Programme:
»Farinelli«: Arias by Nicola Antonio Porpora, Geminiano Giacomelli, Egidio Duni and Johann Adolph Hasse

When the feature film »Farinelli« first introduced the most famous castrato in music history to a wider audience in 1995, a technical trick was used to give an impression of his singing voice: the voice of countertenor Derek Lee Ragin was mixed electronically with that of coloratura soprano Ewa Małas-Godlewska. Of course, at that time Philippe Jaroussky was still a teenager! Today he is one of the world's most celebrated countertenors, capable of interpreting Farinelli's expressive and virtuoso repertoire with lush vocal acrobatics, delicate ornamentation and seemingly endless lung capacity! Nicola Porpora, who discovered Farinelli, was a grand master of baroque opera who composed arias tailor-made for his abundant voice. A tireless researcher in archives, Jaroussky has also tracked down treasures by composers who are less well-known today, such as Geminiano Giacomelli and Egidio Duni, with whom Farinelli also celebrated true triumphs. And what about the name of his ensemble Artaserse? It stems from an opera by Johann Adolph Hasse, in which Farinelli shone as Prince Arbace in Venice in 1730 – that can’t be a coincidence, can it?

Philippe Jaroussky Countertenor
Artaserse Instrumental ensemble

Tickets € 85 / 73 / 60 / 48 / 25 (concessions 20 %)

supported by the Waldemar Koch Stiftung
with the kind support of Angelika Bunnemann-Brabant and Dr. Thomas Brabant