Franco Fagioli is one of the leading virtuoso countertenors of our time. He is the first countertenor to sign an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon.
He is a renowned concert artist, appearing at the Halle, Ludwigsburg, Innsbruck and Salzburg Festivals, and collaborated with such conductors as Rinaldo Alessandrini, Alan Curtis, Gabriel Garrido, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, René Jacobs, José Manuel Quintana, Marc Minkowski, Riccardo Muti and Christophe Rousset.
His impressive discography includes title roles in Handel’s Serse and Gluck’s Orfeo and Ezio, Pergolesi’s Adriano in Siria, Handel’s Berenice and Teseo, Leonardo Vinci’s Artaserse and Catone in Utica, Caldara’s La Concordia de’ pianeti, Hasse’s Siroe, rè di Persia and the solo albums Arias for Caffarelli and Il maestro Porpora.
In the 2024/25 season, he made his house debut at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in a recital of repertoire performed by the famed castrato Giambattista Velluti. Other season highlights included a tour alongside Capella Cracoviensis as Arsace in Rossini’s Aureliano in Palmira. He also appeared as Acis in the Opera Royal Chateau de Versailles’ run of Polifemo, Farnace in Mitridate, re di Ponto at the Teatro Real in Madrid, and Arsace in Rossini’s Semiramide with Opéra de Rouen.
Franco Fagioli sang the title role of Handel’s Giulio Cesare at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, after which he joined Il Pomo d’Oro on tour for Handel’s Ariodante. He made his European conducting debut with Handel’s Messiah in Versailles and Palau de la Música and began a European tour of Mozart arias, which were featured on his recent debut album Anime Immortali by Pentatone. Further performances included Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno with the Berlin Philharmonic, Polifemo at the Theater an der Wien and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and Porpora’s Carlo il Calvo at La Scala in Milan and Konzerthaus Dortmund.
Career highlights have included Nerone (Agrippina) and Idamante (Idomeneo) for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Hamburg and Munich State Operas; the title role in Rossini’s Sigismondo at the Teatr Słowackiego in Krakow, the title role in Cavalli’s Eliogabalo for the Paris Opéra and the Dutch National Opera, Arsace in Rossini’s Semiramide for the Opéra national de Lorraine, Andronico in Tamerlano at La Scala, Ruggiero (Alcina) in Hamburg, the title role in Serse at the Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Adalgiso in Carlo il Calvo at the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival, Piacere in Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, the Opéra de Lille and the Theatre de Caen, and the title role in Giulio Cesare for the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and the Opernhaus Zurich. More recently, he performed Ruggiero (Alcina) in a new production at the Opéra de Lausanne.
