This concert, a tribute to the castrato Giovanni Battista Velluti (1780 –1861), packed both a theatrical and musical punch. Of course, the venue, the sumptuously decorated Salon d’Hercule in the palace of Versailles, made a difference. What other concert hall could boast a wall entirely occupied by a painting by Paolo Veronese? The Feast in the House of Simon, presented as a gift to Louis XIV by the Venetian Republic, remained in full view until the players of the resident Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal, bathed in a peach-hued light, made a ceremonial entrance to the sound of drums. As a kind of fanfare, they performed a burst of French baroquerie, asserting their corporate identity before moving on to a predominantly Italian, early-Romantic programme. Their chief conductor, Stefan Plewniak, cut a striking figure in his long black tunic – tall and angular with a mane of hair, gesturing expansively and grinning as he pivoted towards the different sections of the orchestra. When he later played the mercurial polonaise finale from the Violin Concerto No 1 by Pierre Rode, the French composer’s coeval Niccolò Paganini inevitably sprang to mind. The orchestral players were similarly demonstrative, egging each other on as they exchanged glances and smiles and leaned into each other.
If the vocal star of the evening, the Argentinian countertenor Franco Fagioli, was physically less exuberant, the flickering movements of his eyes and eyebrows gave visual expression to his virtuosity in arias and scene by Rossini, Giuseppe Nicolini (born 30 years before Rossini in 1762), Paolo Bonfichi (born in 1769) and Saverio Mercadante (born in 1795).
The only castrato role that Rossini wrote appears in his 1813 opera Aureliano in Palmira. The character’s name is Arsace – not to be confused with his homonym in Semiramide. Nor is the opera itself to be confused with Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra and Il barbiere di Siviglia, with which it shares an overture. The familiar sinfonia in question introduced the ambitious scena ‘Dolci silvestri orrori …’, which in its closing section presages the cabaletta to Rosina’s ‘Una voce poco fa’.
In an interview last year with Opera Wire, discussing his Velluti-themed CD released on the Château de Versailles Spectacles label, Fagioli said: “Velluti was the last famed castrato, who sang music from the 19th century … My love for bel canto was also a reason for my discovery of this great singer. I realized he still sang in this castrato tradition. Velutti also started in opera the same way I did, and did not come from the British style or the baroque tradition.”
Indeed, it would be hard to imagine Fagioli blending into a cathedral choir. With his vibrant, slightly breathy tone, dense chest register, aerial high notes, flickering coloratura and artful phrasing, he could perhaps be the countertenor brother of Cecilia Bartoli.
As it happened, the graceful ‘Ah se mi lasci, o cara’ from Nicolini’s Traiano in Dacia, with its prominent solo clarinet, suggested an operatic character closely associated with Bartoli – Sesto in La clemenza di Tito. The instrument again came to the fore in ‘Qual mi circonda e agghiaccia’ from Bonfichi’s Attila, an aria introduced with dramatic orchestral gestures in the vein of Cherubini’s Medée.
In ‘Ecco o numi compiuto’ from Nicolini’s Carlo Magno it was the bassoon that acted as Fagioli’s partner, while (following an overture by Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli that seemed to exemplify the ‘Italian style’ referenced by Schubert), the countertenor seemed to be duetting with Plewniak and the entire orchestra in the gracefully lilting ‘Era felice un dì’ from Mercadante’s Andronico. It was capped off with a thrilling, Rossinian final section.
Rossini himself, and his Arsace, provided the first encore – the cabaletta ‘Oh, come da quel dì’ from Semiramide. Fagioli then leaped forward more than a century for Ernesto de Curtis’s Neapolitan song ‘Non ti scordar di me’ (its harmonies sounding especially piquant on instruments geared for the period around 1800), and finally paid tribute to France and the late baroque era with the plangent restraint of the soprano aria ‘Tristes apprêts’ from Rameau’s Castor et Pollux.
Fagioli, Plewniak and the Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal (making its UK debut) visit St Martin-in-the-Fields in London on Saturday 13th June to perform the same programme. For any concertgoers in need of a fix of Veronese, the National Gallery is just across the road.
Yehuda Shapiro
Arias pour Velluti, le dernier castrat
Rossini Tancredi: Sinfonia
Nicolini Traiano in Dacia: ‘Ah se mi lasci o cara’
Rossini Il viaggio a Reims: Finale to Act 3
Bonfichi Attila: ‘Qual mi circonda e agghiaccia’
Rode Violin Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Polonaise
Nicolini Carlo Magno: ‘Ecco o numi compiuto’
Rossini Aureliano in Palmira: Sinfonia; ‘Dolci silvestri orrori’
Zingarelli Giulietta e Romeo: Overture
Mercadante Andronico: ‘Dove m’aggiro’
Franco Fagioli (countertenor)
Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal
Stefan Plewniak (conductor and violin)
Salon d’Hercule, Château de Versailles, 23 March 2026
Top image © Thoroughly Good