I Fagiolini Overview

I Fagioliini are the winners of the Royal Philharmonic Society Ensemble Award, 2006. I Fagiolini is acknowledged worldwide as the most innovative British vocal ensemble specialising in early music. Their stylish staged productions of Renaissance and Baroque music-theatre works together with... [more]

I Fagioliini are the winners of the Royal Philharmonic Society Ensemble Award, 2006. I Fagiolini is acknowledged worldwide as the most innovative British vocal ensemble specialising in early music. Their stylish staged productions of Renaissance and Baroque music-theatre works together with virtuosic performances of contemporary repertoire have won them friends from the BBC Proms to Soweto and brought this repertoire to both specialist and completely new audiences. I Fagiolini's Theatre of Music project presents newly commissioned or 16th/17th century music theatre masterworks that have been otherwise ignored due to their difficult context or complicated staging needs. Purcell's Indian Queen with puppets, masked Venetian comedies and mini dramas by Janequin (La Chasse) and Da Flecha (La Bomba, El Fuego) have all been brought back to life in highly imaginative settings by Peter Wilson (West End), John La Bouchardière (English National Opera) and John Fulljames (Royal Opera House). The Full Monteverdi was hailed by The Times as 'A compelling but upsetting piece of theatre… A bleak but brilliant evening", The Guardian as 'an unforgettable experience' and The Independent as 'Music theatre hardly comes more visceral than this'. Robert Hollingworth founded I Fagiolini in 1986. Directing this group has taken up most of his time since but he has directed other ensembles at home and abroad, most recently the Netherlands Chamber Choir in a ground-breaking new music-theatre project (Faust) universally acclaimed by the Dutch press and set in startling venues such as an Amsterdam vast ship-building yard and a disused station. He directed Opera Zuid's underground production of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (with Rufus Müller in the title role), and the BBC Concert Orchestra in a project with 'The Full Monty' composer, Anne Dudley. He founded the spectacular Islington Winter Music Festival, writes and presents programmes for BBC Radio 3 and has worked on a number of films including Quills. In June 2006 he was appointed to the panel of Artistic Directors at the York Early Music Festival. [show less]