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Farinelli’s Dream: Theatrical Space, Audience and Political Function of Italian Court Opera 381 urally tried to make the highest possible profit from their careers.72 From the point of view of Farinelli’s generation, the business of opera drifted inescapably away from the old ideal of poetic expression, to merely enhance the empty virtuosity of vain opera stars. In 1750, Metastasio, Farinelli’s intimate friend, wrote to him from Vienna along these very lines, reiterating in a recurring argument that was widely shared by the singer. Criticizing the stravaganze of contemporary singers indulging in showy vocal acrobatics, he also lamented that “in all the theatres, the musicians and chapel masters, who now busy themselves exclusively with tickling the ears without paying attention to the hearts of the audience, are mostly relegated to the shameful position of serving up intermezzi for the dancers who already occupy most of the public’s attention of the people and most of the spectacle.”73 In this declining context, the aristocratic origins of opera appeared like a lost para- dise. For some attentive contemporary critics, from court to public theatre, “the opera may be said to have fallen from heaven upon the earth.”74 In this sense, Farinelli’s fa- mous memorial manuscript can be understood as a monument to his efforts to return opera to the lost haven of a theatre of magnificence and splendour. In addition to its potential use as a pièce justificative to allay possible criticisms as regards his manage- ment, the Descripción reveals itself as a magnificent display of the kind of ‘conspicuous consumption’ that so aptly characterized the absolutist court. The detailed and almost obsessive listing by Farinelli of the amounts of generous payments and costly gifts offered to the various contracted opera singers are not a mere collection of futile or absurd anecdotes as they have been sometimes interpreted, but offer an essential in- formation on the singers’ reputations, in other words, an expression of their symbolic capital as artists, which naturally also involved the court that engaged them.75 As pre- eminent as they were, singers comprised just one of the many elements revealed by this sumptuous volume, which includes references to the orchestra, wind band, choir, ex- tras, librettists, tailors, producers, stage hands, refreshments and lighting (not to speak of the second part of the manuscript devoted to the amazing water entertainments at the Aranjuez palace). 72 On the rise of a singer’s market, see Rosselli 1993, pp.  101–117; and Walter 2016, pp.  283–297. For a useful outline of opera expansion in 18th-century Europe, see Bianconi 1993, pp.  40–45. 73 “Già a quest’ora I musici ed I maestri, unicamente occupati a grattar le orecchia e nulla curando il core degli spettatori, sono per lo più condannati in tutti I teatri alla vergognosa condizione di servir d’in- termezzi ai ballerini, che occupano ormai la maggiore attenzione del popolo e la maggior parte degli spettacoli.” (Letter to Farinelli dated 1  August 1750, Metastasio 1951, vol. 3, p.  555). I quote from the English translation in Sommer-Mathis 1997, p.  78. 74 Francesco Algarotti, Saggio sopra l’opera in musica (1755), quoted trough Strunk 1998, p.  911, who uses the anonymous English traslation An Essay on Opera of 1767. 75 Beside precise data on salaries, Farinelli’s manuscript informs about further privileges such as acco- modation, furnishing, dressing and transport offered to each singer. See for instance, Broschi 1991, pp.  57–60 (on lodging); pp.  129–160 (gifts and payments). On the notion of symbolic capital applied to singers, see Walter 2016, pp.  283–288.