducted by RENÉ JACOBS

What's On This CD:

Review:
Music supposedly written for the great castrato Carlo Broschi detto Farinelli … you’ve seen the movie of course?

Extensive notes on the subject will enthrall the uninformed. How-so-for-ever that has not a damned thing to do with the present record, which I find a thrill a minute and a lot of good clean fun.

Ms. Genaux hails from Bear country, that is to say Alaska and her voice is quite marvelous. She is all over the place from top to bottom and indeed listening to her exhausts me. I would suggest one aria at a time to be followed by a very dry martini to be followed by more of La Geneaux.

What I mean to say she has a voice like a firebrand that sears the senses and palpitates the sensory organ. I heard the first aria and yelled for my wife – which I have a way of doing when I have something out of this world – she came a-running and wouldn’t go away until the whole CD had been absorbed … along with several ‘shaken but not stirreds’.

All kidding aside: This is a great CD and whatever it cost you will be too little. The music itself? Not to be taken too seriously. It was written for the singer and has not much to commend itself per se. Not to mind. You sit there with your mouth a ‘gape just listening to Genaux.

You will note that there in a Galuppi Concerto a 4 inset for some strange reason halfway through. Either Geneaux got tired or the folks at Harmonium Mundi figured that at that point the Martinis poured. Anyhow it is nice.

René Jacobs and his Merry Men provide exactly what is needed: Lots of precision, good spirits <g>, and driving tempi.

The sound is groovy; there are texts in all languages and I demand to know when there will be more. Maybe of a more substantial sort.