Tom Boswell wrote that “Time Begins on Opening Day”. I’ve always felt that summer ends when the baseball season ends and that the end of the World Series brings on four months of darkness, finally ended by spring training and rebirth. Now is the winter of my discontent….

Judie and I saw an astonishing play Monday night. It was “Farinelli and the King” and it starred Mark Rylance. It was based on the true story of King Philip V of Spain in the early 1700s. Philip, the grandson of Louis XIV (the Sun King), was bipolar and severely depressed and simply unable to function due to mental illness. To try to snap him out of it, his wife, Queen Isabel, went to London and hired the most famous singer of the day, a castrato named Farinelli to come and sing for the King. His singing saved the King’s sanity and allowed him to remain King, but their relationship went much deeper. They were two men who were forced to be kings in different ways and found it to be painful. Philip was, of course, forced by his family to be King of Spain and Farinelli was forced by his family to become a castrato and was the King of opera. He was the most acclaimed singer of the day, having been castrated by his brother at the age of ten to preserve his lovely singing voice. In the 1600s until the beginning of Romanticism, the castrati were the superstars of the music scene. This was partly due to fact that women were not permitted to perform in many Catholic countries, but also because of the incredible sound that castrati created. According the program notes, musicologists feel that countertenor and altos do not capture that sound. (The last castrati died in 1924 and there really are no good recordings.) Anyway, Farinelli began singing for Philip and never stopped. He quit performing in public and continued to sing daily for Philip until Philip’s death in 1742. (Some of this comes from the programme. You have to buy them here, which is kind of annoying when you are used to free Playbills on Broadway. But the content is much better and this one had articles about the history of castrati, a long article about Philip V, an article about the history of music therapy and an interview with the playwright, Claire van Kempen, Rylance’s wife. It was worth the £4.)

So you have this incredible story: Crazy king played by the great Mark Rylance, a beautiful and powerful queen determined to save her husband, conniving courtiers trying to get rid of him and/or start a war, the most brilliant singer of his day, not just making all the difference in the KIng’s sanity, in one of the first examples of music therapy, but retiring from public performance and becoming the King’s best friend and confidante. It was put together wonderfully into a compelling play, but what made it utterly memorable was the music. Interspersed in the course of the play were instances in which Farinelli sang for the King. But rather than finding an actor who could sing (or a singer who could act), they simply rotated three famous countertenor who would enter, dressed in the same costume as the Farinelli actor and sing these unbelievably lovely arias. (They were mostly by Handel and were the actual arias that the real Farinelli would have sung.) There was something about the other-worldly countertenor voice and the smallness of the theater (the stage was candle-lit) and the context of the plot that made it just ethereal. It gave me chills. So ultimately the play was not simply about the power of music to restore a person to sanity. It was also about the power of music to transport an audience. If they decide to bring it to Broadway, you must see it. And if you are in London, try to figure out how to get one of the few remaining tickets.