Toronto Summer time Music: Franco Fagioli — The Final Castrato, Arias for Velluti. Rossini: Sinfonia from Tancredi; Nicolini: “Ah se mi lasci o cara,” Traiano in Dacia; Bonfichi: “Qual mi circonda e agghiaccia … Dolenti e care immagini … Vedrai quest’anima,” Attila; Rode: Concerto No. 1 in D minor for Violin, III. Polonaise; Nicolini: “Ecco o numi … Ah quando cesserà … Lo sdegno io non pavento,” Carlo Magno; Rossini: Sinfonia from Aureliano in Palmira; Rossini: “Dolci silvestri orrori … Ah! Che sento … Non lasciarmi in tal momento,” Aureliano in Palmira; Zingarelli: Overture from Giulietta e Romeo; Mercadante: “Dove m’aggiro … Period felice un di … Sì bel contento in giubilo,” Andronico Franco Fagioli, countertenor, Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal de Versaille. July 29, 2025, Koerner Corridor.
It’s uncommon in a vocal live performance for the conductor to attract extra consideration than the singer; particularly when that singer is the Argentinian star countertenor, Franco Fagioli.
However, on this much-publicized Toronto Summer time Music live performance at Koerner Corridor, it was Stefan Plewniak, conductor of the 2019-founded Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal de Versaille who got here throughout because the extra flamboyant artiste. He minimize a Billy Connolly-meets-Rasputin-meets-Paganini determine, along with his lengthy, raveled hair that grew ever wilder as he bounced throughout the stage, and along with his windmill conducting method.
The theatricality award of the night time additionally went to the orchestra, for its entrance and exit, accompanied by excerpts from Lully’s Bourgeois gentilhomme, and Rameau’s Les Indes galantes, respectively.
The Program
However the principle program left the French Baroque behind and moved to late-18th and early-Nineteenth century Italy. The live performance was conceived as a celebration of and homage to Giovanni Battista Velluti (1780-1861), the so-called ‘Final Castrato’ of the subtitle, and topic of a current recording by Fagioli and Plewniak’s crew.
Technically talking, the final castrato was truly Alessandro Moreschi (1858-1922), of whose voice we actually have a scratchy recording. However Velluti was admittedly the final castrato with starring opera components written for him by the main composers of his time. In any case, it makes for a beautiful live performance title.
A lot of this repertoire is primarily a car for a unprecedented voice, and accordingly it scores low on substance. Tripartite scenes, comparable to from Nicolini’s Carlo Magno, Bonfichi’s Attila, or Mercadante’s Andronico, hint a routine trajectory from dolorous ruminations by melancholic reverie in the direction of raging or jubilant defiance, the final of those accompanied by stratospheric vocals and audience-massaging exaltation.
It took two contributions from Rossini to point out what a first-rate composer can do with these clichés.
Franco Fagioli
If the lyrics or the contexts had extra to supply, the Koerner Corridor viewers had no method of figuring out. A brief paragraph on Velutti was all this system needed to vouchsafe: nothing on the composers or the works, no lyrics, no synopses.
It was left to Fagioli’s vocal prowess to information us by the labyrinth of gildings and vocal somersaults, and for us to belief his appearing out of the operatic personae.
His is a voice that falls someplace round a full-bodied chesty mezzo-soprano, with occasional exhilarating ventures into excessive coloratura and baritonal deep dives. As thrilling as it’s to listen to all three octaves on show, the transitions between registers usually are not at all times easily negotiated, and the bottom register is extra masculine-timbred than that of different main countertenors.
Nonetheless, the readability and agility are exemplary, as is Fagioli’s breath management, even in probably the most devilish roulades.
Remaining Ideas
Vocal numbers had been interjected with purely instrumental ones, the place the orchestra’s intense, characterful musicianship shone forth, particularly in numbers by the never-failing musical jester, Rossini.
The all-Italian program obtained one other Gallic increase from the manic Polonaise finale of Pierre Rode’s first Violin Concerto — additionally an event to admire Plewniak as a prancingly emancipated violinist.
He returned along with his violin for the live performance’s second encore, after an aria from Rossini’s Semiramide, to accompany a reasonably loosely experimental ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ from Handel’s Rinaldo.
For such a starry live performance with a European orchestra, honouring the previous TSM Creative Director, Douglas McNabney, it was a disgrace to not see the corridor packed out. However, these in attendance, a lot as they could have grumbled concerning the lack of program notes, had been handled to a night of entertaining virtuosity.
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Michelle Assay is a Marie Curie/UKRI World Fellow on the Universities of Toronto and King’s School London engaged on Ladies and Western Artwork Music in Iran (Womusiran.com). She holds a PhD from the Sorbonne and College of Sheffield and has been a Leverhulme Fellow on the College of Huddersfield. She is the writer of award-winning articles on Russian and Soviet music and on Shakespeare and music, and usually seems in live shows as a pianist. She is a daily broadcaster for the BBC and contributor to Gramophone, Worldwide Piano, and Bachtrack, together with Ludwig Van.
