The last great castrato, we are told, was Vellutti who was a favourite with many early 19th century composers. Tuesday night’s concert at Koerner Hall as part of Toronto Summer Music was a tribute to him with counter-tenor Franco Fagioli accompanied by L’Orchestre de l’Opéra de Versailles and their flamboyant violinist/conductor Stefan Plewniak performing music associated with Vellutti interspersed with orchestral music from (mostly) the same operas.
Leonardo Vinci’s Artaserse is in many ways it’s a classic opera seria. The good guy roles are written for castrati but the baddies here too go to high voices; a castrato and a tenor. But what sets this apart is that it was written for Rome where it premiered in 1730. At that time women were not allowed on stage in the Papal States so the two female roles were played by castrati en travesti. In recreating it in 2012, l’opéra national de Lorraine chose to cast all five castrati roles with countertenors, producing a cast like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard.
operaramblings 