Touching Intimacy

Whichever music magazine you open right now, the countertenor Franco Fagioli is the singer everyone is talking about. Things are going really well for the simpatico Argentinian countertenor with Italian-Spanish roots. He is currently singing in Paris in the title role of Francesco Cavalli’s opera “Eliogabalo” at the Opéra national. The first night was in mid-September. And of course there will be a lot of press interest in his new CD, due to be released at the end of this month.

For Carus, Franco Fagioli recorded a CD in 2010 – “Canzone e Cantate” (Carus 83.361) – with vocal works by Frescobaldi, Monteverdi, and from Handel to Paisiello – a solo CD I have often returned to listen to. This isn’t operatic repertoire, but cantatas and chamber music vocal works, written for social music-making in a small circle. And Fagioli impresses. Partly, of course, with his tremendous lightness and mastery in parts often with crazy coloratura passages – how could it be otherwise? But it’s also in the simple, serene passages which can move so greatly in their intimacy, such as the wonderful Handel aria “Care luci, che l’alba rendete” from the cantata “Aure soavi e liete”. Franco Fagioli is always completely absorbed in the music. Simply marvellous!

With Luca Pianca on the lute, Marco Frezzato on the cello and Jörg Halubek on the harpsichord, he is accompanied by three extremely sensitive instrumentalists who also perform solo on some tracks on the CD. A successful combination. It’s also worth looking at the short film clips made during the production.

And incidentally, Franco Fagioli can also be heard as Teseo in the title role in the Carus recording of Handel’s third London opera (Carus 83.437), a live recording of a production at the Stuttgart Staatsoper conducted by Konrad Junghänel. Definitely worth hearing!

Miriam Wolf has worked at Carus since 2012. She is responsible for Public relations and also Management Assistance.

Franco Fagioli. Canzone e Cantate

CD

“Countertenor Franco Fagioli, an exceptional singer with an even rarer modesty, was equal to the challenge of Handel’s music in all its facets – the breakneck coloratura, which he is able to propel powerfully and effortlessly in the highest range, but also the profound melancholy of ‘Scherza, infida,’ for which he knows how to enshroud his voice in the hues of sorrow.” This is what the periodical Opernwelt wrote in the spring of 2010 about the Argentinian countertenor Franco Fagioli, who sang the title role in Handel’s “Ariodante” at the Badische Staatstheater in Karlsruhe.