Editing Farinelli (section)

==The artist and his times==
Farinelli is widely regarded as the greatest, most accomplished, and most respected opera singer of the "castrato" era, which lasted from the early 1600s into the early 1800s, and while there were a vast number of such singers during this period, originating especially from the Neapolitan School of such composers as [[Nicola Porpora]], [[Alessandro Scarlatti]], and [[Francesco Durante]], only a handful of his rivals could approach his skill as a singer.{{Citation needed|date=June 2016}} [[Caffarelli (castrato)|Caffarelli]], [[Matteuccio]], [[Giovanni Francesco Grossi|Siface]], [[Senesino]], [[Gioacchino Conti|Gizziello]], [[Luigi Marchesi|Marchesi]], [[Giovanni Carestini|Carestini]], and some others were very famous and extremely gifted in their own right, with Caffarelli probably being the most vocally proficient – but Farinelli was also admired for his modesty, his intelligence, his unassuming attitude, and his dedication to his work. He respected his colleagues, composers, and impresarios, often earning their lifelong friendship as a result, whereas Caffarelli was notoriously capricious, malicious, and disrespectful of anyone sharing the stage with him, to the point of cackling and booing fellow singers during their own arias.

Farinelli's technical proficiency allowed him to be comfortable in all vocal registers from [[tenor]] to soprano; he himself favoured the medium-to-high register rather than the very high, thus enabling himself to convey emotion rather than to astonish by sheer technique (unlike most of his colleagues who preferred to startle audiences with vocal stunts). This "soft" approach to music no doubt helped him survive his 22-year private engagement at the court of Spain, after his theatrical career had ended when he was aged only 32, a career in which he had already achieved every possible success on every European stage, and, even in retirement in Bologna, was still regarded by every foreign dignitary visiting the city as the preferred music star to meet.