Farinelli et Porpora

PJ was seventeen when he watched Farinelli with a friend from the conservatory, but then the well-known film of Corbiau didn’t impress him so much. Not even the pyrotechnic baroque music appealed him. He played the violin and studied thoroughly Brahms and Shostakovich, but he probably was already inoculated byt the virus of the most extravagant vocal myth of the History. As a proof of that only one year later he decided to try as a singer. He wasn’t thinking about castration then and obviously not now, but the bloodless option of developing a career as a counter-tenor allowed him a reconciliation with Farinelli. He even sings the well-known air of Porpora (Alto Giove), that also appears in the film.

Farinelli is the topic of his last album (Erato) and the main appeal of his broad international tour that also stops in Spain: Barcelona, Pamplona and Madrid. The French star devotes his tournée to Nicola Porpora. “Till some extent I used the name of Farinelli to enlighten an almost forgotten composer, who embodied the best of the Neapolitan repertoire. Maybe Porpora was not a genius comparable to Händel or Vivaldi, but his highly accurate music deserves to be taken into account as one of the most evident steps towards the classicism” PJ said.

Philippe Jaroussky has no pretension to emulate Farinelli, he wants to evocate his artistry in a plausible and respectful way. That explains the airs Porpora composed for his "castrato". Those airs oscillate between pyrotechnic and introspection, the ones who really fits Jaroussky's voice. "Farinelli was a prodigy of art and nature. The music composed for him shows an awesome breathing capability and a terrific voice rage, that was able to change with ease from the very high to the lower notes. I can not sing just like him becasue I am a countertenor, but the repertoire I chose was the nearest to Farinelli I am capable to be. I am so interested in the slow airs because of their inner artistic sensitivity. Farinelli was an athlete, that's undeniable, but he was also a refined singer".

Jaroussky has studied deeply the athletic dimension of Farinelli's artistry, he even compares him and other well-known castrati of the Eighteenth-Century with the sport prodigy of Michael Phelps, who is an example of discipline. "We have assumed a very distorted and sterotyped image of the castrati. We think their merit was only a magnificient child voice, that survived many many years after the castration. It wasn't like that, many of them didn't achieve it. The successful ones only got it after many years of constant sacrifice; they studied so much and were totally devoted to their artistry".

Then Jaroussky explains the role Nicola Porpora had as a vocal trainner for Farinelli. He was like an old DDR coach. "Farinelli probably had to cry a lot lot before becoming the big star he was meant to be. There was pain and an enormous capacity of self-improvement. I'm not saying Porpora was a cruel and heartless teacher, but the sources show he was a very strict teacher and Farinelli was a very professional pupil".

The revision and updating due to Jaroussky's work was also devoted to the clichés concerning the performance myth. In fact, Corbiau's film, the one who didn't impress too muche a young Jaroussky (the impact was most unconscious), recreated a drammatic suggestion where people fainted before the singer. "I think I can afirm that Farinelli wasn't a great actor. He had his artistry as a singer, but concerning his qualities as an actor he was not a Caffarelli or a Giovanni Carestini. I believe his main virtue was his sensitivity and sweetness but not his scenic display". The Frech singer thinks his own credibility as an actor depends on the subtlety, the refinement and some sort of estetic trance that transforms him in the scene. "I believe I transmit a poetic state, even fragility. I realize that my audience is a mix of youngers and middle age women with maternal instict. I feel like they wanted to protect me. I'm 35 years, that's it, but in my view I still keep a boyish image that makes easier to identify with the youngers and it also evokes the need of caring in middle age women". ( I think he prefers to believe that than the most obvious reason   too much disturbing for him  )

His wide farinellian tour confirms those expectations and feelings. The european tournée has 25 concerts and it has demostrated that the saturated market is only in need of new approaches and projects. "Cecilia Bartoli has laready shown us the way to do it, it is a nonsense to produce an album because I said so. You have to offer a well-done work and a deep study. It is about filling a gap or offering new material. Those scopes are behind my own albums, that explains they took me around two years to elaborate and mature them. There is also a close relation between the disk and the tour, so both embodied a more complete and homogeneous experience. I won't deny there is a saturation, but I also noticed the contraction in the disk market has a compensatory effect in the increase of the selling in the concert halls".

Jaroussky also states that the free digital videos and recordings on Internet (like Youtube) are not only an obstacle for the live concerts but even an encouragement for the audience. "It happens to me and to other artists. The ones who watched something they liked in youtube are interested in attending my concerts. Then I believe there are new approaches to music that allows us to be much more optimistic about the future".