Farinelli(1994) Guide

In the audience, the great George Frideric Handel watches, his face a mask of jealous contempt. He sees the "musical monster" he once tried to recruit, now tethered to Riccardo’s talentless scripts.

The stage is bathed in the flickering amber of a thousand candles. In the wings of the Opera of the Nobility, Riccardo Broschi watches his brother, Carlo—the man the world knows as —prepare to take the stage. Farinelli(1994)

Carlo stands still, his breathing shallow. He remembers the childhood "accident"—the fall from a horse that Riccardo always claimed made the castration necessary. But as the years pass, the truth feels like a sharper blade: his body was sacrificed so that Riccardo could have a vessel for his mediocre compositions. In the audience, the great George Frideric Handel