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Home , Alessandro Scarlatti, Charles Burney, Farinelli, Francesca Cuzzoni, Henry Carey (writer), John Dennis (dramatist)

U UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Date: March 4, 2009

I, Ashley Offret , hereby submit this original work as part of the requirements for the degree of:

Master of Music in Music History

It is entitled: A Dozen Little Farinellos: A Reception History of Farinelli in London, 1734-1737

Ashley Offret Student Signature:

This work and its defense approved by:

Committee Chair: Melinda Boyd Jeongwon Joe Jonathan Kregor

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I have reviewed the Thesis/Dissertation in its final electronic format and certify that it is an accurate copy of the document reviewed and approved by the committee.

Committee Chair signature: Melinda Boyd A Dozen Little Farinellos: A Reception History of Farinelli in London, 1734-37

A Thesis Submitted to the

Division of Graduate Studies and Research of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Music

in the Division of Composition, Musicology, and Theory of the College-Conservatory of Music

2009

Ashley Offret

B. M., University of Maine, 2005

Committee Chair: Dr. Melinda Boyd ABSTRACT

Farinelli’s arrival in London in 1734 to perform with the Opera of the Nobility marked a temporary rise in the declining popularity of Italian Opera in England. The previous few decades had seen Italian opera overwhelmingly successful under the baton of Georg Frederic Handel, despite frequent and constant complaints by critics. This thesis will reconstruct Farinelli’s reception history through an examination of contemporary literature. First, it will examine

Farinelli’s irresistibility as a sexual icon by reconstructing London’s ideas about femininity, while taking into account his unique traits that attracted him to both males and females. Next, it will examine Britain’s evolving sense of national identity that they thought placed it in equal merit standing with other European countries. This thesis will use contemporary criticisms in various forms, including a false letter, essays and satires, by some of the most famous literary names of the time period.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank my friends and family for listening to me talk endlessly about the following thesis, especially while it was in its beginning stages. I also want to thank the musicology faculty at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music for their support and advice, especially Dr. Jeongwon Joe and Dr. Jonathan Kregor for their valuable contributions as readers of my thesis. Most of all I want to thank Dr. Melinda Boyd, because I am certain that without her contagious passion for learning, careful attention to detail and firm encouragements this thesis would have been much more difficult for me to write.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract..………………………………………………………………………………………….ii

Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………..iv

Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………….v

Introduction. …………………………………………………………………………….……...…1

Chapter One: The Making of a Great Castrato…….…...………………….…………….……..…5

Chapter Two: Contextualizing Gender in 18th-Century Britain…………………...…….……….22

Chapter Three: The Castrato in Contemporary Literature……………………………………….45

Epilogue……………………………………………………………………………………….…72

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………..75

“But so numerous are they grown, it is high Time to put a Stop to them, lest the growing

Generation be corrupted; and England rival Italy, in this most unnatural and wicked Practice.”1

Introduction

London in the 1730s was deeply rooted in ancient, conservative tradition. Entertained for

years by George Frederic Handel and his famous singers, the public was in love with the world

of Italian opera. The court funded recruitment trips throughout Europe to invite some of the

most talented musicians the continent had to offer to perform on the highly receptive, although

often criticized, London stage. Handel’s rival opera company hired famous Italian Nicolo

Porpora (1686-1768) to help the Opera of the Nobility compete for the fickle London audience.

When Porpora seduced one of his most famous pupils, the castrato Carlo Broschi (1705-1782),

also known by the stage name Farinelli, to participate in the 1734-37 season, the scale balancing

the rivalry was inevitably tipped in favor of the Opera of the Nobility.2

Famous for his gentlemanly demeanor and charisma, Farinelli quickly became a

household name among London’s opera public. He did not possess many of the notorious

characteristics that some of his infamous fellow opera singers did, such as difficult rehearsing

technique, impossible demands both onstage and offstage, and a general attitude in public that

reflected an inflated sense of self. He was invited to many aristocratic homes, singing,

entertaining and sharing his interesting life stories. His presence was so exciting to some of his 1 Rictor Norton, ed., "Reasons for the Growth of Sodomy, 1731," Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook, 14 April 2000; updated 4 March 2007, http://www.rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/1731grow.htm (accessed September 14, 2008).

2 Ellen T. Harris, "Farinelli," in Grove Music Online/ Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/09312 (accessed October 5, 2008).

admirers that “one woman blasphemed: ‘One God, one Farinelli!’”3 Equating Farinelli with God

may be seen as blasphemous, but such was the singer’s reputation at the time. London had never

before experienced such overwhelming interest in a new performer.

Studying the reception history of this outstanding performer through contemporary

literature is the key to unlocking the paradox of the castrato: Europe’s fascination with the voice,

and the fear of emasculation held by many fortunate enough to have heard and socialized with

one. The widely varying amount of literature published during Farinelli’s tenure in London is

indicative of his massive talent and stage-capabilities. This is why he is the ideal subject for this

study, which reveals the undeniable influence he had on the development of operatic culture.

Tracing the construction of gender as it was understood by early eighteenth-century

Britons, especially in terms of their definition of effeminacy, is helpful in understanding exactly

why Farinelli provoked the powerfully charged and emotional reactions that he did. The notion

of effeminacy was by no means a new concept in England at the time that Italian castrati and

their music were introduced in England, but their physical and social oddities were so surprising

to the English that they could not help but provoke some sort of response in the public eye.

References of attraction to Farinelli are numerous and obvious in the body of contemporary

literature, by both sexes, partly because of the exotic quality his body and talent possessed for the

English. Exactly how one’s attraction to Farinelli revealed itself in the literature depended upon

the gender and background of the person in question, a subject which will also be explored in

this thesis. Understanding the physical attraction to castrati is only a part of the source of the

3 Thomas McGeary, “‘Warbling Eunuchs’: Opera, Gender, and Sexuality on the London Stage, 1705- 1742,” Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theater Research 7, no. 1 (Summer 1992): 13.

Londoners’ reaction, but it is an important one, as it would continue to impact English society for

a long time.

An examination of the reception of Italian opera in England through the contemporary

literature provides another key to understanding Farinelli’s strong reception in London. Italian

art’s influence was felt in England long before Farinelli began his stay there, largely through

paintings, portraits and literature that were brought back by the English who travelled abroad.

There was, according to Nigel Llewellyn, a driving need by the English bourgeois to feel elite

and educated, especially when it came to cultures outside of their own.4 Opera was embraced by

so many partly because this need for culture was already rooted in British society. It is also the

reason that there were so many public arguments against Italian opera. Famous British critics

and poets alike tackled the issue, debating such problems as the influence Italian opera would

have on young women, men who would be influenced to become more feminine, and the

overwhelming support of opera by the royalty. Alexander Pope was one of the most famous

people to tackle what he perceived as the problems with Italian opera. He demonstrated opera’s

influence over the monarchy in his epic Dunciad,5 in which his Queen, Dullness, attempts to rule

by ridding her court of science and reason.

The British thought their country to be in the middle of a cultural revolution, and as such

deservedly sat apart from the rest of the European countries. Another reason behind the outcry

against Italian opera was this elitism, which for critics threatened to again place England at the

4 Nigel Llewellyn, “ ‘Those loose and immodest pieces’: Italian art and the British point of view,” in Italian Culture in Northern Europe in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Shearer West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

5 Alexander Pope, The Dunciad , http://ebooks.ohiolink.edu/xtf- ch/view?docId=tei/enpo/22269.xml&query=dunciad&brand=default (accessed Sept. 2, 2008).

same level as the rest of Europe instead of setting it apart from and ahead of its competitors.

John Dennis emphasized this in his Essay on the Operas,6 which is examined below, and by

doing so attempted to place pressure on Britian’s government to forcefully rid England of the

foreign art. This obviously did not happen, as 30 years after his publication Farinelli came to

London with such overwhelming initial success. Nonetheless, interpreting this work also

provides insight as to why Farinelli was received with such mixed reactions.

England was a society far enough away from the rest of Europe and was only aware of a

trickle of what was happening artistically elsewhere, but its elite were still starved for exposure

to the exotic offerings of other countries.7 None were more exotic or irresistible, to both critics

and supporters, than the great operatic castrati from Italy. With their voices rooted in the

religious background that fostered the cultivation of high male voices through castration, their

soaring high registers were meant to get the attention of any listener. Their elaborate lifestyles,

which frequently started in poverty, were also meant to grab the attention of any audience

member. Farinelli was arguably the most talented and well-traveled of the castrati during the

decline of their popularity on the operatic stage, and as such is the perfect choice for this study.

The existence of so much literature from his time working in London makes this study more

thorough and interesting, as it provides the opportunity to examine the influence of Italian opera

on those outside of Farinelli’s immediate world.

6 John Dennis, An Essay on the Opera’s After the Italian Manner, Which are about to be establish’d on the English Stage: With some Reflections on the Damage they may bring to the Publick (London, 1706).

7 For more information on this topic, refer to Leslie Griffin Hennessey, Italian Culture in Northern Europe in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Shearer West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 31.

Chapter 1: The Making of a Great Castrato

Farinelli’s arrival and reception in London was in many ways the climax of his legendary career. Many of the strongest reactions to any Italian singer anywhere were penned by English critics during Farinelli’s short tenure with the Opera of the Nobility; criticisms which were written during and after his time in England, and which only boosted his popularity through scandal. His stay in England also affected him personally, as he sentimentally continued to recall his time there throughout the rest of his life. This chapter, by highlighting certain events during the great castrato’s lifetime, will serve to contextualize the rest of this thesis. It will also reflect on some of the more publicized moments of Farinelli’s life, which is helpful in interpreting the mixed reactions the singer experienced from audiences all over Europe, but more strongly in England.

Carlo Broschi, also known as Farinelli

Carlo Broschi was born in Andria, Italy on January 24, 1705. His family had minor nobility status, and his father had served as Royal Governor for Maratea and Cisternino, both small towns. Broschi’s father, Salvatore, was also a musician who both taught and composed, and it was from him that the young Broschi had his first exposure to music. It is, however, unusual that Salvatore decided to have his son castrated. The type of singer typically castrated was from a lower class, frequently a family struggling for survival, and selling a son with a musically promising voice was a way for them to provide their family with some extra income.

There was also the possibility that the singer would, if successful, support his family later in life.

The practice of castration peaked around the turn of the seventeenth century. Most of the castrated boys were not able, through lack of talent or opportunity, to find their place on the 5

operatic stage, and therefore there was a large surge of castrati joining monastic orders. It was a

logical place for the castrati to end up, as there was always a need for high voices in church

choirs, and indeed the church was the first organization to encourage and employ castrati.

Castration was sometimes even looked upon by the Italians as an act for the glory of God, as

castration was an obvious extension of the celibacy required by those who chose to become

monks.1 Since Carlo’s family was not in these typical circumstances, it remains that he is the

only known castrato to have come from nobility. It has been suggested that perhaps Carlo’s

castration came as a result of medical treatment for some injury or illness, but definitive evidence

has not been found.2

Broschi’s stage name, Farinelli, was used both for the young singer and his brother

Ricardo, a composer whose works Carlo would perform throughout his life. In Italian,

“Farinello” means “a thorough rascal, a rogue,”3 so perhaps the name came to be associated with

the family as a result of some “rogue” family trait. Whatever its origins, the name “Farinelli”

has now become representative of the singer born as Carlo Broschi,4 and will be used to refer to

Broschi for the remainder of this thesis.

1 Patrick Barbier, The World of the Castrati: The History of on Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon, trans. Margaret Crosland (London: Souvenir Press Ltd., 1996): 19.

2 Angus Heriot, The Castrati in Opera (1956; repr., London: Calder and Boyars Ltd., 1975), 95.

3 Ibid.

4 According to Daniel Heartz, “Farinelli Revisited,” Early Music 18 (August 1990): 430, both “Farinelli” and “Farinello” were used synonymously by poets for more flexibility in choosing rhymes.

Farinelli and Nicola Porpora

Although he was only nineteen, by 1715 Nicola Porpora had already established himself in Naples as a music teacher with a considerable studio of high-quality private students. His talents were further rewarded when, the same year, he was appointed maestro at the

Conservatorio di Sant’Onofrio, a school for orphans, underprivileged children and a few students who paid their tuition at the school solely for educational purposes.5 Porpora’s partiality toward composition and his corresponding endeavors were largely unnoticed in Naples during his first few years in residence there, however, because of the overwhelming success of Alessandro

Scarlatti. Scarlatti’s return to Rome in 1719 cleared the way for Naples’s patrons to commission new operas from new composers, and the young Porpora was ready and eager to take on the challenge.6

In 1717 Salvatore died, the same year his 12-year-old son went to Naples to study with

Porpora. Broschi studied with Porpora for three years, perfecting his technique. He would learn to control his voice, to rapidly navigate three octaves, to execute leaps and trills, to improvise ornamentation, and also to pull his audience into the music of the character he was portraying onstage. Broschi’s career as a vocalist had much promise, with Porpora as the one to guide

Carlo to the road to fame as an operatic singer.

Billed as Farinelli, the young singer made his public debut in 1720, when he was fifteen years old, in a production celebrating the birthday of the Austrian Hapsburg Empress, Elizabeth

Christine. He played a minor role in Angelica e Medoro, with music by Porpora. This occasion 5 Barbier, The World of the Castrati, 19.

6 Kurt Markstrom and Michael F. Robinson, "Porpora, Nicola," in Grove Music Online/ Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/22126 (accessed October 5, 2008).

was also a first for Pietro Metastasio, whose first libretto was the one set to music by Porpora, and it was through this production that Metastasio met and befriended Farinelli. They became lifelong friends and correspondents, and many of their letters to each other still survive. The two referred to each other as “caro gemello,” or “dear twin,” in reference to the operatic birth they both experienced through their simultaneous debuts in Porpora’s opera.7

During the 1720s and 1730s, the Neopolitan style of singing at S. Giovanni Grisostomo, heavily influenced by Porpora, was overtaking the Venetian school of singing in popularity and in style as well as the important centers and schools of thought. Farinelli emerged as one of the most popular results of Porpora’s training, an early example of what would be known as the bel canto style of singing, capable of maintaining an even, consistent tone throughout his entire vocal range, without sacrificing his ability to create different tone colors when the music required it. He had a smooth soprano range encompassing more than three octaves, and was also agile enough to astonish his audiences with his impressive ornamentation. The tones “produced in the chest were as strong and varied as those moving seamlessly into the upper registers were cultured (savant) and harmonious.”8

Throughout the early 1720s, Farinelli toured Rome and Naples, singing both prima donna and primo uomo roles. One of the most famous anecdotes concerning Farinelli dates from this period while he was in Rome:

There was a struggle every night between him and a famous player on the trumpet, in a song accompanied by that instrument: this, at first seemed amicable and merely sportive, till the audience began to interest themselves in the contest, and to take different sides: after severely swelling out a note, in which each manifested the power of his lungs, and tried to rival the other in brilliancy and force, they had both a swell and a shake together, 7 Barbier, The World of the Castrati, 88-89.

8 Hennessey, Italian Culture in Northern Europe, 31.

by thirds, which was continued so long, while the audience eagerly waited the event, that both seemed to be exhausted; and, in fact, the trumpeter, wholly spent gave it up, thinking, however, his antagonist as much tired as himself, and that it would be a drawn battle; when Farinelli with a smile on his countenance, shewing he had only been sporting with him all this time, broke out all at once in the same breath, with fresh vigour, and not only swelled and shook the note, but ran the most rapid and difficult divisions, and was at last silenced only by the acclamations of the audience. From this period may be dated that superiority which he ever maintained over all his contemporaries.9

Farinelli toured Italy extensively through the mid 1730s, accumulating appreciators of his

art everywhere he performed. In a somewhat sarcastic letter written in 1728 by the Abbot

Antonio Conti, the overwhelming craze surrounding Farinelli’s power over his audience is

obvious. Conti wrote: “One speaks of nothing but the opera and everyone is so enamoured of

Farinello that if the Turks appeared in the [Adriatic] Gulf they would calmly be allowed to

disembark so as not to miss even a pair of his arias.”10 It is important to stress that Farinelli

continued to grow as a musician during this time and continued to take advice into consideration.

Charles Burney related Farinelli’s account of his performance for Charles VI. The monarch told

him that his singing was impressively virtuosic and athletic, but “it is now time for you to please

. . . if you wish to reach the heart, you must take a plain and simple road.”11 Farinelli took this

advice seriously, and consequently became a virtuoso singer known for both his technical

virtuosity and emotional singing. His control of the messo di voce technique--which includes

beginning a note very softly, a crescendo through the note, and then a decrescendo to the same

very soft dynamic level in one breath--was known to leave his audiences on the edge of their

seats tingling with anticipation. 9 Charles Burney, Dr. Burney’s Musical Tours in Europe: An Eighteenth-Century Musical Tour in France and Italy, vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 153.

10 Hennessey, Italian Culture in Northern Europe, 31.

11 Burney, Musical Tour in France and Italy, 204.

London and Italian Opera

Beginning with the few years before 1700, Italian singers were being engaged for

“entertainments of singing,”12 concerts that included Italian opera repertory but were not staged as such. At that point, Italian music and musicians had been introduced to London, but they did not yet have the popularity or funding to allow full operatic productions. Both male and female singers were showcased in these formal recitals. One of the first Italian singers to achieve widespread popularity was Francesca Margherita de l’Epine, who was in London in 1703. She was involved in a rivalry with an English singer, Mrs. Katherine Tofts, who was also engaged by the Drury Lane Theater, to sing both English and Italian songs. The rivalry culminated at a performance by L’Epine on February 5, 1704, which required a letter of apology on the part of

Mrs. Tofts. The letter was published in The Daily Courant and addressed to the manager of the

Drury Lane Theater:

Sir, I was very much surpriz’d when I was inform’d that Ann Barwick, who was lately my Servant, had committed a Rudeness last night at the Playhouse by throwing of Oranges and hissing when Mrs L’Epine the Italian Gentlewoman Sung. I hope no one can think that it was in the least with my privity, as I assure you it was not. I abhor such Practises, and I hope you will cause her to be prosecuted, that she may be punish’d as she deserves. I am, Sir, your humble servant, Katherine Tofts.13

This event was evidence of the thrill audience members experienced by onstage controversy, and the history London audiences had of creating controversy. Introducing Italians and their music to their stage would only provide more excitement.

12 Eric Walter White, A History of English Opera (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1983), 139.

13 Ibid.

Near the close of 1704, shortly after the incident at Drury Lane Theater, “an opera, after the Italian manner: all sung,”14 was offered to the public. It was based on Tomaso Stanzani’s

Arsinoe, which had been originally set by Petronio Franceschini for the Teatro Fromagliari in

Bologna in 1677. The successful 1704 setting was in English, which would become a trend in

London until Handel’s arrival on the opera scene, and included an all English cast. One of the three English composers working toward a new setting of the work was Thomas Clayton, who wrote a preface to the libretto:

The design of this entertainment being to introduce the Italian manner of music on the English stage, which has not been before attempted. . . The stile of this music is to express the passions, which is the soul of musick: And though the voices are not equal to the Italian, yet I have engag’d the best that were to be found in England.15

This preface clearly shows the emerging bias of Londoners toward Italian music and musicians.

For the 1708-1709 season, the Italian castrato known as Nicolini was contracted to sing at the newly opened Queen’s Theater.16 He was known for his performances in leading roles in several of Alessandro Scarlatti’s operas in Naples, a reputation that certainly preceeded his premiere performance in London in Scarlatti’s Pyrrhus and Demetrius on December 14, 1708.

The opera was presented in two languages at once: Nicolini sang his part in Italian, and the

English singers performed their roles in English. The audience was particularly impressed by his singing and acting, and he was labeled as superior to those of his fellow English performers.

14 White, A History of English Opera, 140.

15 Ibid.

16The Queen’s Theatre would become known as the King’s Theatre after the death of Queen Anne, and later as Her Majesty’s Royal Opera.

Nicolini would make several more appearances in London over the next few years, the last of which was in 1718.17

After Nicolini, the English stage was dominated by Italian singers for several decades.

The overwhelming infatuation the English public felt toward Italian opera was fueled by a scandalously large amount of propaganda. This propaganda, strongly against Italian music and musicians, was published in response to the flood of foreign music in England. One such position was expressed by John Dennis, a critic who published many pamphlets advocating against Italian music in England. In a letter, Dennis described the English taste for Italian music as “unnatural, wholly unsuitable to our northern climate, and the genius of the people, whereby we are overrun with Italian effeminacy and Italian nonsense.”18 The flood of anti-Italian propaganda set the stage for Italian opera’s reception over the following decades in London. The pamphlets published during that time frequently read like a gossip tabloid, full of rumors and fictional, satirical stories involving the foreign musicians.

Porpora and the Opera of the Nobility vs. Handel and the King’s Theater

George Frideric Handel arrived in London in late 1710 on invitation from the Earl of

Manchester, the same Earl who had enticed Nicolini to the London stage. Handel’s studies of

Italian opera and his first few experiments in the genre during his time in Hamburg behind him, he immediately went to work for the Queen’s Theatre. Rinaldo, his first opera for the London

17 Winton Dean, "Nicolini," in Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/19902 (accessed October 5, 2008).

18 White, A History of English Opera, 152.

stage, premiered on February 24, 1711.19 It was a great success and was also the first work

Handel had published through J. Walsh of London. Handel was immensely popular with the

English public and decided to make England his permanent home, becoming a naturalized citizen

in February of 1726.

Handel’s operas written for the Royal Academy of Music became the setting for a famous

onstage rivalry between two of his imported Italian sopranos, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina

Bordoni. He struggled to maintain a professional working relationship between his performers,

struggles which sometimes resulted in Handel directing threats toward his singers, such as the

day an insistent Cuzzoni refused to sing an aria that Handel had written for her. His reply:

“Madam, I know that you are a veritable devil, but I want you to know that I am Beelzebub, the

chief of the devils-and I intend to throw you through that open window.”20 A year after

Faustina’s 1726 arrival in London, the warring divas reached their peak. During a performance

of Bononcini’s Astianatte on June 6, the audience members screaming their support of their

favorite diva prevented the performance from continuing, and may or may not have actually

resulted in blows between the divas onstage.21

When the Royal Academy of Music folded in 1728, Handel entered into a partnership

with John James Heidegger to manage the King’s Theater. By 1733 the struggling company had 19 Interestingly, Aaron Hill, the impresario for the Queen’s Theatre, looked upon Rinaldo as a milestone contribution to English opera. He wrote in his dedication to Queen Anne that “this opera is a native of Your Majesty’s dominions,” and included comments on his “endeavour to see the English opera more splendid than her mother, the Italian.” White, A History of English Opera, 157.

20 Richard Somerset-Ward, Angels and Monsters: Male and Female Sopranos in the Story of Opera (New Haven: Yale University Press): 36.

21 Lowell Lindgren, "Astianatte," in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, edited by Stanley Sadie, Grove Music Online/ Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/O006742 (accessed October 5, 2008).

a rival group, the Opera of the Nobility, which was funded by the Prince of Wales. Nicola

Porpora proved to be an excellent director, and even managed to get Senesino to leave Handel’s company to come perform with his ensemble. Porpora also had Cuzzoni and Farinelli in his company.

Now, instead of supporting a diva, the public had to choose an opera house. They could choose the King’s Theater, backed by the King, or the Opera of the Nobility, backed by the

Prince of Wales. An audience member named Mrs. Pendarves reported a performance at the

Opera of the Nobility in November, 1736, in a letter. Obviously favoring Handel’s theater over

Porpora’s, she noted that:

They have Farinelli, Merighi, which no sound in her voice, but thundering action- a beauty with no other merit; and one Chimenti, a tolerable good woman with a pretty voice and Montagnana, who roars as usual! With this band of singers and dull Italian operas, such as you almost fall asleep at, they presume to rival Handel.22

Over the next few years, the two companies caused the downfall of each other. Their demise was described in the first biography on Handel, John Mainwaring’s Memoirs of the Life of

Handel:

Though Handel had some good Singers, none of them could be compared to Farinelli, who drew all the world to the Hay-market. And it soon appeared that the relish of the English for Music, was not strong enough to support two Operas at a time. There were but few persons of any other class, besides that of the Nobility, who had much knowledge of the Italian, any notion of such compositions, or consequently any real pleasure in hearing them. Those among the middling and lower orders, whom affectation or curiosity had drawn to the Theatre at his first setting out in conjunction with Rich, fell off by degrees. His expenses in providing Singers, and in other preparations, had been very large; and his profits were no way proportionate to such charges. At the end of three or four years, instead of having acquired such an addition to his fortune, as from his care, industry, and abilities, he had reason to expect, he was obliged to draw out of the funds almost all that he was worth in order to answer the demands upon him.23 22 Pat Rogers, “The Critique of Opera in Pope’s ‘Dunciad,’” The Musical Quarterly 59, no. 1 (Jan., 1973): 25.

23 J. Mainwaring, Memoirs of the Life of Handel (1760), quoted in White, A History of English Opera, 163. 14

Handel’s love for the theater was the reason why he poured so many of his assets into funding performances of his operas. After he had nothing left, no money and no audience, he successfully created the English oratorio.

Farinelli in London

While touring in Turin, Farinelli was introduced to the English ambassador Lord Essex by his English friend and patron, the Duke of Leeds. The Duke was touring Europe, and upon hearing the great Farinelli made it a large part of his tour to hear the singer perform as often as possible.24 Essex, along with several other members of the English nobility, helped negotiate

Farinelli’s move to London in 1734 to join Porpora and the cast of the Opera of the Nobility.

Essex may also have been the person who commissioned the formal portrait of Farinelli painted by Bartolomeo Nazarin in 1734, which has since become one of the most famous images of quite possibly the most famous singer of the eighteenth century.

Farinelli had been considering the idea of going to London since 1729, when Handel attempted to contract him to sing for the King’s Theater. He instead signed a contract with

Handel’s rival company, the Opera of the Nobility, where his old friend and teacher, Nicolo

Porpora, was the music director and primary composer. His English debut was in October of

1734, when he sang in Porpora’s adaptation of Johann Adolf Hasse’s Artaxerxe. Farinelli remained in London for three seasons, and performed operas by such composers as Porpora, J.

24 For more information on the Duke of Leeds, the Earl of Essex, and their longtime friendship with Farinelli, consult Thomas McGeary’s “Farinelli and the Duke of Leeds: ‘tanto mio amico e patrone particolare,’” Early Music 7 (May 2002): 203-213.

A. Hasse, who would marry Cuzzoni, and his brother Riccardo Broschi. Farinelli’s arrival

further inflamed the rivalry between the two opera houses.25

John Hawkins, in his General History, mentioned the Londoners’ desire for everything

Italian in both music and visual art, specifically with Porpora’s newly launched Opera of the

Nobility: “At the same time that the nobility under the new subscription engaged with Farinelli,

they also agreed with Porpora as a composer for the opera and with Amiconi to paint the

scenes.”26 Amiconi became a friend of Farinelli, and is responsible for one of the most popular

images of the singer at the height of his popularity: Farinelli Crowned by Euterpe and Attended

by Fame.

Farinelli carefully managed to balance the rivalry between the two royal factions. One

example of his maneuvers is represented by a portrait painted by his Italian friend, Amiconi.

This portrait is unusual in its obvious elevation of Farinelli, with its depiction of him being

attended by immortal Gods. Even the nobility were not painted in this way. Moreover, it was

also exhibited alongside paintings of some of the highest ranking nobility in the world. It was

advertised in the Grub Street Journal in July of 1735 that the portrait was hanging next to an

allegorical work of Queen Catherine by Amigoni, “delivering up his Royal Highness [William,

Duke of Cumberland] to the Goddess of Wisdom, who is represented under the form of Mrs.

Poyntz [the governess].”27 Hennessey observed that “the public presentation of these two

25 Ellen T. Harris, "Farinelli," in Grove Music Online/ Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/09312 (accessed October 5, 2008).

26John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, 876. Quoted in Hennessey, Italian Culture in Northern Europe, 34.

27 Hennessey, Italian Culture in Northern Europe, 34.

portraits as if they were pendants is an eloquent testimony to Farinelli’s prestige.” 28 Hennessey also presented an interesting interpretation of the display. Farinelli needed to carefully maintain his public image in the city that produced the warring factions in support of Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. By displaying his image next to the monarch, Amigoni was helping his friend place himself above such rivalries, presenting the singer as a gift from the Gods and therefore immune to such earthly squabbles as those the rival queens engaged themselves in.

Farinelli went to London to join the cast of the Opera of the Nobility not only as a friend of Nicola Porpora, but at the personal invitation of the Price of Wales. In a politically charged move, the Prince took sides against his father, George II, who was personally financing Handel’s opera company. The Londoners’ infamous history of taking the side of one or the other singer had extended to the highest level of the nobility. After successfully hiring two of Handel’s most popular singers, the decision to add Farinelli to the group only added to the stakes that had already been placed in the center of the game table. Farinelli’s first encounter with the royal family at Kensington Palace proved to be evidence of the ongoing game, as he was presented with a test: “I have had to give sufficient proof of my ability to be recognized in this place; while singing at the Court the King and Queen were present and the choirmaster was the Princess of

Orange, who all of a sudden (all’improviso) presented me with arias by Handel and very frankly told me to sing them, and thank God it turned out gloriously.”29 The Princess’s selection of an aria by Handel was a bold one, as Handel’s company was the rival to the Farinelli’s employer, and functions as further evidence of the games the nobility played at favoring a specific singer.

28 Hennessey, Italian Culture in Northern Europe, 34.

29 Ibid., 37.

The nobility were not the only people to appreciate Farinelli’s talent, as his fellow musicians also expressed their admiration. Charles Burney visited Farinelli in Bologna during his retirement, after he had left the Spanish court in Madrid. Burney was one of many to make the pilgrimage to visit the great singer, including royalty and the young Mozart. The following anecdote about his first performance with another famous castrato, Senesino, was related to

Burney during his interview with Farinelli in Bologna:

Senesino and Farinelli, when in England together, being engaged at different theatres on the same night, had not an opportunity of hearing each other, till, by one of those sudden stage-revolutions which frequently happen, yet are always unexpected, they were both employed to sing on the same stage. Senesino had the part of a furious tyrant to represent, and Farinelli that of an unfortunate hero in chains; but, in the course of the first song, he so softened the obdurate ear of the enraged tyrant, that Senesino, forgetting his stage-character, ran to Farinelli and embraced him in his own.30

Farinelli’s colleagues certainly had a reason for their admiration, as Farinelli’s vocal prowess was rare and inimitable. Burney also described Farinelli’s vocal technique, as fondly recollected by an astonished London audience member:

the first note he sung was taken with such delicacy, swelled by minute degrees to such an amazing volume, and afterwards diminished in the same manner to a mere point, that it was applauded for full five minutes. After this he set off with such brilliancy and rapidity of execution, that it was difficult for the violins of those days to keep pace with him. . . it was not only in speed that he excelled, for he had now every excellence of every great singer united. In his voice, strength, sweetness, and compass; and in his stile, the tender, the graceful, and the rapid. Indeed, he possessed such powers that were irresistible, and which must have subdued every ear; the learned and the ignorant, the friend and the foe.31

Farinelli’s carefully cultivated, “irresistible” technique presented unprecedented vocal control to

London’s audiences and he was understandably rewarded for it with gifts, praise and admiration.

30 Burney, Tour in France and Italy, 157.

31 Ibid., 154.

Consequently, Farinelli was a popular guest among the London elite. Not only did he enjoy a substantial salary, but he routinely was the beneficent of generous gifts and dinner parties. His popularity also generated a great deal of criticism from Londoners opposing the influence of foreign culture in London. A considerable amount of literature was published in the

1730s, emphasizing the castrati’s culturally undesirable traits in an effort to detract from the craze surrounding the castrati in general and Farinelli in particular. An epistle to John James

H—dd—g—r, esq; on the report of Signior F-r-n-lli’s being with child,32 was published in 1736 and fueled gossip about Farinelli’s offstage endeavors in the bedroom, especially as the recipient of the Epistle was the co-director of Porpora’s rival company. Another striking example of this anti-Farinellian propaganda comes from a 1737 play by Henry Felding:

4th Lady. He’s everything in the world one could wish! 1st Lady. Almost everything one could wish! 2d Lady. They say there’s a lady in the city has a child by him. All Ladies. Ha, ha, ha! 1st Lady. Well, it must be charming to have a child by him. 3d Lady. Madam, I met a lady in a visit the other day with three…All Farinellos, all in wax. 1st Lady. O Gemini! Who makes them? I’ll send and bespeak half a dozen tomorrow morning.33

32 An epistle to John James H--dd--g--r, esq; on the report of Signior F-r-n-lli’s being with child. London, 1736. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ECCO?dd=0&locID=ucinc_main&d1=0937701700&srchtp=a&aa=AND&c=2 &SU=All&a0=the+happy+courtezan&d2=1&docNum=CW3315243596&h2=1&vrsn=1.0&al=All&af=RN&a5=0X &d6=1&ste=10&d4=0.33&dc=tiPG&stp=Author&n=10&d5=d6 (accessed March 13, 2008).

33 Henry Fielding, Historical Register for the Year 1736. London: J. Watts, 1741. This play ended Fielding’s career and heightened the efforts of censorship on the London stage. Quoted by Thomas McGeary. “‘Warbling Eunuchs’: Opera, Gender and Sexuality on the London Stage, 1705-1742.” Restoration and Eighteenth- Century Theater Research 7, no. 1 (Summer 1992): 13. McGeary summarizes: “the supposed babies fathered by Farinello are the product of using a wax dildo.”

Here, it is hinted that the overwhelming sarcasm of this conversation and the allusion to morally forbidden sex toys is a result of Farinelli’s presence in London. If Farinelli, and possibly all

Italian music, had never come to England, then the ludicrous conversation would never have taken place. This assumption is also present elsewhere in the play, and is a colorful example of anti-Farinellian propaganda.

In 1737, Farinelli decided to break his contract with the Opera of the Nobility to go to

Madrid. King Philip V suffered from depression and melancholy, and the Queen made Farinelli a considerable offer to come sing exclusively for the King. The London public was generally sad to see him go, but there was also a bit of resentment upon his departure, evident in a Daily

Post article from July 7, 1737:

Farinello, what with his Salary, his Benefit Night, and the Presents made him by some of the wise People of this Nation, gets at least 5000 l. a Year in England, and yet he is not asham’d to run about like a Stroller from Kingdom to Kingdom, as if we did not give him sufficient Encouragement, which we hope the Noble Lords of the Haymarket will look upon as a great Affront done to them and their Country.34

Farinelli’s move to Madrid and corresponding retirement from the public stage is well-known and well-documented. He reportedly sang to King Philip V every night, cycling through the same three to nine arias each night, according to conflicting reports. He sang exclusively for the

King until his death in 1746. He was generously rewarded for his efforts in curing the King of his chronic melancholy, and was granted many privileges. In addition to a substantial sum of money, he was given separate coaches for city and country travel, horses, mules, housing and servants. Farinelli was also knighted in 1750 into the Order of Calatrava. The last known portrait of him from 1755 by Corrado Giaquinto shows him in his knight’s robes, with the King and Queen in portrait behind him. He stayed in Madrid after the King’s death as artistic director 34Harris, "Farinelli," in Grove Music Online/ Oxford Music Online.

of theatres in Madrid, and for a decade supervised brilliant performances with his old friend,

Metastasio.

Farinelli was arguably the most famous and successful castrato of the high Baroque. He was immortalized through the various roles written for him, and through writings that attempted to record his true background, such as those of Charles Burney. Farinelli, however, never forgot or ceased to appreciate the experiences he had in London. Burney, in his interview, wrote that

“He speaks much of the respect and gratitude he owes to the English. When I dined with him it was on an elegant service of plate, made in England at the time he was there.”35 Farinelli traveled throughout Europe and flaunted his striking vocal talents in many different countries.

Regardless of all the anti-Farinellian propaganda which circulated while he was a resident in

London, the city and its inhabitants remained a valuable and memorable experience for him.

35 Burney, Musical Tour in France and Italy, 152.

Chapter 2: Contextualizing Gender in 18th-Century Britain

Literature from early eighteenth-century Britain contains many clues to understanding the

construction of gender in England at this time, especially given that Farinelli was received with a

flood of mixed literary responses containing a plethora of innuendo. In order to understand

exactly why Farinelli provoked the reactions that he did, it is important to have an understanding

of how gender was constructed by early eighteenth-century Britons. This chapter will examine

gender construction among Farinelli’s contemporaries, and then examine the references of

physical attraction to castrati as portrayed in the body of literature. The ways in which the

attraction was discussed depends on the gender of the person being attracted, which will also be

examined here.

One-Sex/Flesh Model

By the seventeenth century, many Britons had accepted a theory of sexuality adapted

from an ancient Greek model. According to the Greeks, both male and female reproductive

organs were identical, and the female reproductive system was simply a reversed, internal

manifestation of the male reproductive system. Thomas Laqueur called this the one-sex/flesh

model of sexuality.1 Under this model gender is clustered, as “two genders correspond to but

one sex.”2 There was, therefore, a history in Western culture that the female body was an

imperfect version of the male body because its reproductive organs were imperfect, a view that

was reinforced by the traditionally patriarchal society. The idea of the imperfect female body

1 Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 25.

2 Ibid.

was also influenced by the Bible, from the story of Adam and Eve. With Eve owing her

existence to Adam’s rib, women were therefore secondary to men forever.

The early eighteenth-century idea of sexuality was based on an ancient dichotomy, but

the fact that there was only one sex blurred the line which distinguished between genders. As

Laquer also noted, the line could be crossed. “The one-sex body would seem to have no

boundaries that could serve to define social status. There are hirsute, viral women – the virago –

who are too hot to procreate and are as bold as men; and there are weak, effeminate men, too

cold to procreate and perhaps even womanly in wanting to be penetrated.”3 The fear of this line

being crossed in a patriarchal society threatened society’s very existence. When considering the

popular idea that the castrati happily walked and performed in between the traditional gender

categories, and also influenced those with whom they kept company, the threat they represented

to Britain is more easily understood. The Britons were confused by the foreign presence of the

castrati and their strange traditions, and their usual defined roles of the two genders were not

valid in the case of the castrati. The castrati therefore transcended the idea of the “one-sex”

model, not tied down to one or the other category as defined by the model.

Contextualizing Effeminacy

In early seventeenth century England there was, according to Linda Phyllis Austern, a

“venerable intellectual tradition that united music with womanhood on allegorical and practical

levels.”4 It is therefore important to understand the seventeenth century’s definition of the role

3 Laqueur, Making Sex, 52.

4Linda Phyllis Austern, “‘Alluring the Auditorie to Effeminacie’: Music and the Idea of the Feminine in Early Modern England,” Music & Letters 74, no. 3 (Aug. 1993): 343.

of women in British culture in order to understand how the British thought about music. This definition developed largely out of Puritanism and humanistic thought, as evidenced by the adoption of terms such as “effeminate” and “womanish” into the list of vocabulary reserved for describing the arts and especially music. These terms were often used by critics who thought music had no place in intellectual life. This bias, strongly rooted in intellectual thought, prevailed well into the twentieth century.

The definition of what it was to be a woman in English culture, and their domination by men, was largely influenced by Puritanism and its emphasis on a literal translation of the Bible.

Austern summarized that, in a Puritan-controlled society, “Woman’s place became especially subordinate to Man’s; her sphere of existence was unquestionably domestic, spousal, maternal, inspirational and decorative. . . .The few exceptional women of the highest social classes who stepped outside this naturally ordained position did so only through the denial of normal femininity and at the risk of public and private censure.”5 If a woman was so daring as to venture outside of the boundaries created for her by men, she was no longer a true woman in their eyes, and consequently became a kind of freak. Women became the subservient sex in order for them to be able to take their place in Britain’s patriarchal society.

In addition to the influence of Puritanism on early modern English thought, humanism, which is based on the writings of ancient Greeks, also had a somewhat contrary influence. Neo-

Platonism and Ovid’s eroticization of women were frequently referenced in sixteenth-century

British literature. The ancient writers, and those who imitated them, continued to impact English thought well into the time that the castrati were popular on the English stage. According to

Austern, “late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English thinkers who considered ideas of 5 Austern, “‘Alluring the Auditorie to Effeminacie,’” 344.

womanhood or femininity found a tangled skein of attitudes whose ultimate origins ranged from misogyny of the earliest biblical exegetes and Church fathers to Aristotelian and Galenic medicine and to the Renaissance neo-Platonic ideas that glorified the transcendent love and beauty of women.”6 This conflicting vein of thought associating eroticism with the image of women can be interpreted as part of the root of the argument in opposition to the Puritan- influenced thinkers who criticized Italian opera.

The ideal woman possessed sensuality and eroticism, but also looked and acted as the

Puritan model of a virtuous housewife. Although she, by nature of birth, had the potential to be an erotic symbol, she was conditioned by her Puritan-influenced society to suppress the perceived negative traits, specifically the sexual traits, of her gender. By combining these influences, women can then be seen in another role which links them to their association with music. Woman became an object, sensual and erotic, whose best attributes were her physical and aesthetic traits admired from a distance. According to Austern, women’s primary purpose was to “inspire love,” noteworthy because the inspiration of love was one of the primary feminine characteristics that was associated with music. “Music, then, was easily personified as a woman . . . because of its similar ability to move the affections, to ravish the mind and, at its noblest, to inspire divine love. This latter was the highest possible function held to be common to both women and music.”7 Women’s ability to be at once an erotic object, and also a sensual, creative maternal being, lent itself well toward an analogy describing music.

Music was widely believed to have the ability to communicate extreme passion and emotions, attributes associated by contemporary audiences with women. Therefore, to narrow 6 Austern, “‘Alluring the Auditorie to Effeminacie,’” 345.

7 Ibid., 348.

the scope of this discussion, the exotic, irresistible allure of Italian opera made it difficult for the

British public to resist patronage. One of the most prominent criticisms was of opera’s

effeminate character and its ability to pass this effeminacy onto its audience. This was a

substantial problem because the audience of Italian opera was made up of both men and women.

British writers frequently expressed their concern regarding the threatening effect that Italian

opera might have on its listeners, and the possibility of a male audience member becoming

feminine was a main point of contemporary criticism. 8 Because the feminine aspects of Italian

operatic music and musicians were frequently the subject of the writers’ focus, the female sex

was often cited as the cause of the effect opera had on men. Women, and therefore Italians too,

“used [their] sexual power to make weak men foolish and feminine.”9 Making men more

feminine was an undesirable characteristic, one which writers went back to again and again as

evidence of the negative impact of Italian music in England.

Certain aspects of Italian opera were identified by contemporary critics as evidence of its

effeminacy, and the frequent subject of this discussion was the use of ornamentation by the

singers. Ornamentation was also specifically identified as an indication of opera’s elaborate

luxury. This issue, and its negative connotations, was a frequent discussion topic in the

newspaper The Prompter, which described “those soft Thrillings, that cause a Suspension of

every sensible or reflective Quality in the Soul.”10 Italianate ornamentation disrupted the

8 One of the most widely read of those authors was John Dennis’s The Impartial Critick (1693), which took the form of five conversations between between “Freeman” and “Beaumont,” again obviously inspired by the Greek tradition of publishing fictional dialogues.

9 Thomas McGeary, “Gendering Opera: Italian Opera as the Feminine Other in Britain, 1700-1742,” Journal of Musicological Research 14 (1994): 23.

10 The Prompter (London), November 14, 1735.

delivery of text and also prevented it from being audible to the listener, which is further evidence that the audience did not care as much about the meaning of the text as the social appearance they made by attending the opera. The opinion was that “the auditor (especially the man) who succumbed to music’s overwhelming charms halted his active mind, becoming a simple receptacle for the music in a way that reinforced the ancient tie between passion and passivity.”11

The audience member who allowed himself to be affected by the music and its ornamentation put himself at risk of succumbing to its charms, and even perhaps running the danger of losing his mental facilities as well.

Delaying and extending beats was another sign of opera’s luxury. The soloist who delayed the next beat by lengthening a note was thought of as disruptive to the music’s meaning, and such an act was interpreted as the soloist’s unwillingness to conform to society, whether with notes or with themselves.12 Later it would become normal for singers to use this type of rubato as part of their arsenal of interpretive musical devices, which is further evidence of the irresistible quality of Italian music and also of its completely different style when compared to that being written by its rival English composers.

Thus, a complex definition emerges: Effeminate music, “like a perfectly constructed fantasy lover, continually delights the senses with change, with variety, with ornament, with the delicious use of the unexpected and with an occasional discord yielding at last to harmony.”13 It has the potential to feminize men, frightening to British men as a symptom of too great a taste

11 Suzanne Aspden, “‘An infinity of factions’: Opera in eighteenth-century Britain and the undoing of society,” Cambridge Opera Journal 9, no. 1 (Mar. 1997): 15.

12 Ibid.

13 Austern, “‘Alluring the Auditorie to Effeminacie,’” 353.

for women, and was irresistible to the British elite despite the threat it carried. Effeminate music

could also influence women, a topic which some critics chose to dwell upon.14 Effeminate music

was Italian in origin and sung by Italians, in a foreign style.

To the English, the castrati represented the physical manifestation of effeminate music.

After willingly submitting themselves to the process of completely turning their bodies over to

their art, the bodies of the castrati became unnatural and misshapen. They were then not

masculine, but feminine, with fatty thighs and hips and underdeveloped sex organs. The castrati

were then seen as possessing an ideal combination of fashionable masculine and feminine

characteristics, in terms of an ideal sexual partner. A castrato was therefore “regarded as a highly

sensual creature, wanting in the ‘masculine’ virtues of restraint and abstinence.”15 The castrati,

with their unusual vocal range, virtuosity, unique training and undeniable sex appeal, were the

perfect and irresistible characters to complete the picture of the effeminacy of Italian opera in

London. Farinelli came to London at the height of Italian opera’s dominance of the English

stage, and as such represents the pinnacle of the presence of Italian art in England. His physical

proportions were often satirized in the literature, overemphasized in an attempt to turn the

English away from Italian music.

14 See John Dennis, Essay on the Operas, discussed below in Chapter 3.

15 Roger Freitas, “The Eroticism of Emasculation: Confronting the Baroque Body of the Castrato,” The Journal of Muiscology 20, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 206.

Women and Castrati

Teresia Constantia Muilman- The Happy Courtezan: Or, the Prude demolish’d. An epistle from the celebrated Mrs. C- P-, to the angelick Signior Far—n—li

The Happy Courtezan, An Epistle From the Celebrated Mrs. C----- P-----, to the Angelick

Signior Far—n—li, is a seventeen page pamphlet, which was published in London by J. Roberts in 1735. It consists of 37 stanzas of rhymed couplets. The speaker, Mrs. P, presents herself as a wealthy woman who has been in the fortunate position of being Farinelli’s lover. She is also a blunt woman who has taken it upon herself to educate herself and any interested readers on exactly what it is like to be intimate with a Eunuch.

Mrs. P begins by describing all the various lovers she has had and her dissatisfaction with them. She also introduces a theme which will be a narrative thread throughout the poem, which is the perceived negative aspects of foreign influence on the British, particularly on British women:

All Ages, Sects, and Nations have I try’d, But, for their sake, I set them all aside;16

Mrs. P then lists the reasons as to why she finds men so disagreeable, comparing them to a

“shaggy Bear.” Conveniently, this list includes physical attributes which the castrati did not possess:

Rough-bearded Monsters, scrubbing Brushes, Saws! What is a tender Woman in their Paws? Man, like his Brother Brute, the shaggy Bear, Where he attempts to stroke is sure to tear; His fond Embrace deprives you of your Breath; But if he hugs, he squeezes you to Death.17 16 Teresia Constantia Muilman, The happy courtesan: or, the prude demolish’d. An epistle from the celebrated Mrs. C- P-, to the angelick Signior Far—n—li (London: J. Roberts, 1735): 2.

Although Mrs. P lets the reader know quickly exactly what is so unappealing to her about the general appearance of men, she shortly thereafter touches upon one of the most important features that make men such disagreeable lovers:

Can we with Pleasure, what we dread enjoy, That very Dread does Love itself destroy.18

This is also really the only time that Mrs. P mentions what would probably be on the minds of anyone reading this Epistle: What about Love? As Love would ideally be required to begin a relationship between a woman and her lover, it is interesting that Mrs. P mentions it here. A woman necessarily enters her child-bearing years after being married. If Love precedes the marriage, and sex is a product of love, then Mrs. P suggests that pregnancy and children quickly make sex an issue, one that even has the power to “destroy” that love. If Mrs. P is expressing her fear of pregnancy, then the “dread” that Mrs. P mentions perhaps refers to her fear and apprehension of the complications that could result from it. It also provides an interesting commentary on the demands that were expected of early eighteenth-century British society women. Love would be ideal in a marriage match, but not necessary, as the woman would need someone to take care of her. Another option that Mrs. P implies is the possibility of finding pleasure, and even love after marriage with another partner. Obviously this would have been a fear of men, and one of the reasons why they would choose to discourage their wives from associating with castrati.

17 Muilman, The happy courtesan, 3.

18 Ibid., 3.

Mrs. P then begins describing someone with charms that are the opposite of those she used to describe men. This being is something different, with a speaking voice of “tuneful pleasing Sweetness,” a smooth, beardless face and “a thousand various Charms.” Perhaps for

Mrs. P, the person with the feminine charms was her replacement for a desire for Sapphonic love. This man with female characteristics is described by Mrs. P as a “delicious Boy,” a term that would have been familiar to contemporary readers, as “boy” was a term commonly used to refer to the castrato, this delightful alternative. Farinelli himself was frequently referred to as “Il rigazzo,” another Italian term used to describe a young person. As I will discuss later, the concept of the boy as a sexually erotic being was prevalent during the reign of the castrati as operatic superstars.

After listing all the gifts that admirers brought to win the favor of Italian singers, Mrs. P again mentions the inadequacies of British men, as compared to the castrati, who possessed characteristics that were different and exotic. According to Mrs. P, “These are the Charms that move our British Fair.” But physical and aural charms are not the only features that “move our

British Fair.”

They know, that safe with thee they may remain; Enjoy Love’s Pleasures, yet avoid the Pain: Each, blest in thee, continue still a Maid; Nor of a Tell-tale Bantling be afraid: This, by Experience, know the Prudes full well, Who’re always virtuous, if they never swell.19

For contemporaries of The Happy Courtesan, the term “prude” was multivalent. “Prude” had a history, from the French etymology, of describing a woman who was so prudent she was thought of as very intelligent. Around the time the Epistle was published, the word had begun to acquire 19 Muilman, The happy courtesan, 5.

the meaning associated with it today: “A person (in early use esp. a woman) who has or affects an attitude of extreme propriety or modesty, esp. in sexual matters; an excessively prim person.”20 According to Mrs. P, even the most modest of women cannot resist the charms of the castrati. Her “Prudes” are experienced socialites, and by relating their private endeavors it becomes more obvious that there is a tradition in London of British women chasing after castrati.

Eunuchs can give uninterrupted Joys, Without the shameful Curse of Girls and Boys: The violated Prude her Shape retains, A Vestal in the publick Eye remains; Shudders at the remotest shew of Vice, And Bashfulness out-blushes, she’s so nice: With eager Fondness yet can yield her Charms, When raptur’d in her darling Eunuch’s Arms.21

The next few lines, however, contain contradictory adjectives that present a strange picture of what was portrayed as a reclusive, prim woman. Now, while being a “violated Prude,” the woman is also a “Vestal,” a holy term that could be associated with a chaste and inexperienced young woman (much closer to the modern definition of prude), while she also “Shudders” with anticipation (worry or shame?), and blushes, a feature commonly associated with young women ignorant about intimate moments inside closed bedrooms.

Here, the castrato’s lover has taken on “Charms” which she then can “yield” to her lover.

Up to this point, the only characters mentioned by Mrs. P to possess “Charms” were the castrati themselves. It appears that not only have the castrati successfully created a new type of woman, referred to by Mrs. P as the “Prudes,” but that the castrati have left their imprint behind. The

“Prude” is no longer a British woman. She has become something different and foreign, perhaps 20 “Prude,” Oxford Dictionary of Music Online (Accessed June 15, 2008).

21 Muilman, The happy courtesan, 6.

Italian, and no longer completely feminine, as she has absorbed the “Charms” that had so attracted her to the castrati in the first place.

Now comes the most convincing reiteration from Mrs. P, and that is the fact that a castrato is, by definition, a safe partner. The next stanza continues, describing the safeness of castrati as sexual partners, but it is much more direct in its choice of words than the previous stanza. It also is the first time, since the title of this Epistle, that Farinelli is almost mentioned by name.

These love the Deed, but seem to hate the Name, Indulge Love’s Pleasure, but avoid the shame: Well knowing Eunuchs can their Wants supply, And more Bragging Boasters satisfy; Whose Pow’r to please the Fair expires too fast, While F-----lli stands it to the last.22

Mrs. P suggests here that, of all the men from different nations, and all the other castrati,

Farinelli alone was able to fully satisfy her. While other “well knowing Eunuchs” could meet their lover’s wants, Farinelli is special. He could appease his lovers, and still “stand” up to the challenge, ready for more. Farinelli, therefore, is the biggest threat that London, or Mrs. P at least, has seen. His superior foreignness and sexual prowess serve both as a distraction to

London’s women and as competition to London’s men.

Henry Fielding’s Historical Register for the Year 1736

One of the most popular satires to address the issue of the attraction of women to

Farinelli was a play which premiered in 1737. The chatter of gossiping women also provides insight into the intimidation of men by their foreign sexual rivals. Henry Fielding satirized this 22 Muilman, The happy courtesan, 6.

intimidation of Farinelli’s reputation in London among women in his Historical Register for the

year 1736, a play which pokes fun at the state of politics and society in London. The play was

written for the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, one of the most popular theater districts in

London. Fielding had already been quite successful with the previous plays he had premiered in

the theater. His satires had earned the Little Theatre the nick-name of “Mr. Fielding’s scandal

shop.”23 His sixth season at the playhouse included the premiere of the instantly successful

Historical Register for the Year 1736. In his words, the satirical subjects for this work would be

“a pack of patriots, a pack of ladies, [and] a pack of beaux.”24

Act II begins inside the playhouse where most of the play takes place. As the character

Medley explains, four women are discussing “Affairs of great importance:”25

SECOND LADY. Who can miss an opera while Farinello stays? They say there’s a lady in the city has a child by him.

ALL LADIES. Ha, ha, ha!

FIRST LADY. Well, it must be charming to have a child by him.

THIRD LADY. Madam, I met a lady in a visit the other day with three!

ALL LADIES. All Farinellos?

THIRD LADY. All Farinellos, all in wax.

23 Henry Fielding, Historical Register for the Year 1736 and Eurydice Hissed, ed. William W. Appleton (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1967): xi.

24 Ibid., xiii.

25 Ibid., 24. This passage is parallel to the dialogue passage in chapter 1, where it was first introduced, and also the source of the title for this thesis.

FIRST LADY. Oh Gemini! Who makes them? I’ll send and bespeak half a dozen tomorrow morning.26

The ladies mention several things which may have been seen as threatening to their husbands.

The women are fantasizing about being with another man. When the possibility of another woman having had a child by Farinelli is mentioned, the women laugh at the impossibility, as the possibility of a castrato fathering a child obviously does not exist. The women then suggest sex toys, items which were sold in public, dressed as dolls, so they could be discreetly purchased.

Mr. Fielding carefully worded the interaction between his characters here. For a woman to have to use one of the wax dolls to be sexually gratified by Farinelli meant that the object of the gratification was not the other man, and therefore he was perhaps not so much of a threat. Also, since Farinelli could not function sexually as a man, in terms of procreation and not sexual satisfaction or so Fielding would like his audience to believe, Farinelli and his partner were supposedly forced to use some other means of being intimate with each other. Fielding is insinuating that Farinelli, despite his allure onstage and in public, was in actuality no threat to men because he could not function in a way that gave his partner maximum sexual gratification.

Medley and another of Fielding’s characters, Sourwit, observed the exchange between the women and had the following interjection:

SOURWIT. Mr. Medley, sir, is this history? This must be invention.

MEDLEY. Upon my word, sir, ‘tis fact, and I take it to be the most extraordinary accident that has happened in the whole year, and well worth recording. Faith, sir, let me tell you, I take it to be ominous, for if we go on to improve in luxury, effeminacy, and debauchery, as we have done lately, the next age, for ought I know, may be more like the children of squeaking Italians than hardy Britons.27 26 Fielding, Historical Register, 24.

27 Ibid.

The adjectives that Medley used to describe the so-called improvements are interesting.

“Luxury” would be understood by the contemporary audience as a criticism of the people who attended opera, as it was very expensive and only the rich could afford it. Fielding’s audience was made up of people who had been exposed to Italian opera, but could not necessarily afford it. There perhaps was some resentment on the part of Fielding’s audience that they could not afford the luxuries of the more financially well-off, and Fielding used this resentment in his play.

Italian opera was also the importation of foreign music and musicians and was seen by many as an outrageous luxury. The cost was extraordinary, and the language was Italian, although it did not matter that the operas were performed in a language only few of the social elite could understand.

For Medley, an increase in “effeminacy” is one of the largest threats that the castrati presented to the English public, as all the secret nighttime occurrences between castrati and

British women would inevitably produce “children of squeaking Italians” rather than “hardy

Britons.” The effects of this “effeminacy” on British men carries just as much negative potential for harmful effects as it did for British women. The effeminate traits seemed to be able to spread as easily as the common cold, and men could “catch” the effeminate characteristics. Roger

Freitas has observed that “Whereas nowadays describing a man as ‘effeminate’ might imply homosexual leanings, a womanish demeanor in the 17th century was considered rather a sign of too great a taste for women.”28 Men who spent too much time in pursuit of women were not seen as masculine, but instead would begin to take on the physical attributes of women themselves.

28 Freitas, “The Eroticism of Emasculation,” 204.

Through Medley, Fielding satirized the general fear of what may happen to the British male after prolonged exposure to Italian culture.

The ladies continue their discussion:

FOURTH LADY. I’m afraid my husband won’t let me keep them, for he hates I should be fond of anything but himself.

ALL LADIES. Oh, the unreasonable creature!

FIRST LADY. If my husband was to make any objection to my having ‘em, I’d run away from him and take the dear babies with me.29

The fourth lady implies the unspoken rules, which governed the public lives of these society women, maintaining that the husband is the most important thing in a woman’s life. The husband, however, must tolerate any scandals created by his wife, or else lose her. In the case of the first lady, she has an understanding with her husband to look the other way, so long as she gets to have her relationship with the great castrato. Taking the “dear babies” with her would be difficult, if she is hinting that she would run away with Farinelli.

Here, a paradoxical interpretation can be inferred, if the dolls take on a double meaning and represent Farinelli himself. Although it was the voice which initially drew the women to hear him repeatedly at the opera house, it is now something different which attracts them.

Freitas has observed that “it has become common to interpret the voices of these creatures as bodiless, that is, of giving no indication of the sort of body from which they emanate.”30 Rather than being a bodiless voice, he is now, at the same time, a doll, a sex toy and an ideal lover whom the husband tolerates rather than have his wife run away with the opera singer. All three

29 Fielding, Historical Register, 25.

30 Freitas, “The Eroticism of Emasculation,” 201.

of these items are products of fancy, objects that are made up to distract or compliment reality.

The doll is a toy made for a child, suggesting innocence which does not exist. Castrati were often referred to as boys, as performers who would never physically mature out of childhood.

Sex toys were invented for adults at play, but were also safe lovers in the same sense that

Farinelli was, providing pleasure with no risk of pregnancy. Ideal lovers do not exist, especially as a side to marriage and with the tolerance of the husband. Farinelli existed on-stage, even when he wasn’t performing, as he was viewed as a type of circus freak while moving in society circles.

Men and Castrati

Throughout much of England’s history, homosexuality was no secret. In Farinelli’s time, while not yet illegal, it was looked down upon by the British who had firm religious backgrounds. One of England’s most famous inhabitants, William Shakespeare, is often thought to be homosexual in light of numerous openly homosexual references in many of his works. In

Venus and Adonis, the male protagonist is described similarly to the castrato, with boyish, preadolescent features. He is depicted as the ideal object of sexual desire, better than his adult competition.

“Thrice fairer than myself,” she thus began, “The field’s chief flower, sweet above compare; Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man, More white and red than doves or roses are: Nature that made thee with herself at strife, Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.31

31 William Shakespeare, The Unabridged William Shakespeare, ed. William George Clark and William Aldis Wright (Philadelphia: Courage Books, 1989), 1246, lines 7-12. Adapted from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, first published in 1864 as the Globe Edition and revised in 1911.

This image of the boy version of Adonis as a lover for men was no new concept for the castrati- crazed Britons, and he was often painted as a pre-adolescent in portraiture.32 The soft, more feminine features possessed by boys, such as those features Shakespeare described in Adonis above, are frequently cited as the source of attraction, and therefore also a source of poetic inspiration for other artists. Contemporary portraiture of Adonis, and other similar settings, also suggests an interesting interpretation of what it meant to be male in the eighteenth century.

When the male is full grown, he is no longer a source of sexual pleasure, but rather it is his duty to take on more masculine pursuits, and “strive after heroic deeds and manly virtues.”33

In early modern times, sodomy was thought of as a rite of passage, and is believed to have been a fairly widespread practice. As Freitas has noted, “the boy was eroticized both in art and life. One locus of that eroticization was pederasty. Most researchers agree that pederasty was practiced more or less widely throughout the early modern period and that among men whose tastes included homosexual sodomy, boys were the generally preferred partners.”34 Adult men would sleep with adolescent boys, who would in turn do the same thing to the next generation of boys when they reached adulthood. This was such a well-known practice that it also sparked some sharp criticism from contemporaries, especially after the introduction of

Heidegger’s “midnight masquerades.” These costume parties were held at the Haymarket

Theater, and guests were encouraged to wear costumes of the opposite sex. In light of these popular parties, the strong language in the following 1731 published criticism is more easily

32 Franca Trinchieri Camiz, “The Castrato Singer: From Informal to Formal Portraiture,” Artibus et Historiae 9, no. 18 (1988): 171-186.

33 Freitas, “The Eroticism of Emasculation,” 209.

34 Ibid., 210.

understood: “But of all the Customs Effeminacy has produc'd, none more hateful, predominant, and pernicious, than that of the men Kissing each other. This Fashion was brought over from

Italy, (the Mother and Nurse of Sodomy); where the Master is oftner Intriguing with his Page, than a fair Lady.”35 Identifying this practice with Italy and, more specifically, Italians, was an easy way for the English to condemn the practice as a result of foreign, negative influence, and therefore create a need to purge England of everything Italian.

There was another reason that boys were the preferred choice of men. Boys were safer lovers for multiple reasons, including their lack of sexually transmitted diseases. “Boys are thus the ideal object for male love because they are superior to women both spiritually and physically.

And the particular pleasure of boys is that they offer the possibility of enjoying feminine beauty without the necessity of congress with a woman,”36 and also without any danger of pregnancy.

There was also no risk of the man being contaminated by his partner’s feminine characteristics.

His partner was male, but the pre-pubescent was also androgynous, attractive for both the masculine and feminine characteristics he possessed.37

Because music, for Londoners at least, was so charged with femininity, the male who had given himself over to a life of music would necessarily acquire the physical traits that accompanied it. They were the also epitome of the destructive power that music has over contemporary notions of masculinity. Castration at a young age left the castrati without many features that are typically identified with being male, such as facial hair and an Adam’s apple,

35 Plain Reasons for the Growth of Sodomy (London, 1731), http://forum.stirpes.net/history/11114- homosexuality-eighteenth-century-england-plain-reasons-growth-sodomy.html (accessed Sept. 17, 2008).

36 Heller, “Chastity Heroism, and Allure,” quoted in Freitas, “The Eroticism of Emasculation,” 212.

37 Freitas, “The Eroticism of Emasculation,” 212-213.

and instead they are left with features closer to those of the ideal preadolescent Adonis described above. This perhaps was much of what made the castrati so appealing to men as safe lovers. A castrato was still, physically at least, a boy, possessing female passion and sensitivity and therefore represented, as Freitas argued, “an erotically charged boy.”38 The castrati walked the line between sexes and, dangerously the Londoners thought, had the potential to bring admirers to that same line which possessed undesirable qualities from both sexes.

The Story of my Life, by Giacomo Casanova

Giacomo Casanova was arguably the most active and prolific womanizer in history. He wrote about his experiences in his twelve-volume autobiography Memoirs, which he labored to write over the last decade of his life. He detailed approximately two hundred sexual conquests, which reveal that he must have been an ardent record keeper throughout his travels. Casanova, notorious for his open sexuality, encountered castrati several times while traveling in Rome. His interactions, and the adjectives he chose to describe the castrati he came in contact with, reveal much about how they were perceived among more openly sexual men.39

In a well-made corset, he had the waist of a nymph, and, what was almost incredible, his breast was in no way inferior, either in form or in beauty, to any woman’s; and it was above all this means that the monster made such ravages. . . When he walked about the stage during the ritornello of the aria he was to sing, his step was majestic and at the same time voluptuous; and when he favoured the boxes with his glances, the tender and modest rolling of his black eyes brought a ravishment to the heart. It was obvious that he hoped to inspire the love of those who liked him as a man, and [who] probably would not have done so as a woman. Rome the holy city, which in this way forces every man to 38 Freitas, “The Eroticism of Emasculation,” 214.

39 http://users.dickinson.edu/~emery/Casanova.htm provides more information on Casanova’s biography and current research into the actual history behind his tales of conquest (accessed Sept. 17, 2008).

become a pederast, will not admit it, nor believe in the effects of an illusion which it does its best to arouse.40

Casanova described the physical consequences of castration, such as the development of breasts and feminine curves, as some of the castrato’s most appealing attributes. He also hinted that it was fairly common knowledge that castrati were willing to blur and cross gender boundaries, and could even hover mysteriously over both at the same time, which is reinforced here in

Casanova’s ambiguous description of the role the castrato was performing. Casanova even wrote that Rome ignored the attraction castrati had for both women and men, an insult aimed specifically at the Catholic capitol of the world. Here, Casanova delighted in emphasizing the fact that Romans were so willing to turn the other cheek and ignore the sexual pursuits of the castrati in favor of operatic “illusion,” an idea that was obviously tainted by perceiving Italian culture as less than his own.

The Rake’s Progress; or the Humors of Drury Lane (1735)

In 1735 an anonymous poem was published which created a story-line to accompany

William Hogarth’s series of prints known as The Rake’s Progress. The second of Hogarth’s eight engravings includes Farinelli in the company of artists and artisans. This is the same engraving in which the phrase “One God, one Farinelli” appears on a banner. Anonymous’s second canto implies that the Rake has a homosexual preoccupation with Farinelli:

But Music most his Bosom warms, And heavenly Farinelli charms. One God, one Songster he’ll confess, But of the two thinks the first less.41 40 The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, quoted in Heriot, The Castrati in Opera, 54-55.

41 Anonymous, “The Rake’s Progress; or The Humors of Drury Lane” (London, 1735): 17. 42

The Rake then describes the lust that females have for Farinelli, expressing some jealously at the

women crowding themselves around the singer and lavishing expensive gifts upon him. He also

implies that, perhaps and as far as pleasing women is concerned, it is better to be a castrato:

“Strange that the Loss of all our Store / Should make us able to do more.”42

Henry Carey, “The Beau’s Lamentation for the Loss of Farinelli”

Henry Carey was a composer and librettist who worked at Drury Lane from 1723, and

wrote songs and incidental music for Drury Lane productions. In the 1730s, he was part of a

group of musicians who strongly advocated and worked to revive and reestablish serious opera in

English.43 He also wrote and published satirical verses, the following couplets in 1737:

As saunt’ring I rang’d in the park all alone A sparkish young fellow was making his moan; . . . For his dear Farrinelli had flown into Spain, And he never should hear the sweet creature again.44

Carey hints at Farinelli’s sexual appeal to men, even suggesting that the speaker himself could be

a sodomite. The speaker also hints at the sexual nature of the castrato’s singing. After Farinelli’s

departure, Carey’s lament isn’t necessarily that he will not be able to hear Farinelli sing again,

42 Anonymous, “The Rake’s Progress,” 18.

43 Norman Gillespie, "Carey, Henry," in Grove Music Online/ Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/04925 (accessed October 5, 2008).

44 Henry Carey, “The Beau’s Lamentation for the Loss of Farinelli,” in The Poems of Henry Carey, 110. Quoted in T. S. Gilman, “The Italian (Castrato) in London,” in The Work of Opera: Genre, Nationhood, and Sexual Difference, ed. Richard Dellamora and Daniel Fischlin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 57.

but that he “never should hear him again.” Carey is perhaps intentionally equating Farinelli’s sexual “moaning” and singing.

Contemporary literature provides many keys to unlocking the reasons why the British were so attracted to Farinelli. The reactions ranged from positive to negative, but all the literary responses were strongly voiced. Understanding the physical attraction to castrati is only a part of the source of the Londoners’ reaction, but it is an important one, as it would continue to impact

English society for a long time. Kristina Straub’s study of British actors in the eighteenth century contains a summary of the crowd’s reaction to actors, but it echoes of the reaction by the

British to the magnetism of the castrati. Those stage performers created “a certain limited fluidity of sexual identity between the homoerotic and the homosocial. The actor [or castrato] is both the feminized erotic spectacle and the masculine practitioner of a ‘science’.”45 The feminine “erotic spectacle” was created by a history of constructing femininity under the umbrella of Puritanism and ancient Greek writings, and was well represented in the writings of the authors discussed above. The “masculine practitioner” aspect came from the presentation of the castrati as professionals, masters of their unique craft, and therefore worthy to be admired from a safe distance. The threat the castrati presented to the British construction of strictly defined genders was real, but still irresistible in the freak show attraction which was an integral part of the production of Italian opera. Farinelli knew this, and exploited it for his own monetary gain and to boost his popularity throughout Europe.

45 Kristina Straub, Sexual Suspects: Eighteenth-Century Players and Sexual Ideology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 28.

Chapter 3: The Castrato in Contemporary Literature

Italian art occupied an interesting place in England at the turn of the eighteenth century.

Its presence in England represented to the Britons a cultural awakening or a coming of age for

their country. Although the English were exposed to Italian art, and owned Italian works or had

Italian musicians as frequent visitors in their homes, their understanding of the art was

incomplete. According to Nigel Llewellyn, “many British visitors and patrons struggled with

Italian art; they felt naïve and confused to comprehend its stylistic nuances; they tended to be

nervous of visual contrivance – just as they feared commercial trickery – and they found the

close connections between Italy, painting and Catholicism especially tense.”1 The combination

of mythological characters and religious icons was difficult for the British to interpret.

Catholicism obviously had a long and troubled history in England, culminating in its elimination

and the creation of the Church of England in the 16th century. Regardless, the beautiful and

expertly depicted images proved irresistible to British art collectors.

Despite their apprehension toward Italian art, for Britons it became a sign of not just

cultural knowledge, but knowledge of the real world outside of the wealthy British culture. As a

result, some British published material reflecting what they thought was their realistic

knowledge, often taking the form of criticism. Their idea of “the real,”2 however, was often

derived from Italian art, which frequently included scenes depicting a combination of

mythological creatures and symbolic artifacts. According to Lleyellyn, “as a community of

1 Nigel Llewellyn, “ ‘Those loose and immodest pieces’: Italian art and the British point of view,” in Italian Culture in Northern Europe in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Shearer West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 68-69.

2 Ibid., 75.

critics, the British had undergone a polite classical education focused on concepts of idealism and beauty, rather than the nature or the real.”3 As a result, the British had unique opinions of

Italian art, Italy and also the other European countries from which they imported art and other material wealth.

Caricatures can sometimes provide enlightening information as to deciphering the features that the artist considered “real.” A caricaturist works to overemphasize “real” features that his or her subject possesses, perhaps producing the “ideal” features of the subject which are easy to recognize by looking at the caricature. The term “ideal” must be understood loosely, as an “ideal” castrato in England was fated to be the subject of satire. Many of the portraits painted of Farinelli from this time emphasized his boyish features, and included the company of royalty or of symbols associated with his art. Even the satirical images and caricatures from this period emphasize the stereotypically Italian features and dress, such as a large Romanesque nose and elaborate clothing.

Imported Italian opera can then be interpreted as the musical and theatrical representation of the confusing ideas surrounding Italian art. If, as Llewellyn discussed, the British considered the presence of Italian art in England as a symbol of education, an intellectual and artistic

Renaissance, then Italian opera represented a confusing appendage of that presence. Although

Llewellyn’s argument almost exclusively deals with paintings and portraiture, when it is extended to included Italian opera it explains much of the strong and varied responses by the

British public. The English bourgeois’ fascination, indeed for some an obsession, with Italian music and musicians was driven by a need to feel educated, elite and worldly. Defenders of

3 Llewellyn, “Italian art,” 75.

either side of the argument emphasize these essential desires, and indeed frequently make up the core of their discussions.

On the side of the debate supporting Italian opera’s presence in England, there were many supporters of the art form as a means of elite and extravagant entertainment. These people were frequently the patrons of foreign art themselves, the most powerful of whom was the king and his immediate family. As for the opposing camp, many of those who considered themselves

Britian’s intellectuals saw Italian opera as a threat to the further existence of British theater and, as mentioned previously, the influence of the foreigners on the behavior of the British opera- going public. Those intellectuals against the presence of Italian opera began publishing anti-

Italian propaganda early in the eighteenth century, and continued through its decline in popularity in England. The introduction of castrati to London merely added fuel to the fire of building opposition. They gave critics a tangible oddity to build upon other arguments, and cited things such as the misshapen features the castrati developed as evidence of Italian opera’s potential for physical and mental harm.

John Dennis’s An Essay on the Operas (1698)

A tradition of traveling around Europe as a rite of passage to adulthood had established itself in England by the year 1700, accompanied by the travelers often bringing back Italian art.

According to Nigel Llewellyn, the artistic investment on the part of the British “has often been regarded as evidence that Britain reached aesthetic maturity in this age of elegance, when the ice- age of Puritanism and iconoclastic barbarity finally ended.”4 England was increasingly placing itself as an international center of political and cultural activity by its ongoing political 4 Llewellyn, “ ‘Those loose and immodest pieces’,” 76.

maneuvers with France and Spain, and by its importation of foreign artists and art. “The

eighteenth century is presented historiographically both as an age of elegance and the moment

when Britain becomes a major commercial nation.”5 The idea even advanced to the point that, in

1700, political writer John Toldand referred to London as the “‘New Rome in the West,’ which

deserved, ‘like the old one, to become the Soverain Mistress of the Universe’.”6 The British saw

themselves and their country in the middle of a cultural renaissance, and as an elite culture

worthy of being set apart from the rest of Europe. For John Dennis, these imported influences on

English artistic culture were threatening, indeed placing England at the level of other European

countries instead of setting it apart, and he thoroughly explored them in his Essay on the Operas.

When music critic and social commentator John Dennis published his Essay on the

Operas After the Italian Manner, Which are about to be establish’d on the English Stage: With

some Reflections on the Damage they may bring to the Publick in 1698, he was publishing the

first of what would be several public attacks on Italian music in London. By this time, Italian

music and singers had become a “palpable presence in London, a vital part of British culture in

the very theaters and music room.”7 Although Italian opera’s success in England was still in its

infancy, Dennis perceived in the foreign music what he considered to be a huge threat to society.

He felt that it was his place to warn the public about his theory that Italian opera would

completely overwhelm and destroy English theater. Dennis also felt that, unless some

5 Llewellyn, “ ‘Those loose and immodest pieces’,” 99.

6 Quoted in John Eglin, “Venice on the Thames,” in Venice Transfigured: The Myth of Venice in British Culture, 1660-1797 (New York: Macmillan Palgrave, 2001), 101.

7 Thomas McGeary, “Gendering Opera: Italian Opera as the Feminine Other in Britain, 1700-1742,” Journal of Musicological Research 14 (1994): 27.

intervention occurred, Italian opera would continue to gain in popularity among the London elite.

Gloomy music critics continued to publish essays with similar content for more than 50 years,

following the wide circulation of Dennis’ Essay. 8

The lengthy preface is nearly as long as the Essay itself. It clearly dictates what Dennis

perceived as the threat of opera and his motivation for writing the pamphlet:

We have endeavour’d to shew in the following Treatise, by the force of Reason, that the Italian opera, another Entertainment, which is about to be establish’d in the room of Plays, is a Diversion of more pernicious consequence, than the most licentious Play that ever has appear’d upon the Stage.9

In the preface, he names the group of people whom he thought should be responsible for an

intervention to rid London of the negative influences of Italian opera. “If the Government does

not take care to provide reasonable Diversions for them, they will not fail to provide such for

themselves as are without Reason.”10 Dennis felt it was necessary for the government to control

the public’s “diversions,” in order to preserve and enhance their minds and morals. Italian opera

did not do any of these things, in his mind, and Dennis’s primary argument is based upon this

belief.

Dennis claimed that there was evidence of Italian opera’s negative influence on English

society. He included several examples involving both men and women, who occupied

themselves with pleasurable “diversions.” He also claimed that there was a rise in both

excessive gambling and bankruptcy in England, which had its roots in the arrival of the Italian

8 Suzanne Aspden, “ ‘An Infinity of Factions’: Opera in Eighteenth-Century Britain and the Undoing of Society,” Cambridge Opera Journal 9, no. 1 (Mar. 1997): 12.

9 John Dennis, An Essay on the Opera’s After the Italian Manner, Which are about to be establish’d on the English Stage: With some Reflections on the Damage they may bring to the Publick (London, 1706).

10 Ibid., 2.

“diversions.” Dennis believed that this was evidence of a decline in “reason.” “That pleasure of

Sense, being too much indulged, makes Reason cease to be a Pleasure, and by consequence in contrary to both publick and private Duty.”11 Dennis emphasized the importance of public

“Duty” throughout his essay, and made it clear that, in his opinion, it was every citizen’s obligation to have a sense of public duty bred into them.12 He also frequently referenced the ancient Greeks as an ideal model of public service to be imitated by his fellow Britons.

Dennis clearly identified the specific threats of Italian opera in the body of his essay, part of which takes the form of a letter. Dennis’s letter is addressed to a friend who is considering matrimony, but Dennis clearly did not think that it was a good idea because the intended bride was a frequent attendee at the opera house:

As soon as she is usher’d by her Uxorious Huband to the opera, with what Air dost thou think the young Saint will behold the Harmonious Pomp of an enchanting Spectacle, those wanton Dances, those Heroes with luxurious Voices? With what Air dost thou think she will listen to a Discourse that resides upon Love alone, to those mad Orlandos, and those melting Rinaldo’s; hearing from them that we ought to sacrifice all, nay, ev’n Virtue itself, to Love, as to the only Supreme Divinity; that we can never suffer our selves to take Fire too soon, that bounteous Heaven has bestow’d a Heart upon us only that we might love; and all those common places of slippery Morals.13

Dennis obviously felt that this woman’s capability to reason logically was jeopardized by her attendance at the opera. He thought that, if this woman was to observe the absurd plots sung and enacted onstage, she may begin to think that stage love was how real-life love was supposed to function. Dennis even went so far as to suggest that the woman may willingly give up her most

11 Dennis, An Essay on the Operas, 2.

12 Aspden, “‘An Infinity of Factions’,” 12.

13 Dennis, An Essay on the Operas, 5-6.

valuable quality, most valuable to her suitors at least: her “Virtue.” Dennis continued to advise his friend:

I dare not allure thee, that as she comes back, throwing off that Awe which has hitherto been a restraint upon her, and having all her Soul possest with those melting Sounds, she does not instantly withdraw to some convenient Retirement.14

The young woman, who so recently had a suitor and a future as a bride, now has no promising future. Instead, because she has attended and been influenced by the opera, her life is over.

Dennis suggested that the only option left for her is “Retirement,” that all the youthful energy and promise that the young woman possessed was now gone, having been drawn out of her by opera.

After using the common comparison by relating Italian opera to women, Dennis goes on to again discuss ancient peoples. Now, he describes the degeneration of Italians since the time of

Ancient Romans, who were so strongly influenced by the Greeks. He does not wish the British people to eventually degenerate like the Romans did, or as Dennis believes they did, after the highpoint of their ancient civilization.

Dennis also brings up an interesting point about the hierarchy of society. Opera, he believed, was not just affecting its well-to-do audience members. His evidence of this was gathered through his observation of various peoples who worked lower-class jobs in London.

Dennis believed that their casual conversation, because of the influence of Italian opera being passed down by the elite, had “reduced to such a Level among all sorts of People, as perhaps never was known in the World before.”15 Dennis had clearly marked the two sides of the Italian opera debate in black and white before his readers had reached the main body of his Essay. 14 Dennis, An Essay on the Operas, 6.

15 Ibid., 7.

Despite their affected conversation, Londoners had no choice but to pick a side, either for or against Italian opera.

In his Essay, Dennis does not say that music in general has negative side effects, but rather there were some ways that music could be usurped to acquire negative influence. “Musick may be made profitable as well as delightful, if it is subordinate to some nobler Art and subservient to Reason.”16 It becomes dangerous when it is more than “mere sensual Delight, utterly incapable of informing the Understanding, or of reforming the Will.”17 Dennis, however, did think that he had come up with the solution. According to him, there are two ingredients to opera: music and poetry. Dennis felt that the separation of those two elements was the key to solving the problem of Italian opera. “We must banish one and retain the other, it will be reasonable to banish the Opera and not Poetry.”18 His rationalization was that poetry alone has the power to educate rationally. When music is added to poetry, it is impossible to educate without some sort of emotional influence getting in the way, the emotion problem of course having been created by the music.

Near the close of his essay, Dennis did allow that Italian opera has some beautiful aspects. These aspects, however, were distinctly feminine in character and only able to exist simultaneously with the more “ugly” ones. He included the following addendum: “But yet this must be allow’d, that tho’ the Opera in Italy is a Monster, ‘tis a beautiful harmonious Monster, but here in England ‘tis an ugly howling one.”19 Perhaps Dennis allowed this comment because

16 Dennis, An Essay on the Operas, 9.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., 14.

19 Ibid., 21.

of the way he viewed foreigners in connection with Britons. From his perspective, Italians were not as good as citizens, or as people, in comparison with the Britons, because they were “perhaps the best quality’d of any People in Europe.”20 Dennis also cleverly reinforced the gendering of

Italian opera as feminine, not only with his choice of adjectives such as “beautiful” and

“harmonious” in his Essay, but in his later writings as well. He contrasted the foreign femininity by using masculine words to appeal to the leaders of England’s patriarchal society. Thomas

McGeary noted that Dennis’s descriptions placed Italian opera outside of the emerging sense of

British national identity, and specifically placed a feminine gender distinction on the art form.

By defining British national identity in terms of “reason, virtue, and public spirit”21 and associating the positive aspects of the terms as masculine, Dennis places more emphasis on

Italian music as the feminine “Other.” By doing this, “Dennis especially identifies, isolates, and exteriorizes feminine traits and projects them upon the newly-introduced opera.”22 By doing so, he purposefully placed pressure on the controlling members of Britain’s patriarchal society to rid the England of its Italian influences.

Dennis’ Issues with Castrati

Suzanne Aspden examined opera’s “apparent capacity for breaking down social structures”23 reflected in contemporary literature, including some of Dennis’s publications. She

20 Dennis, An Essay on the Operas, 21.

21 McGeary, “Gendering Opera,” 22.

22 Ibid.

23 Aspden, “An Infinity of factions,” 2.

also identified what she labels as the “most potent symbol of opera’s perverted social order”24 at

the center of all the criticism, the castrati. In her essay, the “Undoing of Society,” Aspden

described the English belief that the castrati were the source of all confusion, and the cause of

“sexual deviancy”25 as a natural consequence of attending the Italian opera performances. As

Dennis explored in his Essay on the Operas, and in several of his later publications, Italian opera

was also seen as a source of social decline in manners and morals. Dennis was not the only

contemporary author to worry about this social decline, as critics published their concerns on this

subject well into Farinelli’s time in London.26

In his Essay on the Operas, Dennis did not specifically write about any particular

musicians, but he did dwell at length on opera’s capability to “pervert” London’s social order.

Castrati can be interpreted, through Dennis’ lens of examination, as a visual result of prolonged

exposure to the art form. According to Aspden’s description of this situation, “the bodies of

castrati must have seemed an adequate outward sign of the degeneracy of the times.”27 Not only

did Italian opera pollute the mind and morals, but it had the potential to produce physically

misshapen individuals. For Dennis, the castrati who seemed to willingly allow the operation to

occur could be interpreted as further evidence of the degeneration of their minds. Normal young

boys would not allow themselves to be subjected to such brutality so they could literally become

their art. As a result, “men who aped fashions and passions, as singers of opera did, were

24 Aspden, “An Infinity of factions,” 2.

25 Ibid., 7.

26 See Anonymous, “A Satire on the Modern Men of Taste,” in The Connoisseur (London, 1735), which uses a similar tactic to Dennis by using peer pressure.

27Aspden, “An Infinity of factions,” 9.

reduced to mere husks of humanity.”28 One could not attempt to wear the clothes of the Italians, or even adopt any of their mannerisms or collect their art, without putting themselves at risk of losing their own national identity.

Therefore to the British skeptics, the castrati were a physical representation of this

“degeneracy,” and must be stopped. But they did also find a way to spread the idea of physical deformity as a result of exposure to Italian art to other Italians. Aspden refers to these artists as

“poetically misshapen,”29 and cites contemporary images of both male and female singers as evidence. The “poetically misshapen” Italians, however, were also seen as representatives of the world outside of England. In this sense, and in the art they brought with them, English bourgeois sought to learn as much as they could about them, so as to expand their knowledge of the world outside of England.

One famous example of how stereotypical physical traits typically associated with Italian castrati were translated onto other Italian musicians is the following famous caricature, an engraving by William Hogarth:

28 Aspden, “An Infinity of factions,” 10.

29 Ibid., 9. An example of artists as “poetically misshapen” can be seen below in the famous drawing of Senesino and Cuzzoni by William Hogarth, included.

This image is meant to represent a performance of Handel’s Flavio, composed for the 1722-1723 season at the King’s Theater. Pictured from left to right are the castrato Senesino, Cuzzoni, and another castrato, Gaetano Berenstadt.30 Senesino and Berenstadt are easy to find in the engraving, with their unusually large figures and torsos, and their tiny heads. Cuzzoni, however, is also a product of the inevitable deformities caused by being Italian. Her feminine silhouette is obviously marked by a ridiculously long “Roman” nose. More than that, her dress is so elaborate that she cannot move, and her very long headdress looks tangled, rather than graceful, as one would expect from an opera diva. Perhaps the clumsy garments were depicted as such here, so as to poke fun at the elaborately dressed Italians, and to discourage young women from being influenced by a fashion practice that could only result in taking on “Italian” features.

The influence of Italian culture could even be seen in everyday dress, and functions as further evidence of the English bourgeois’ absorption of everything Italian. Critics thought that this threat needed to be deleted from their English culture, as is evident in an article from The 30University of Buffalo Music Library Exhibit, Boys Will Be Girls, Girls Will Be Boys: Cross Gender Roles in Opera, http://library.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/music/exhibits/genderroles.pdf (accessed Sept. 26, 2008). 56

Daily Post on July 7, 1737.31 At this point it was fairly clear that Farinelli was considering not returning to another season at the Opera of the Nobility, and the newspaper sarcastically encouraged his departure. These same English critics continued to emphasize their dominance in

Europe as a country, despite the ongoing fascination by their counterparts of objects and practices occurring elsewhere and the ongoing publications in local newspapers that allowed

Farinelli’s followers to track his actions.32

Farinelli’s overwhelming influence on the English could be felt for years after he left, indeed four years after his departure the following Comi-Farci-Operatical Humorous and

Political Burlesque Scene was published. It further emphasizes England’s need to feel as if they were a dominant culture, fully capable of ridding themselves of anything that threatened their developing sense of national identity.

The Scene was also fueled by the outbreak of the War of Jenkins’ Ear on October 19,

1739. The foundation of the war stemmed from the rivalry between the two countries and their attempts to control the flow of goods from the West Indies and the Americas. In spite of treaties,

England and Spain grew to a stalemate that included the Spanish interception of English treasure ships. 33 England’s increasing anger with this state of affairs coupled with Farinelli’s failure to return after the end of his summer in Madrid sets the proper scene for A Comi-Farci-Operatical

Humorous and Political Burlesque Scene.

31 See the article quoted on pg. 24 of Chapter 1 for the specific reference from The Daily Post.

32 For more information on the contents of those articles and the letters of the ambassador between Spain and England, see Thomas McGeary, “Farinelli in Madrid: Opera, Politics, and the War of Jenkins' Ear,” Musical Quarterly 82, no. 2 (Summer, 1998): 383-421.

33 McGeary, “Farinelli in Madrid,” 394.

Anonymous, A Comi-Farci-Operatical Humorous and Political Burlesque Scene Between the

King and Queen of Spain, an English Sailor, and Farinelli, on the Present Posture of Affairs

(1741)

A Comi-Farci-Operatical Humorous and Political Burlesque Scene is a satire

emphasizing the supposed influence that Farinelli had gained with his upper-class operatic

patrons.34 The poem focuses on the highest possible patrons in the social hierarchy: the

monarchy. The author’s choice to set the poem in Spain places it safely away from possibly

offending the British monarchy, and also allows the author to emphasize the superiority of the

British over Spain, and also France and Italy. In the poem, Farinelli is able to influence the

affairs of the monarchy, partly because he is allowed to be in the presence of the royalty during

all times, and partly because his song lyrics are so beautifully sung.

The poem is written in the form of a play, with characters speaking to each other as if

they were on a stage. The theatrical aspect is enhanced by the author’s inclusion of stage

directions. The Comi-Farci-Operatical Humorous begins with the Queen of Spain holding

council, followed by the King entering with “melancholy.”35 The “Operatical” part of the Scene

involves the characters spontaneously breaking into song. Although there is no extant music, it

can be assumed that they were sung to popular operatic or folk melodies, after the manner of The

Beggar’s Opera.36

34 For a more extensive list of the plays, novels and satires that Farinelli inspired, see Jeongwon Joe, “Farinelli, Il Castrato: Two Voices, Two Bodies,” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 28 (2005): 507- 509. 35Anonymous, A Comi-Farci-Operatical Humorous and Political Burlesque Scene between the King and Queen of Spain, an English Sailor, and Farinelli, on the Present Posture of Affairs (James Hory: Dublin, 1741), 6.

36 Jonathan Swift, libretto and John Gay, music. The Beggar’s Opera, 1728.

After the King and Queen lament over the state of their country and its losing struggle against Britain, the King decides he needs to be cheered up:

K. O Farinelli. Come hither quickly, My Kingdom, like my self, grows sickly.

Enter Farinelli.

Fari. See Farinelli hovers round you. K. My Charmer come -----37

The King’s choice for a term of endearment “Charmer” carries some noteworthy connotations.

He addressed the singer as a pet or perhaps a lover, and indeed he beckoned Farinelli like a pet.

Also, it seems that “charm” was a term frequently associated with castrati.38 The readers, or potentially audience members, may have understood that the King was addressing Farinelli instead of, perhaps, his wife. The King’s usage of the term could also indicate to the audience that the singer had some mystic power over his prestigious patron.

Farinelli proceeds to sing for the King, and the last few lines of his song would have been particularly delightful for the English audience, as England had just recently rid itself of the famous castrato:

Then she [Spain] in one Thing Britain surpasses, That’s Farinelli, who made ‘em all Asses39

The political satire really begins with this comment by Farinelli. The King apparently did not hear or understand the meaning of Farinelli’s words, but was instead dazzled by his unrivaled technical virtuosity and beautiful tone. The text may also have been an indicator of the level of

37 Anonymous, A Comi-Farci-Operatical Humorous, 7.

38 For example, “charm” and some of its possible meanings was discussed previously in the section on The Happy Courtezan: Or, the Prude demolish’d.

39 Anonymous, A Comi-Farci-Operatical Humorous, 8.

influence that the British felt Italian opera singers possessed. The King was delighted by

Farinelli’s song, providing the audience with ammunition against the largest “ass” of all the

Spaniards: their King. The comment also had the possibility of making the British feel that they were better as a people than the Spaniards, as the British were able to rid themselves of the seductive powers of Farinelli before it was too late for them. The Spanish King here is completely under the foreign power of the castrato.

Farinelli’s next song has similar political implications, and further addresses the relations between England and Spain:

O my noble King of Spain-a, Your peevish Queen disdain-a, That you’re losing Cartagena, Is now no Wonder

Tho’ your Sense she so bewitches, She only exhaults your Riches, Let her not then wear the Breeches, But keep her under.

In vain my King in vain-a, Shall Spain a War maintain-a, Or hope to keep the Main-a, ‘Gainst Britain’s Thunder.

Methinks you all judg’d that Ill To rouze the Lyon to Battle; Hark! how their Cannons rattle, Their Bombs are flying:

O where shall we go to hide us, All Europe must divide us, We’re lost! -----O Woe betide us With Fear we’re dying.40

40 Anonymous, A Comi-Farci-Operatical Humorous,10.

The silly metric simplicity of the stanzas most likely left the text audible to audience members,

with the exception of the last stanza. After the word “lost,” the author inserted several dashes,

which perhaps indicate a long melisma. It is probably the most appropriate position for this

stanza, as it is the only one which expresses direct emotion with his “O Woe!”

Farinelli repeatedly emphasized the incapacity of the Spanish monarchy, in both domestic

affairs with the Queen and foreign affairs with the ongoing conflicts with England. The song

also emphasizes the inability of the King as a ruler, as he cannot even control his own Queen.

As this poem was obviously written by a Briton would necessarily, to sell copies of the published

version, include humor that the public would understand and agree with, it is logical to assume

that some Britons shared the author’s viewpoint on foreign politics. The long-lasting bickering

with Spain would have been a sore spot to poke at for the Britons, so any way for them to laugh

at the losses of the Spanish to England would have been a welcome opportunity for humor.41

The King then sings a song after the Queen suggests that Farinelli should leave their

court. This is the one time in the poem that the Queen stands up to the King, and his song

concludes with an interesting twist:

Then O my Farinelli come, And let us fly together; Your Voice shall make my Sorrows dumb, ‘Till we the Storm can Weather;

Then on the Breast, I’ll fondly lean, And there forget my Care-o; No greater Prize I wish to gain, Then for to Triumph there-o.42 41 Another technique utilized here to make the audience laugh was pasticcio. For more information, see Curtis Price, "Pasticcio," in Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/21051 (accessed October 5, 2008).

42 Anonymous, A Comi-Farci-Operatical Humorous,10-11. 61

The King has chosen Farinelli, his songbird, over his Queen as his ideal partner! The author reminds his audience of the King’s chronic melancholy, and that Farinelli’s presence in Madrid is intended to cure it. However, the King calls Farinelli his “Prize,” a bold move that suggests that he is interested in more than Farinelli’s ability to cheer him. The King even goes so far as to hint that he is indeed under Farinelli’s power, and the reason for Farinelli’s hold over him is that the King has fallen in love with the castrato.

Toward the conclusion of the short play, the King and Queen again argue and physically exchange blows onstage. Stage-fighting in satirical plays was a common affair by 1741, especially after the overwhelming popularity of The Beggar’s Opera in 1728. Since it was the

King and Queen fighting, it allowed the British elite to again feel special and apart from the rest of Europe because its monarchy was winning in the fight against Spain’s monarchy. The writer of the satire used this technique extensively in the work, pointing out the perceived flaws of

Spain, in order to make his audience feel more pride toward their own country and sense of national identity. He also marks the British as more intelligent than the Spanish because the

British were “smart” enough to get rid of Farinelli when they did, although in reality Farinelli was the one who had left England of his own accord.

The English continued to satirize Italian opera to inflate their own sense of importance in

Europe. Even England’s most famous poet of the time could not escape the temptation of poking a bit of fun at what was arguably the most influential of the foreign art forms imported to

England during this time.43 Alexander Pope, England’s most celebrated poet of the time, thought

43 Paul Baines, The Complete Critical Guide to Alexander Pope (New York: Routledge, 2000), 46.

that the problem of Italian Opera was significant enough to deserve immortalizing it in one of his

greatest works. At the time of The Dunciad’s publication, Pope was at the end of a long and

prolific career. Pope had been present for the rise and fall of Italian Opera, and also for

Farinelli’s introduction to the English public. His comments in The Dunciad, therefore, provide

some valuable insight to London’s reception of arguably the most famous castrato to ever set

foot in England: Farinelli.

Alexander Pope’s The Dunciad (1742)

Alexander Pope was one of England’s most famous poets who rubbed elbows with

England’s highest levels of nobility in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century.

Although he proclaimed that he had no musical talent himself, he collaborated with the most

successful composers in England. He greatly admired Bononcini and Handel, and helped write

librettos and exchanged ideas among his friends. Pope’s friendship with Handel was

immortalized by his kind words about the composer in book four of his Dunciad, in which

Handel was one of few to escape the arrow of Pope’s well-known sarcastic wit. His positive

inclusion of Handel in his poem is evidence of Handel’s long-standing favor in England, despite

his role in popularizing Italian opera locally and bringing foreign music and musicians to

London. Handel reciprocated Pope’s admiration so much that he quoted him several times in his

oratorios, most famously in Jephtha. The final Act 2 chorus includes the line “Whatever is, is

right,” extracted from Pope’s Essay on Man.44

44 Duncan Chisholm, "Pope, Alexander," in Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/22104 (accessed October 5, 2008).

Pope wrote his Dunciad over several decades, publishing the fourth and final installment on March 20, 1742. According to Paul Baines, over the course of The Dunciad, “Dulness regains empire over the human mind by leading the exponents of contemporary culture from their dingy belongings in the penumbra of the philistine City towards the seat of government in the West End.”45 In his attempt at spotlighting England as the modern metropolis, Pope argues for the need for scientific thought and research. Pope also focuses on the pitfalls of the human mind, by relaying the weakness of Dulness.

Although the Dunciad existed in some form or another throughout his lifetime, Pope eventually published four versions of the text:

1. “The Dunciad: An Heroic Poem. In Three Books (1728), with a false ‘Dublin’ imprint and shabby format”

2. “The Dunciad Variorum (1729), with voluminous mock-critical apparatus and a more detailed text”

3. “The New Dunciad (1742), a first version of what became book IV of the poem”

4. “The Dunciad, In Four Books (1743), a full final version”46

The final version of The Dunciad is the one discussed here, because it contains Pope’s specific criticism and thoughts on the state of art, music and poetry in England. Many of the underlying themes which Pope focuses on are those which continue to reoccur throughout this chapter: a driving need to feel educated, elite and worldly. Indeed, the thick language so typical of Pope, overflowing with symbols and underlying meanings, is in itself an expression of Pope’s need to express his education and worldliness in his writings.

45Baines, Guide to Alexander Pope, 131.

46 Ibid., 130.

The Dunciad is sometimes an “obscure and bitter assault on the final death of a culture

(intellectual, poetic, artistic) under George II.”47 Although its publication date was after the

decline of Italian opera, and several years after the Opera of the Nobility folded and Handel had

begun composing oratorios, its satire also provides some helpful insight into how Italian opera

was received in England.

Pope began his fourth installment of the Dunciad with a short preface, which

distinguished it from the first three books:

This Book may properly be distinguished from the former, by the Name of the GREATER DUNCIAD, not so indeed in Size, but in Subject; and so far contrary to the distinction anciently made of the Greater and Lesser Iliad. But much are they mistaken who imagine this Work in any wise inferior to the former, or of any other hand than of our Poet; of which I am much more certain than that the Iliad itself was the Work of Solomon, or the Batrachomuomachia of Homer, as Barnes hath affirmed.48

Pope’s satirical voice is immediately identifiable as his places himself on the same legendary

level of importance as the ancient Greek poets. He cleverly set the tone for the following

narrative, in which musicians, and people who associate with them, have a self-importance that

associates themselves with a special action which will be of historic importance hundreds of

years from their initial actions.

Pope then sets the scene for his poem, introducing this cast of characters. He “shews the

Goddess coming in her Majesty, to destroy Order and Science, and to substitute the Kingdom of

the Dull upon earth.”49 Pope named his Goddess “Dulness,” her name perhaps indicative of

47 Baines, Guide to Alexander Pope, 43.

48Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (http://ebooks.ohiolink.edu/xtf- ch/view?docId=tei/enpo/22269.xml&query=dunciad&brand=default (accessed Sept. 2, 2008) Ohio-link online access- English Poetry Collection, 154.

49 Pope, The Dunciad, 154.

what the chaotic world could be like without “Order and Science.” The poem consists of the

Goddess receiving her subjects and judging them, in order to “destroy Order and Science,” frequently giving them new vocations in the process.

The form of the final book resembles that of an opera or play, and Pat Rogers has argued that this structuring is an internal commentary on the absurd spectacle of staged Baroque opera.50

Indeed, Pope includes many introductions to new scenes that sound like elaborate stage directions, in addition to his introduction, and he frequently includes precise locations for his unusual cast of characters:

There march’d the bard and blockhead, side by side . . . Courtiers and Patriots in two ranks divide, Thro’ both he pass’d, and bow’d from side to side: But as in graceful act, with awful eye Compos’d he stood, bold Benson thrust him by: On two unequal crutches propt he came. . . 51

Rogers also argues that Pope derived his form for the fourth book from the famous playwright

Henry Fielding, and from a more common dramatic device described in Suckling’s Session of the

Poets, published in 1637. Sessions gave poets and playwrights specific formulas for constructing their works, and by Pope’s time it had become as cliché as the plots of Italian opera. Pope’s decision to structure his work by following Suckling’s formula can be interpreted as another allusion to what he perceived as absurdity in foreign music.52

Opera herself is a prominent character in the final installment of the Dunciad, a member of the court ruled by Dulness. Pope was very proud of his character, and he specifically

50 Pat Rogers, “The Critique of Opera in Pope’s Dunciad,” Musical Quarterly 53, no. 1 (1973): 15.

51 Pope, The Dunciad, 161.

52 Rogers, “The Critique of Opera,” 16.

describes her faults in his notes: “The Attitude given to the Phantom represents the nature and genius of the Italian Opera; its affected airs, its effeminate sounds, and the practice of patching up these Operas with favourite Songs, incoherently put together. These things were supported by the subscriptions of the Nobility.”53 Opera was also important enough to warrant an early introduction, as she enters Pope’s narrative in line 45:

When lo! a Harlot form soft sliding by, With mincing step, small voice, and languid eye; Foreign her air, her robe’s discordant pride In patch-work flutt’ring, and her head aside. By singing Peers up-held on either hand, She tripp’d and laugh’d, too pretty much to stand; Cast on the prostrate Nine a scornful look, Then thus in quaint Recitative spoke. . .54

Pope presents a very different Opera than the type full of luxury and spectacle that was commonly satirized in contemporary literature. She is “foreign,” but her foreignness is derived from the dregs of prostitution, rather than the distant shores of the Mediterranean ocean. It is also worth noting that, to the elite Londoners who attended performances of opera, the life of a harlot, regardless of the language she spoke, was as foreign to their life of luxury as was the life of an Italian. Opera is so proud she does not care that she is a “harlot” and looked down upon by those of the society of which she is not a part. She is absorbed with herself, oblivious to the world around her, entranced by her own beauty, as are those around her. She is not capable of even walking on her own, and must be assisted by those who sing with her.

It is only in the last line of Opera’s introduction, when she opens her mouth to sing her

“quaint Recitativo,” that Pope reveals her identity. It is interesting that Pope chose recitative for

53 Rogers, “The Critique of Opera,” 23.

54 Pope, The Dunciad, 161.

Opera to sing, because by the late 1730s the use of recitative in opera seria had declined in favor of the more crowd-pleasing arias. Because the function of recitative was to advance the plot, the non-Italian speaking audience had no need of it, and instead more arias were added to fill out the opera.

Opera’s first line of her recitative contains a pun: “Joy to great Chaos! Let Division reign!” Pope identifies the pun in his notes, as a reference to the criticism on the performance of

Italian opera.55 Often singers would add so much ornamentation and divisions that the next beat would be significantly delayed and the orchestra would have to wait for them to finish their ornament. Opera calling to Division to reign over music is a plea on her part to restore measured music to the stage.

Pope used his characters to highlight the aspects of opera that he perceived as its follies.

His criticisms had a slightly different intention than his previous critics, however. As Rogers wrote, “other critics stressed the improprieties and immoralities of the form; Pope was more aware of the uneducative side of opera.”56 He saw evidence of this in the frenzy that performances could create in their audiences, and by the frivolous gifts that admirers would shower upon their favorite singers. Pope included these ridiculous responses in Dunciad:

Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence, Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense: One Trill shall harmonize joy, grief, and rage, Wake the dull Church, and lull the ranting Stage; To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore, And all thy yawning daughters cry, encore. Another Phœbus, thy own Phœbus, reigns, 55 Quoted by Pat Rogers, “The Critique of Opera,” 26.

56 Ibid., 17.

Joys in my jiggs, and dances in my chains. But soon, ah soon Rebellion will commence, If Music meanly borrows aid from Sense57

Pope clearly thought that the music itself was the cause of all the strange behaviors he had observed in his fellow Britons.

Pope referenced the Opera of the Nobility in his notes accompanying his fourth book of the Dunciad. It includes a bit of explanation as to why he chose to depict the character of Opera in her negative light. “The Attitude given to the Phantom represents the nature and genius of the

Italian Opera; its affected airs, its effeminate sounds, and the practice of patching up these

Operas with favourite Songs, incoherently put together. These things were supported by the subscriptions of the Nobility.”58 It seems that Pope blamed the Opera of the Nobility for the problems he associated with Italian opera. He referenced the Opera of the Nobility once more in his poem, when he describes the musical style of as “lyrical and sensuous.” This is a direct reference to the Neapolitan school of composition, of which both Nicolo Porpora and J. A. Hasse were representatives. Rather than put equal blame on both theaters, Pope did not desire to soil the name of his good friend Handel, and therefore in his mind he solely placed the blame on

Handel’s competition, the Opera of the Nobility.59

Alexander Pope’s personal feelings toward the Opera of the Nobility were rooted in his contempt for the way the fans of Italian opera reacted to it, and because of their refusal to acknowledge what Pope and other critics felt were the negative effects of Italian music. The

57 Pope, The Dunciad, 162.

58 Quoted by Rogers, “The Critique of Opera,” 23.

59 Rogers, “The Critique of Opera, 27.

driving need among British supporters to feel elite, worldly and educated was, during the first

few decades of the eighteenth-century, fulfilled by Italian opera and musicians. Their presence

in England introduced natives to a foreign culture which, until then, had only been experienced

first-hand by a few non-Italians. Charles de Brosses, President of the Dijon Parliament, recorded

his travels through Italy and his experience with a very tall castrato, when he was “astonished to

see the sopranist Marianini singing the part of a princess although he was six feet tall.”60 Castrati

frequently grew to uncommon heights, and this fact was often pointed out in jest from spectators

such as President de Brosses.

The exoticism surrounding Italian music was only intensified with the introduction of the

castrati, the popularity of which culminated with Farinelli. There is a famous caricature of

Farinelli by Anton Maria Zanetti which emphasizes the physical abnormalities most frequently

associated with castrati.61 The features emphasized allow a picture of how strange the Italian

operatic castrati must have been to the English. In this particular caricature, Farinelli is in a

medieval costume, with a large feather stuck in his hat. Farinelli is drawn with long, thin legs

protruding out from his costume, which makes his mid section look quite large and round, giving

the castrato a shape resembling a bell. His arms are also very long and thin, and his head is very

small, giving the viewer the impression of either gazing up at something very tall or gazing

60 Patrick Barbier, The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon, trans. By Margaret Crosland (London: Souvenir Press, 1996), 15. Barbier’s study is a good source for general information on the rise and fall of the popularity of castrati in opera.

61 For a thorough study of the medical reasons behind the abnormalities developed by the castrati, consult Enid Rhodes, and Richard E. Peschel, “Medical Insights into the Castrati in Opera,” American Scientist 75 (1987): 578-83.

directly ahead at a freakish person whose unnatural body is ill-suited by the clothing drawn on him.

Epilogue

Examining the reception of this foreign music allows us to piece together a more complete picture of a unique period of history. England’s relative physical isolation from the rest of Europe provides for an interesting case study when examining the introduction of a foreign element, but here it is even more interesting because of the overwhelming amount of literature published by the British in response to the foreign music. The British, “as a community of critics . . . focused on concepts of idealism and beauty, rather than the nature or the real.”1 The craze which accompanied Farinelli’s arrival in England is evidence of the quickly changing trends which governed the choices of those people. It also shows, in light of Nigel

Lleyellyn’s study of Italian art in London, their strong need to feel elite, worldly, and educated.

The literature examined in this study revealed the clues as to why Farinelli was received in London with such strong, conflicting reactions. Eighteenth-century ideas of gender construction, largely influenced by ancient Greek thought and the Bible, left Britons confused.

The castrati did not fit into their established model of sexuality. The answer to their search left the castrati somewhere in between, possessing qualities of both sexes, an unfathomable idea to

Britons. Evidence of this can be found in the terms adopted by Britons to describe Italianate music, intended to be derogatory, such as “effeminate” and “womanish.” Whichever word was used, Farinelli’s exoticism made him impossible to ignore by anyone.

Socializing with a castrato was believed to have the potential to make men more feminine. It carried with it the potential for deformity, as their bodies were the physical manifestation of the impact of feminine music on a man. It also carried with it the potential for

1 Barbier, The World of the Castrati, 75.

demoralizing British women, for example the prattling women in Fielding’s play, Historical

Italian art held a unique place in England, representing to many a cultural awakening that they believed was occurring during the first half of the eighteenth-century. Britons found Italian art irresistible for the education they felt it represented, along with the feeling of being elite members of society. It is interesting that they found it so appealing despite the contradictions it carried toward their religious backgrounds, as it mixed symbols and religious icons freely with mythological characters. Italian opera, therefore, was the musical and theatrical representation of Italian art, and as such was understandably patronized and sought after by the many of the wealthiest of Briton’s society.

Critics sought to cite Italian opera as the source of everything they saw wrong with

England. For John Dennis it was a decline in manners and morals which began with Italian opera’s arrival in England, and for several others it was the root of “sexual deviancy.”2 Some chose the route of satire, poking fun at their own society while hoping that their messages would get through to audiences in the form of humor. Satirical characters could be based on anyone from any level of society, from the Spanish King and Queen, therefore making the British feel superior to Spain during a time of conflict, to a common prostitute, as in Pope’s character of

Opera in The Dunciad.

A personal favorite lies with the dozen little Farinellos. These dolls arguably represent more aspects of criticism than any other discussed above, along with perhaps being the most colorfully presented in their chosen context. If the root of all English problems, involving sexual perversions, confusions surrounding cultural identity, and a lack of morals among all levels of 2 Aspden, “An Infinity of factions, ” 7.

English society, can be found in the sex toys presented as a child’s doll, then perhaps Fielding was hinting at something more. Dressing the toys as Farinelli only adds clothing to a deeper problem: a society’s need to become more outspoken and move in a new direction from the long- standing traditions that have kept it from doing so.

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