Of Caffarelli a curious, and as it seems to me fabulous, story is told to the effect that for five years Porpora allowed him to sing nothing but a series of scales and exercises, all of which were written down on one sheet of paper. According to this anecdote, Caffarelli, with a patience which did not distinguish him in after life, asked seriously after his five years' scale practice, when he was likely to get beyond the rudiments of his art,—upon which Porpora suddenly exclaimed:—"Young man you have nothing more to learn, you are the greatest singer in the world." In London, however, coming after Farinelli, Caffarelli did not meet with anything like the same success.
At Turin, when the Prince of Savoy told Caffarelli, after praising him greatly, that the princess thought it hardly possible any singer could please after Farinelli, "To night," exclaimed the sopranist, in the fulness of his vanity, "she shall hear two Farinellis."
What would the English lady have said to this, who maintained that there was but "one Farinelli?"
At sixty-five years of age, Caffarelli was still singing; but he had made an enormous fortune—had purchased nothing less than a dukedom for his nephew, and had built himself a superb palace, over the entrance of which he placed the following modest inscription:—
"Amphion THEBAS, ego domum."
"Ille eum, sine tu!"
wrote a commentator beneath it.
Guadagni was the "creator" of the parts of Telemacco and Orfeo, in the operas by Gluck, bearing those names. He sang in London in 1766, at Venice the year afterwards, when he was made a Knight of St. Mark; at Potsdam before the King of Prussia, in 1776, &c. Guadagni amassed a large fortune, though he was at the same time noted for his generosity. He has the credit of having lent large sums of money to men of good family, who had ruined themselves. One of these impoverished gentlemen said, after borrowing the sum of a hundred sequins from him—
"I only want it as a loan, I shall repay you."
"That is not my intention," replied the singer; "if I wanted to have it back, I should not lend it to you."