Franco Fagioli

Franco Fagioli (born 1981, in Tucumán) is an Argentinian operatic countertenor.

Born in Argentina, Fagioli initially studied piano and then singing at the Superior Art Institute of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. He began his international career in 2003, when he won the Bertelsmann singing competition ‘Neue Stimmen’ in Gütersloh, Germany.

Franco Fagioli has since made regular appearances at opera houses in Buenos Aires, Karlsruhe, Bonn, Zurich, Essen and Genoa, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna and the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. He has also been invited to perform at a number of festivals, including those in Halle, Ludwigsburg, Innsbruck and Froville.

He has worked with conductors like Rinaldo Alessandrini, Alan Curtis, Gabriel Garrido, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, René Jacobs, José Manuel Quintana, Marc Minkowski, Riccardo Muti and Christophe Rousset.

Franco Fagioli is one of the five countertenors to appear in the opera, TV, CD and DVD production of Leonardo Vinci’s Artaserse, which has been awarded numerous national and international music prizes for example the Echo Award 2013 and 2014 or the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.

The 2013/2014 season was launched with the release of the CD Arias for Caffarelli, which includes many world premieres; this was accompanied by concerts in Germany, France and Denmark. Franco Fagioli made his debut at the 2014 Salzburg Whitsun Festival with his programme Giambattista Velutti. In the same year, there were two debuts with works by Mozart: after performing the part of Sesto in La Clemenza di Tito in Nancy, he debuted as Idamante in Martin Kušej’s new production of Idomeneo at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in November 2014.