Filippo Finazzi, an Italian castrato in Hamburg

Exactly 250 years ago, on 22 April 1776, the Italian castrato Filippo Finazzi—singer, composer, and former cavalry captain—died near Hamburg. Thirty years earlier, he had taken his leave from the Hamburg stage in an opera of his own making. To pay tribute to him, the Hamburger Ratsmusik is bringing several previously unheard symphonies and cantatas by this singular figure of 18th-century European opera back to life.

Anonymous artist, eighteenth-century domestic concert scene in Germany: in Hamburg, Filippo Finazzi was not only an opera singer at the Gänsemarkt Theatre; he also moved among the city’s leading noble and bourgeois families, gave singing and music lessons, and established himself as a composer at the heart of this musical sociability. © Van Ham Kunstauktionen collection

To mark the 250th anniversary of the death of Filippo Finazzi (1705–1776), the Hamburger Ratsmusik is dedicating a major stage production to him in 2026, titled The Farinelli of the North, featuring soprano Kerstin Dietl and conducted by gambist and ensemble director Simone Eckert. Concerts in Hamburg, Sülfeld, Flemhude, and at Celle Castle are reviving his previously unheard cantatas, symphonies, and arias, bringing back to life far more than a forgotten name: an entire chapter of Hamburg’s 18th-century musical life. An Italian castrato who became an acclaimed singer, composer, cavalry captain, and later a landowner near Hamburg, Finazzi crossed Europe between opera stages, battlefields, and the princely courts of northern Germany. Fragments of a life worthy of an opera libretto.