“Il Farnace” by Diego Fasolis

Vivaldi’s opera “Il Farnace” is about the intensively dramatic story of love and hatred in the midst of the war, which was orchestrated by I Barocchisti under the direction of Diego Fasolis.

This opera begins during the war where King of Pontus, Farnace is fighting against invading Roman army. When he thought the defeat is inevitable, before he goes back to fighting, he makes his wife, Tamiri vow to commit double suicide with their young son as to avoid torturous captivity.

Tamiri couldn’t kill her son so she hides him in the royal tomb and tries to kill herself. She is captured by Roman army when she discovers that her own mother, Berenice, Queen of Cappadocia with her forces is on the side of Roman army to finish off Farnace.

Berenice has the venomous hatred against Farnace because her husband and son were brutally killed by his father and he stole her daughter, Tamiri by marring her. Berenice offers Roman emperor, Pompeo the half of her kingdom if he kills Farnace. Her hatred for him is so furious that she also wants to kill her only grandson, which troubles civilized Pompeo. Later in the opera, he often negotiates fair judgment with her blind fury.

Berenice gives order to destroy the royal tomb, which is stopped by Tamir. She lets the child out and begs her own mother for his life. She cries out in despair when she gets rejected coldly by both her mother and husband, who witnessed the child being alive after he was told otherwise.

Meanwhile, Farnace’s sister, Selinda who is practical and strong-willed surrenders herself to Roman army and asks for protection. Pompeo’s perfect, Aquilio and Berenice’s captain, Gilade fall madly in love with her beauty. She carefully makes strategy to use their affections to save her brother’s power.

In the last desperate attempt, Farnace sneaks into Roman army camp to kill Berenice and Pompeo but he gets captured. Tamiri tells him that she saved their son’s life against his will because of her love for him, which softens his heart and he decides to put their fate in gods’ hands.

At the highly intensive Hollywood style climax scene, everyone is at everyone’s throats including the child’s with their own swords and dagger, after Gliade and Salinda’s armed men forced themselves into the scene.

Farnace resolutely throws his sword at Berenice’s feet and tells her to kill him. Upon seen this, Berenice confesses that the hatred in her died and wishes to make peace.

Along with Marc Minkowski’s orchestration in Handel’s “Ariodante”, I fell in love with Diego Fasolis’ orchestration in Handel’s “Faramondo” which is the most refined orchestra sounds I’ve ever listened to. His orchestra sounds have incredibly beautiful textures in spite of the fact that his music is often highly agile, speedy and intensive.

He brings so much Handelian refinement to Vivaldi. His Vivaldi is de-cafe Vivaldi with the best flavor. I don’t think he quiet captures the spontaneous sparks of Vivaldi completely as he did with Handel’s wonderfully, but still, he creates the most beautiful orchestra music.

He also picks highly talented singers with most beautiful voices. All the singers he chose for this opera are very skillful and powerful. 

Countertenor, Max Emanuel Cencic sung the title role. I also fell in love with his voice in “Faramondo” where he sung amazingly.

According to the short bio I read, he was very early bloomer. He gained the first public attention by singing the soprano singers’ Everest aria, Mozart’s Queen of Night aria when he was only 6 years old on TV (it must be fearsome thing to behold). He was also famous soloist in prestigious Vienna’s boys choir.

There are number of recordings from his boy’s choir days on YouTube. He had the heaven given amazing boy soprano voice with exceptional singing talent. The voice like he had, it must be very hard to say goodbye after going though puberty. After the onset of voice change, he trained to become countertenor.

His countertenor voice is very different from his childhood voice. It has full texture at mezzo-soprano range with illumines gorgeous sounds and powerful force. His technique is amazing. He always sings notes with fullness and firmness at such precision. He also sings Mozart and Rossini wonderfully. His voice talent shines specially when he sings big scale music including slow dramatic number like “Gelido in ogni vena" in this opera.

Mezzo-soprano, Mary Ellen Nesi who sung Berenice is the next powerful singer. Her voice sounds like light finer soprano and yet, her singing in this opera is very fiery and powerful.

Mezzo-soprano, Ann Hellenberg who sung Selinda also sung Ptolomy in Handel’s heart wrenching opera, “Tolomeo”. She has very clear beautiful decisive voice with bits of muscularity. Her voice texture has the certain addictive quality. 

Soprano, Karina Gauvin sung the castrato role of Gilade. She also sung Ptolomy’s wife in “Tolomeo” along with Ann Hellenberg. I previously complained about her lack of expressiveness in “Tolomeo” and “Alcina” both directed by Alan Curtis. But in this production, she’s impressively highly expressive, which made her naturally jewel-like rich beautiful voice radiate more.

Mezzo-soprano, Ruxandra Donose sung Farnace’s wife, Tamiri. Her singing had wonderful amount of dramatic weight.

The two tenors, Daniel Behle (Pompeo) and Emiliano Gonzalez Tolo (Aquilio) had beautifully rich voices. Especially Emiliano Gonzalez Tolo had beautiful romantic texture in his voice.