13. Philippe Jaroussky(Farinelli) Porpora Arias
I’ve been interested in this music for a very long time but I chose this record because in the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th centuries there was an extremely inhumane process of castrating young boys who were in choir to create a particular sound called the castrato. Farinelli, who all these songs were written for by the composer Porpora, was one of the most famous castrato singers. One of the quote-unquote ‘benefits’ of the castrati was that they had incredible lung capacity and also the ability to sing incredibly high. So they were given incredibly technical virtuosic music to sing. Today of course people are no longer castrated for musical purposes, thank God, but Philippe Jaroussky is a countertenor singer who sings in the range of a mezzo soprano and he is able to do a lot of this very technically virtuosic music that was written for somebody whose body had been modified to be able to sing better. So it’s inspiring to me that he can sing it. There’s a lot of really interesting stuff on there. One of my favourite songs on this record is ‘Alto Giove’, it is a wild, twelve minute long feat of vocal acrobatics.
