Page - 380 - in Musiktheater im höfischen Raum des frühneuzeitlichen Europa - Hof – Oper – Architektur

Juan José Carreras 380 and criticism (as also happened with the figure of the castrato).69 Farinelli’s own voice seems to arise from Sacchi’s words from his famous 1784 biography,70 reflecting on the inevitable fate of his dream: “And after his  [Farinelli’s] leaving  [from Spain], balls were admitted, at the time when the theatre became commercial, because before, it was open at the sole cost of the king, and no other people were admitted there than the King’s and the Royal Family’s official deputies, the foreign ministers, some persons of the highest quality, and a few others as a token of special favour. If theatre can be innocent, then it was under these wise rules. But without any doubt in no other place could the sweetness of singing be better appre- ciated, because never was heard there the noise that is so frequent in other theatres and is perhaps an expression of amusement but is also the behaviour of the common people, and indeed contrary to the aim of the theatre performances, whether serious or comic, but much more of serious drama. There, all attended in perfect silence, just a controlled and brief murmur was heard to support the king’s and queen’s applause, when they be- stowed it on some of the actors.”71 In the eyes of many contemporaries, Italian opera in the mid-18th century faced an inevitable decline caused by the greed of singers, who irresponsibly gave way to the demands of roaring ‘plebeian’ audiences. Growing urban audiences were undoubtedly a crucial part of the European expansion of opera, a growth that went at the same time hand in hand with the establishment of an international market for singers, who nat- 69 On criticism and satire as markers of the end of a castrato era, see Rosselli 1993, pp.  72–73. Reconsid- ering the actual influence of enlightened discourse, Rosselli rightly underlines the importance of struc- tural factors such as the 1620 economic crisis and the general recovery of the 1730s as a determining factor in the growth and decline of castration in Italy. 70 The Barnabite scholar Giovenale Sacchi, who actually never met the singer, wrote Farinelli’s biogra- phy in Milan based mainly on information transmitted to him by the Bolognese musicologist Giovanni Battista Martini, who was closely connected to Farinelli during his last twenty years or so. On the high degree of reliability of Sacchi’s informants in Bologna, see Bianconi  /  Pedrielli 2018, pp.  119–120. 71 “Furono poi ammessi i balli dopo la sua partenza, quando il Teatro divenne venale, perchè avanti apri- vasi a spese del Re solo, e non vi si ammettevano, che gli Ufficiali deputati a servizio del Re, e della Real Famiglia, i Ministri esteri, i Personaggi più distinti, e pochi altri per favore. Se il Teatro può essere in- nocente, allora il fu sotto quel savio regolamento. Ma senza nessun dubbio in nessun altro potè meglio gustarsi la dolcezza del canto; perchè ivi non si udì mai quello strepito, che oggi è frequente negli altri, e che forse è una parte dell’allegrezza, ma anche è cosa plebea, e affatto contraria al fine delle rappre- sentazioni teatrali, o serie, o giocose che sieno, e molto più delle serie. Ivi tutti attendevano con perfetto silenzio; appena udivasi un somesso, e breve bisbiglio, per secondare l’applauso dell Re, e della Regina, quado a taluno degli attori lo davano.” (Sacchi 1784, p.  22.) This impressive testimony of what we may call the invention of silence through the king’s ear has remained to my knowledge unnoticed. On silence and listening in opera theatres of the 18th century, see Feldman 2007, pp.  11–13; Weber 1997; Johnson 1995, pp.  9–34; on applause as a mode of expression restricted mainly to the stalls in 18th-century public theatres, see Victoroff 1955, p.  151–152.