=Gaetano Majorano Caffarelli= (1703-1783)—the reader will note that many of the old school of musicians lived to a ripe old age—was the son of a Neapolitan peasant, who tried to repress the boy’s evident musical inclinations. Cafaro, director of the Chapel Royal, at Naples, chanced to hear him sing and succeeded in getting charge of him and gave him his elementary instruction, which was followed by instruction from Porpora, who was then living in Naples. Porpora was a most exacting teacher, requiring implicit obedience and unceasing practice. The story is told that Porpora kept Caffarelli for five or six years to the unvaried study of a single page of exercises despite the pupil’s most strenuous objections. At the end of the time, when Caffarelli declared he would submit no longer, the old teacher said: “Go, my son. I have nothing more to teach you. You are the greatest singer in Europe.” When he first appeared in opera he sang female parts, for which his beautiful face was well-suited. Some years later he took men’s parts. He gained great popularity in the leading cities of Europe and amassed an enormous fortune. He excelled in slow and pathetic airs, yet he was most admirable in the bravura style, and his technic in the trill and chromatic scales was unapproached by any other singer of his time. He was fond of introducing chromatic passages in quick movements. =Farinelli= (1705-1782), whose real name was Carlo Broschi, was a pupil of Porpora. He made his first public appearance in Rome when he was seventeen years old. It was on this occasion that he sang the famous aria with trumpet obligato, written by his master, a piece which became so associated with him as to be demanded at all his concerts. In this piece, trumpet and voice vie with each other in holding and swelling a note of extraordinary length and volume; when the trumpeter had exhausted his breath Farinelli kept on with increased power and ended with a great vocal display. This aria called for wonderful vocal technic owing to the novelty and difficulty of the trills and variations introduced. In 1727, he engaged in a musical duel with Bernacchi, previously referred to, in which he was conquered. As a result of this he placed himself under Bernacchi’s instruction, and thus perfected his wonderful talent. In 1731, at the suggestion of the Emperor Charles VI, he modified his style and devoted study to the mastery of pathos and simplicity. During his public career he won the greatest possible success in the European capitals and passed the last years of his life in wealth. Mancini, a fellow-pupil of Farinelli and later a famous singing master, says of Farinelli’s voice: “It was so perfect, so powerful, so sonorous and so rich in its extent, both in the high and the low parts of the register, that its equal has never been heard in our time.... The art of taking and keeping the breath so softly and easily that no one could perceive it began and ended with him.