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‘The little that I have done is already gone and forgotten’:Farinelli and Burney Write Music History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2015

Anne Desler
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Abstract

Eighteenth-century narratives of Carlo Broschi Farinelli’s inimitability and superiority did not arise fortuitously but resulted to a large extent from artistic, professional and personal choices made by the singer in order to create a unique artistic profile and influence public perception of him. Similarly, Charles Burney created his historical writings with the aim of establishing himself as a man of letters in order to rise in social status and leave a lasting legacy. Analysis of Farinelli’s careful manipulation of his reputation in his encounters with Burney and the latter’s calculated representation of Farinelli in The Present State of Music in France and Italy and A General History of Music sheds light not only on both men’s self-promotion strategies, but also on the high degree of mediation of historical fact in writings that have long served as supposedly reliable ‘primary’ sources on eighteenth-century music.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , November 2015 , pp. 215 - 238
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

Anne Desler, University of Edinburgh; a.desler@ed.ac.uk. I would like to thank Melania Bucciarelli, Margaret Butler and especially Suzanne Aspden for their insightful feedback on this article.

References

1 Burney, Charles, The Present State of Music in France and Italy: or, The Journal of a Tour through those Countries, Undertaken to Collect Materials for a General History of Music, 2nd edn (London, 1773)Google Scholar; the first edition was printed in 1771. All references in this article are to the second, corrected edition. Burney referred to the book by the short title, Italian Tour; see Lonsdale, Roger, Dr. Charles Burney. A Literary Biography (Oxford, 1965), 101Google Scholar.

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5 The first three volumes of Martini’s Storia della musica were published in Bologna in 1757, 1770 and 1781, respectively.

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9 Burney, Italian Tour, 223. It was clearly important to Burney to communicate to his English readers the unassuming and decorous character for which Farinelli was widely known on the Continent. This is evident from both his own comment on Farinelli’s modesty and the fact that he intensified the wording of Farinelli’s self-effacing remark, mentioned above, that ‘the little that I have done is already gone and forgotten’. In his original travel journal, now held in the British Library, the passage reads ‘mine is past and already forgotten’. Burney, Charles, Music, Men, and Manners in France and Italy (British Library, Add MS 35122), ed. H. Edmund Poole (London, 1974), 91Google Scholar.

10 Letter of 8 September 1740. Farinelli, Carlo Broschi, La solitudine amica. Lettere al conte Sicinio Pepoli, ed. Carlo Vitali (Palermo, 2000), 164Google Scholar. All translations are my own unless stated otherwise.

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13 Farinelli starred in the eponymous prima donna role. The size of singers’ roles indicated their status in the professional hierarchy.

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16 According to Farinelli’s letter of appointment, he was under the immediate command of the Spanish royal couple. Letter of 12 February 1738. Broschi Farinelli, Lettere, 145–8.

17 See Thomas McGeary, with the assistance of Vitali, Carlo, ‘Farinelli Recovered in Documents: Visitors to His Villa’, Il Farinelli Ritrovato, Proceedings of the conference at the Centro Studi Farinelli in Bologna on 29 May 2012, ed. Luigi Verdi (Lucca, 2014), 140–187Google Scholar.

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19 The imitation of birdsong had wider aesthetic and scientific implications in the early eighteenth century. See Desler, ‘Farinelli’, 120–52.

20 On 30 December 1728, for example, Conti wrote ‘In the end, he [Farinelli] surprises more than he touches’, and that Faustina (whose singing had constituted the yardstick of virtuosity in Venice prior to Farinelli’s arrival) touched him more. Conti, Lettere, 230.

21 Desler, ‘Farinelli’, ch. 8, esp. 240–1, 266–8. The first instance of such an allusion is ‘Ombra fedele anch’io’ (Idaspe, 1730).

22 Burney, Charles, A General History of Music From the Earliest to the Present Period (London, 1789), IV: 414–415Google Scholar.

23 Among the numerous contemporary references to the widespread imitation of Farinelli’s style are Metastasio’s letters of 1 August 1750 and of sometime in August 1751: Brunelli, Bruno, ed., Tutte le opere di Pietro Metastasio (Milan, 1943–54), III: 555–556Google Scholar and 664, respectively, and Martinelli’s, VincenzioLettere familiari e critiche (London, 1758), 361–362Google Scholar.

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26 Barbier, Patrick, Farinelli: le castrat des Lumières (Paris, 1994), 15Google Scholar, and Cappelletto, Voce perduta, 3.

27 Jacopo Amigoni, Portrait of Carlo Broschi detto Farinello, oil on canvas, 1735, Museum of National Arts of Romania, Bucharest.

28 Joncus, Berta, ‘One God, so many Farinellis: Mythologising the Star Castrato’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 28 (2005), 451–453Google Scholar.

29 Joncus, , ‘Mythologising the Star Castrato’, 453Google Scholar. According to the ‘Domestic News’ section of the Grub-Street Journal 289 (10 July 1735), there was ‘a great concourse of persons of distinction every day to see it, at his [Amigoni’s] house in Great Marlborough-street’. See also Hennessey, Leslie Griffin, ‘Friends Serving Itinerant Muses: Jacopo Amigoni and Farinelli in Europe’, in Italian Culture in Northern Europe in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Shearer West (Cambridge, 1999), 34–35Google Scholar.

30 Joncus, , ‘Mythologising the Star Castrato’, 460Google Scholar, 485–86.

31 Farinelli sang Arbace in Venice and Lucca (1730), Ferrara (1731) and London (1734–5) and Epitide in Turin (1732), Lucca (1733), Venice (1734) and London (1737).

32 Desler, ‘Farinelli’, 252–9. These changes were independent of institutional practice such as discussed by Margaret Butler with regard to the Teatro Regio in Turin in her article in this issue.

33 Nicolini created both Siroe and Ezio, in 1726 and 1728 respectively, and appeared in the former role three more times. Senesino, Carestini and Farinelli all sang Siroe in two settings and Ezio in one setting each.

34 For discussions of eighteenth-century operatic acting practice, see Melania Bucciarelli, Italian Opera and European Theatre, 1680–1720: Plots, Performers, Dramaturgies (Turnhout, 2000) and Nicola Gess et al., eds., Barocktheater heute. Wiederentdeckungen zwischen Wissenschaft und Bühne (Bielefeld, 2008).

35 See, for example, [Roger Pickering], Reflections Upon Theatrical Expression in Tragedy (London, 1755), 63–4. I will discuss Farinelli’s acting practice in more detail in a future article.

36 See, for example, Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert D., ‘Construing and Misconstruing Farinelli in London’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 28 (2005), 372–375Google Scholar.

37 Melania Bucciarelli discusses Senesino’s great reputation as an actor in ‘From Rinaldo to Orlando, or Senesino’s Path to Madness’, in Handel, ed. David Vickers (Farnham, 2010), 312; first published in D’une scène à l’autre. L’opéra italien en Europe, vol. 1: Les pérégrinations d’un genre, ed. Damien Colas and Alessandro Di Profio (Wavre, 2009), 135–55. She attributes an isolated instance in which he was criticised for standing still ‘like a statue’ to his critic’s antipathy towards the singer (318). Contemporary comparisons of Farinelli and Senesino certainly indicate that the two singers’ visual impression on their audience differed greatly. In reference to productions in which Farinelli and Senesino appeared together in London in the 1734–5 and 1735–6 seasons, Pickering states that ‘At the same Time, on the same Stage, and in the same OPERAS, shone forth in full Excellence of Theatrical Expression, the graceful, the correct, the varied Deportment of SENESINO. FARINELLI had stole the Ears, but SENESINO won the Eyes of the House; that Part of it, I mean, who were not Music-mad’ (Pickering, Reflections, 64). A few years earlier, Conti wrote that ‘at San Grisostomo, they have a concert for a solo voice, and at San Cassano [sic], they have an opera’, contrasting two Venetian carnival productions of 1729, Catone in Utica (Metastasio–Leo) at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo with Farinelli as primo uomo and Gianguir (Zeno–Giacomelli) at the Teatro San Cassiano with Senesino as primo uomo. In the same letter, Conti comments that ‘people agree that he [Farinelli] is not an actor and that his strong suit consists entirely in singing arias of a kind that have never been heard before’. Letter of 30 December 1728. Conti, Lettere, 229–30.

38 Pickering, , Reflections, 1Google Scholar.

39 Martello, Pierjacopo, Della tragedia antica e moderna (Bologna, 1735), 129Google Scholar.

40 Joncus, , ‘Mythologising the Star Castrato’, 486Google Scholar.

41 Joncus, Berta, ‘Producing Stars in Dramma per musica’, in Music as Social and Cultural Practice. Essays in Honour of Reinhard Strohm, ed. Berta Joncus and Melania Bucciarelli (Woodbridge, 2007), 279Google Scholar.

42 See Quantz, ‘Lebenslauf’, 231, 213 and 235 respectively.

43 Desler, , ‘Farinelli’, 42Google Scholar, 103–7 and 139–42. However, Farinelli and Bernacchi soon became friends.

44 Desler, Anne, ‘Orpheus and Jupiter in the Limelight: Farinelli and Caffarelli Share the Stage’, Studies in Musical Theatre 4 (2010), 27–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Letter of 16 February 1738. Broschi Farinelli, Lettere, 143.

46 Letters of 30 November 1734, 8 and 23 May 1735 and 2 July 1735. Broschi Farinelli, Lettere, 132–9.

47 In Italy, famous singers performed approximately four roles per year on average in the 1720s and 1730s; starting in 1728, Farinelli sang in five or six productions in most years, although he frequently told Pepoli that he felt very tired. See, for example, Farinelli’s letter of 28 July 1731. Lettere, 83.

48 Desler, ‘Farinelli’, 48–9.

49 On Farinelli’s friendship with Pepoli, see Vitali, Carlo, ‘Da “schiavotello” a “fedeleamico”: lettere (1731–1749) al conte Sicinio Pepoli’, Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana 26 (1992), 1–36Google Scholar. On his friendships with the Duke of Leeds and other English nobility, see McGeary, Thomas, ‘Farinelli and the Duke of Leeds: “Tanto mio amico e patrone particolare”’, Early Music 30 (2002), 202–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Farinelli’s Progress to Albion: The Recruitment and Reception of Opera’s “Blazing Star”’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 28 (2005), 339–60.

50 For example, a year after his arrival in Spain, Farinelli wrote to Pepoli ‘I live in complete isolation in order not to give anyone reason to talk about me.’ Letter of 23 August 1738. Broschi Farinelli, Lettere, 152.

51 Burney, Italian Tour, 212.

52 Jacopo Amigoni, The Singer Farinelli and His Friends, c.1750–2, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. This was one of numerous paintings Farinelli had brought with him to Bologna from Spain.

53 Burney, , Italian Tour, 220Google Scholar. That fact that Farinelli refused to reveal the identity of an English lady depicted in another portrait to Anne Miller, who visited him in 1771, suggests that the misidentification of Castellini was intentional rather than a misunderstanding by Burney. Miller, Anne, Letter from Italy, in the Years MDCCLXX and MDCCLXXI, to a Friend Residing in France, 2nd edn, rev. and corr. (London, 1777), II: 326–328Google Scholar, quoted in McGeary, ‘Farinelli Recovered’, 173–4.

54 Barbier, , Farinelli, 160Google Scholar, and Cappelletto, Voce perduta, 111.

55 Maximilian Joseph Count of Lamberg, Mémorial d’un mondain, new, corrected and enlarged edn (London, 1776), 141. Lamberg appears to have met Farinelli around 1773. However, the possibility that Lamberg invented his visit to Farinelli’s house, drawing on and fancifully embroidering Burney’s account, cannot be excluded. Some of the risqué comments Lamberg attributes to Farinelli do not tally at all with the sense of propriety that emerges from the singer’s correspondence and other people’s accounts of him.

56 Barbier and Cappelletto point out the absence of conclusive evidence for a romantic relationship. Barbier, Farinelli, 159–60; Cappelletto, Voce perduta, 111–14.

57 Burney, , Italian Tour, 220Google Scholar.

58 Burney, , Italian Tour, 214Google Scholar.

59 In the anecdote, the trumpeter stops playing after he runs out of breath at the end of a trill the two performers sustain, a third apart, over a fermata, whereas Farinelli launches into a cascade of rapid runs without retaking his breath. However, in the score, the trumpet part ends with the trill and a rest separates the trill from the ensuing coloratura in the vocal part. The aria in question is ‘Non sempre invendicata’ from Adelaide (Salvi–Porpora), Rome 1723. See Desler, ‘Farinelli’, 72–4 and 343–7.

60 Burney, , Italian Tour, 225Google Scholar.

61 Desler, , ‘Farinelli’, 44Google Scholar, 50–1, 200–1. On Senesino’s role in the formation of the ‘Opera of the Nobility’, see McGeary, Thomas, The Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain (Cambridge, 2013), 158–159CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Burney’s rightful doubts regarding this anecdote surely arose from his knowledge of the opera scene in London of the 1730s.

62 In the preface of the first volume of his General History, Burney points out that ‘it is necessary to give authorities for every fact that is asserted’ and draws attention to the painstaking process of ‘ascertaining the date, or, seeking a short, and, in itself, trivial passage’ (I: 12).

63 Burney, , Italian Tour, 215–216Google Scholar.

64 Burney, , General History, IV: 378–379Google Scholar.

65 Letters of 26 March to 14 June 1732. Broschi Farinelli, Lettere, 97–105.

66 Both Farinelli and Porpora were in Naples in May 1724 for Semiramide, regina dell’Assiria (Zanelli–Porpora). In October, Porpora directed his Damiro e Pitia in Munich while Farinelli sang in Naples in Eraclea (Stampiglia–Vinci). Following his engagement in Medo (Frugoni–Vinci) in Parma in May 1728, Farinelli travelled to Munich for Nicomede (Lalli–Torri) in October. As is evident from Conti’s correspondence, he arrived in Venice before 4 December (Letter of 4 December 1728; Conti, Lettere, 226).

67 Desler, , ‘Farinelli’, 240–241Google Scholar.

68 Letter of 31 March 1732. Broschi Farinelli, Lettere, 99.

69 Burney, , Italian Tour, 222Google Scholar.

70 Boucus, , ‘Farinelli’, in Louis-Gabriel Michaud, ed., Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne, ou Histoire, par ordre alphabétique (Paris, 1815), XIV: 161–164Google Scholar. Although the article also cites Burney’s General History and Padre Martini as sources, it states that the ‘principal facts were obtained from Farinelli’s nephew and heir in 1792’ (164).

71 Burney, , Italian Tour, 211Google Scholar.

72 While several aspects of Casanova’s report regarding Farinelli do not ring true, his claim that the Electress of Saxony came to Bologna in 1772 to visit Farinelli and, after having heard him sing, exclaimed that she could now die happily, is plausible. Maria Antonia Walpurgis of Bavaria, an eminently talented composer, had studied singing under Porpora and had probably also heard reports about Farinelli from Hasse and Faustina in Dresden. Fischer, Christine, Instrumentierte Visionen weiblicher Macht – Maria Antonia Walpurgis’ Werke als bühnenpolitische Selbstinszenierung (Kassel, 2007), 52Google Scholar. McGeary, too, considers it likely that Farinelli met the Electress and sang for her: ‘Farinelli Recovered’, 178.

73 McGeary, , ‘Farinelli Recovered’, 185Google Scholar.

74 Sacchi, Giovenale, Vita di Don Carlo Broschi detto il Farinello [1784], ed. Alessandro Abbate (Naples, 1994), 56–57Google Scholar. For his eulogical biography of Farinelli, Sacchi interviewed Padre Martini and other acquaintances of Farinelli, but also incorporated material from Burney’s Italian Tour.

75 By 1779, the quality of Farinelli’s voice had certainly diminished considerably. Elisabetta Rangoni writes of her encounter with the 74-year-old singer, ‘I have seen Farinelli, that new Orpheus; he is eighty years old. Age has undoubtedly eased the feeling of regret that his beautiful voice must often have inspired in him. He let us hear its last sighs. Truly, these almost extinguished sounds still touch and soften the heart. He moved me to tears with the beautiful expression that constitutes the sublime in the arts.’ Rangoni, Elisabetta, Lettres de Madame la Princesse de Gonzague sur l’Italie, la France, l’Allemagne et les beaux-arts, nouvelle édition corrigée et augmenté (Hamburg, 1797), I: 59Google Scholar, quoted in McGeary, ‘Farinelli Recovered’, 185.

76 Lamberg, , Mémorial d’un mondain, I: 141Google Scholar.

77 Similar comments are frequent in the correspondence of Metastasio, who reports Viennese connoisseurs’ criticism of Caffarelli in 1749: ‘They say that his taste is poor and old-fashioned, and they claim to recognise in his singing the rancid little turns of Nicolini and Matteuccio.’ Letter of 28 May 1749. Brunelli, , Tutte le opere, III: 595Google Scholar.

78 Burney, , Italian Tour, 360–361Google Scholar. See also Burney, , General History, IV: 420Google Scholar, for a shorter version of the same account. Caffarelli was 60 years old when Burney heard him in 1770.

79 Burney, , General History, IV: 419Google Scholar. However, it is possible that Porpora ranked Caffarelli above Farinelli in order to spite the latter; a letter by Metastasio to Farinelli suggests that the singer and his former teacher were not on entirely amicable terms. Letter of 5 May 1757: Brunelli, Tutte le opere, IV: 10–11.

80 Burney, , Italian Tour, 354Google Scholar.

81 It is noteworthy that the epithet ‘ancient’ bestows a certain prestige and authoritativeness on Caffarelli; ruins, both real and fake, such as in the form of garden follies, were in vogue and had romantic connotations. On Burney’s and Hawkins’s use of ‘ancient’, see Weber, William, ‘The Intellectual Origins of Musical Canon in Eighteenth-Century England’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 47 (1994), 498CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Burney, , Italian Tour, 211Google Scholar and 229.

83 Burney, , General History, IV: 379–380Google Scholar.

84 Burney, Charles, The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands, and United Provinces (London, 1773)Google Scholar (hereafter German Tour), I: iii.

85 Lonsdale, Burney, ch. 3, especially 130.

86 Lonsdale, , Burney, 128–133Google Scholar. Burney had already achieved this aim by means of his Italian Tour and German Tour.

87 Burney, , General History, II: 440Google Scholar.

88 Lonsdale, Roger, ‘Dr. Burney and the Monthly Review [Part 1]’, The Review of English Studies, New Series 14 (1963), 346–347CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Hawkins, Sir John, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, 5 vols. (London, 1776)Google Scholar.

90 Lonsdale, ‘Dr. Burney and the Monthly Review [Part I]’, 347. [William Bewley], ‘A General History of the Science and Practice of Music. By Sir John Hawkins’, The Monthly Review Part 1: No. 56 (February 1777), 137–44; Part 2: No. 56 (April 1777), 270–8; Part 3: No. 57 (August 1777), 149–64.

91 [Bewley], ‘Hawkin’s General History’, Part 1, 140.

92 Riccoboni, Luigi, Réflexions historiques et critiques sur les differens théâtres de l’Europe (Paris, 1738), 50Google Scholar. Burney cites Riccoboni with regard to Farinelli’s reception in Paris. General History, IV: 414.

93 Burney, , ‘Essay on Musical Criticism’, General History, III: viiGoogle Scholar.

94 [Bewley], ‘Hawkin’s General History’, Part 3, 153–5.

95 Burney, , General History, IV: 271–272Google Scholar, 293–4 and 461–2, respectively. The former are excerpts of arias sung by Gireau, de l’Épine, Boschi and Senesino; the latter contain divisions sung by Carestini, Moscovita, Monticelli, Visconti, Ricciarelli and Mingotti as well as common compositional gestures of Galuppi and Lampugnani (461–2).

96 Burney, , General History, IV: 380–381Google Scholar. Later in the volume, Burney claims that ‘such execution as many of Farinelli’s songs contain, and which excited such astonishment in 1734, would be hardly thought sufficiently brilliant in 1788 for a third-rate singer at the opera’ (413) by way of criticising the influence of fashion and the taste of the amateur audience on musical performance and composition.

97 Burney, , General History, IV: 272Google Scholar.

98 Burney, , General History, IV: 291–292Google Scholar.

99 The latter is especially obvious in the excerpt from Perez’s Ezio for Regina Mingotti. Like Farinelli, Mingotti had studied with Porpora, but the coloratura patterns in question originated with Farinelli, not Porpora, as they first appear in Farinelli’s repertory in 1730, when he was not collaborating with his former teacher. Modern scholars, who have approached eighteenth-century repertory predominantly from a composer-centred vantage point have tended to ascribe such similarities to composers rather than singers. However, eighteenth-century readers’ awareness of individual star singers’ distinct artistic profiles probably facilitated their tracing continuities between singers as well. See Desler, ‘Farinelli’, 217–19.

100 Lonsdale, , Burney, 337Google Scholar.

101 Burney, , General History, IV: 378–81 and 414–417Google Scholar. Burney’s summary of Farinelli’s career contains numerous errors, which are surely unintentional and can be attributed to the difficulty of Burney’s task of piecing together the history of his century almost exclusively from primary sources.

102 Burney, , General History, IV: 379–380Google Scholar.

103 These are too numerous to cite. Most were published in London as castrati rarely ventured beyond the English capital. See Joncus, ‘Mythologizing the Star Castrato’ (iconography); Xavier Cervantes, ‘“Let ‘em Deck Their Verses With Farinelli’s Name”: Farinelli as a Satirical Trope in English Poetry and Verse of the 1730s’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 28 (2005), 421–36; McGeary, ‘Verse Epistles on Italian Opera Singers, 1724–1736’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 33 (2000), 40–51 (social and cultural context); and McGeary, Politics, especially ch. 6 (politically motivated references).

104 Burney, , General History, IV: 379Google Scholar.

105 See Bontempi, Giovanni Andrea, Historia musica (Perugia, 1695), 110Google Scholar. Burney criticises Bontempi’s work (Burney, General History, III: 542), but cites it several times in the General History, for example, with regard to Ferri (e.g., IV: 80).

106 Burney, , General History, IV: 412Google Scholar.

107 Hawkins, , General History, V: 327Google Scholar.

108 Burney, , General History, IV: 379Google Scholar (‘Farina’ is Italian for ‘flour’).

109 Burney, , General History, IV: 417Google Scholar. Burney may have wanted to contradict an anecdote published in 1788 that represented Farinelli as insolent; the factual errors prove the story to be either entirely fictional or a conflation of biographical details relating to other singers. The story’s existence demonstrates that Farinelli, the most famous castrato, came to represent his professional group. See the ‘Anecdote of Farinelli’, The New Lady’s Magazine, or Polite and Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex 3 (1788), 31. The story was reprinted several times in similar English publications in the first half of the nineteenth century.

110 Burney, , General History, IV: 413–414Google Scholar.

111 See Aspden, Suzanne, ‘“An Infinity of Factions”: Opera in Eighteenth-Century Britain and the Undoing of Society’, Cambridge Opera Journal 9 (1997): 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112 Hawkins, General History, V: 321. Hawkins drew on some of the criticism and satire of Farinelli (e.g., Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress) and, in turn, served as a source for later critical commentary.

113 For example, Thomas Osborne, the Fourth Duke of Leeds, died only in 1789. His son, Francis, the Marquis of Carmarthen, who was, like Burney, a member of the Literary Club in London, gave Burney a report of his visit to Farinelli in Bologna on his Grand Tour. Madame d’Arblay [Fanny Burney], ed., Memoirs of Doctor Burney, Arranged From His Own Manuscripts, From Family Papers, and From Personal Recollections, By His Daughter, Madame D’Arblay (London, 1832) III: 271–2. In addition to his friendship with several English noblemen, Farinelli had also regularly performed chamber music with the father of George III, Frederick Prince of Wales, an accomplished violoncellist (Letters of 30 November 1734 and 2 July 1735, Broschi Farinelli, Lettere, 134 and 138, respectively).

114 Burney, , Italian Tour, 221Google Scholar and 223, respectively. Sir Benjamin Keene was the British ambassador in Spain from 1729–39 and from 1748–57.

115 Letter of 28 April 1773 to Thomas Twining (British Library Add MS 39939, ff. 54–6). Quoted in Lonsdale, Burney, 145.

116 Burney, , General History, I: xviiiGoogle Scholar.

117 Burney, , General History, 1: 415Google Scholar. Burney had also already inserted two anecdotes about Farinelli’s singing earlier in the volume (380), one about Farinelli’s judicious use of his voice in relation to venue size in Venice and another about the instrumentalists’ amazement upon hearing him sing at their first orchestral rehearsal in England.

118 Anecdote of Farinelli’, 31.

119 Burney, , Italian Tour, 212–213Google Scholar.

120 Burney, , General History, I: 12Google Scholar.

121 Burney, , General History, IV: 416Google Scholar.

122 For example, Burney knew Giuseppe Baretti, who gave a favourable account of Farinelli in his well-known A Journey from London to Genoa, Though England, Portugal, Spain, and France (London, 1770), III: 132.

123 ‘By the following story, one can judge whether this singer possesses nobility of character.’ Abbé de Fontenai [Louis-Abel de Bonafous de Fontenay], ed., Dictionnaire des artistes, 2 vols. (Paris, 1776), II: 349.

124 L’Esprit des journaux, françois et étrangers (February 1775), II: 387–8. Fontenay could also have extracted the anecdote from Joseph de la Porte, Anecdotes dramatiques (Paris, 1775), III: 514–15 (with a few minor changes). Subsequently, it was also published in [Claude Sixte Sautreau de Mars], Nouvelle bibliothèque de société (printed in London, sold in Paris, 1782), III: 187–9, and a review of the latter in the Mercure de France (7 June 1783), 26–8.

125 Lonsdale, ‘Dr. Burney and the Monthly Review [Part 1]’, 352–3. Burney may have felt justified in using Fontenay without acknowledgement as, aside from the tailor anecdote, Fontenay’s biography of Farinelli is an unreferenced, literal translation of excerpts from the Italian Tour. As to his sources, Fontenay only remarks that ‘We have collected what we will say in his [Farinelli’s] regard from different journals.’ Farinelli’s biography takes up most of the article on Nicolò Porpora (‘II. Porpora’, Dictionnaire des artistes, II: 347–50). Rather than translating the passages on Farinelli from Burney’s original, Fontenay seems to have copied them verbatim from the Journal encyclopédique ou universel 5 (1 August 1771), 454–65. The latter states that the anecdotes are ‘extracted from the work of Mr. Barnley [sic] on the present state of music in France and Italy’. Given the misspelling of Burney’s name and the fact that his book had only been published earlier the same year, it is likely that Fontenay was unaware of Burney’s authorship.

126 Letter to Samuel Crisp, 1771, quoted in Lonsdale, Burney, 109.

127 Lonsdale, , Burney, 110Google Scholar.

128 Burney, , Italian Tour, 204Google Scholar.

129 The Critical Review 32 (July 1771); The Monthly Review 45 (July to December 1771); and The Hibernian Magazine, Or, Compendium of Entertaining Knowledge 1 (1771). In the case of the former two, Burney’s connections with the journals facilitated reviews of his book. Lonsdale, ‘Dr. Burney and the Monthly Review [Part 1]’, 347–50.

130 The Edinburgh Magazine (August 1789); The Tomahawk! Or Censor General, issues 54 (17 December 1795), 56 (31 December 1795), 74 (21 January 1796), 78 (26 January 1796) and 79 (27 January 1796); The Monthly Visitor 5 (1798).

131 Journal encyclopédique ou universel 3/5 (1 August 1771); Nieuwe vaderlandsche letteroefeningen 5/2 (1771); L’Esprit des journaux françois et étrangers 49 (July 1790).

132 Burney, a keen reader of foreign-language publications, was fluent in French and Italian and learnt German before his journey to Germany. Lonsdale, Burney, 112.

133 Examples include Mattheson, Johann, Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg, 1739), 27Google Scholar (ch. 4, para. 47–9); Sara Goudar [Pierre Ange Goudar], Supplement aux remarques sur la musique, & la danse ou Lettres de M. rG... a Milord Pembroke (Venice, 1773), 88, 92–3.

134 Burney, , German Tour, I: 297–324Google Scholar, II: 321–2 and Lonsdale, , Burney, 114Google Scholar.

135 Burney, , General History, II: 440Google Scholar.

136 ‘Chant’, in Encyclopédie méthodique; ou par ordre de matières, Musique, ed. Nicolas-Etienne Framéry and Pierre-Louis Ginguené, vol. 1 (Paris, 1791); ‘Music’, Encyclopædia Britannica: or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature, 3rd edn, ed. Colin Macfarquhar et al., vol. 12, part 2 (Edinburgh, 1797).

137 Fétis, François-Joseph, ‘Broschi (Charles)’, Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique, reprint of 2nd edn (1875) (Brussels, 1963), II: 82–88Google Scholar. Fétis also used Sacchi’s Vita and Giambattista Mancini’s account of Farinelli in one of the two editions of Riflessioni pratiche sopra il canto figurato (Vienna, 1774, and Milan, 1777, respectively). The dictionary was first published in Brussels by Leroux in 1835–44. Another work with an alphabetical reference component that reproduces Farinelli anecdotes from the Italian Tour and the General History is Borde, Jean-Benjamin de la, Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne (Paris, 1780), III: 311–313Google Scholar.

138 Haböck, Franz, Die Gesangskunst der Kastraten. 1. Notenband: Carlo Broschi Farinelli: Eine Stimmbiographie in Beispielen (Vienna, 1923)Google Scholar.

139 For example, Brydone’s version of the Farinelli–Senesino anecdote recalls Burney’s somewhat vaguely, as though from memory. Patrick Brydone, A Tour through Sicily and Malta: In a Series of Letters to William Beckford, Esq., 2nd corrected edn (London, 1774), II: 320–1. Burgh’s Letter LVII, entitled ‘Carlo Broschi, detto Farinelli’, consists of chronologically arranged sections from the Italian Tour and the General History, mostly without attribution. Burgh, A., Anecdotes of Music, Historical and Biographical, in a Series of Letters from a Gentleman to His Daughter (London, 1814), III: 85–98Google Scholar.

140 Burney, , Italian Tour, 221Google Scholar.

141 Pickering, , Reflections, 8–9Google Scholar.

142 In his ‘Dissertation on the Music of the Ancients’, Burney even argues for the invention of a notation for theatrical elocution in order to enable preservation of Garrick’s performances. Burney, General History, I: 171–3.

143 Burney, , General History, II: 440–441Google Scholar.

144 Mémoires de M. Goldoni, pour servir à l’histoire de sa vie et à celle de son théatre (Paris, 1787), 1.

145 Lonsdale, , Burney, 97Google Scholar.

146 Farinelli referred to the English as ‘RostBif’ on the occasion of a defeat by the Spanish in the Caribbean in the War of Jenkin’s Ear. Letter of 8 August 1741. Broschi Farinelli, Lettere, 177.

147 Burney, , Italian Tour, 221–222Google Scholar.

148 Burney, , Italian Tour, 7Google Scholar.