![]() ![]() This seems to be very much a passion project for Jorge Navarro Colorado: he described in the programme how singing his first two complete Handel operas ( Lotario in Halle, and Partenope) he discovered that both roles fitted him well and that both were written for Fabri, which impelled him to go in search of other arias written for the tenor. Some 80 minutes of rare Baroque arias might sound somewhat forbidding (three of the arias, including those from Handel’s Scipione, were first performances in modern times) but with performances so wonderfully engaged and engaging we were entranced. There was a chance to explore Fabri and the music written for him in Arias for Ballino, a concert presented by Opera Settecento and Leo Duarte at St George’s Hanover Square, in which they were joined by tenor Jorge Navarro Colorado. For his two seasons in London, Handel both wrote him new roles and adapted existing ones, but Fabri also worked with a wide variety of European composers. ![]() Annibale Pio Fabri, known as ‘Ballino’, is not the best-known name amongst the singers who worked for Handel, yet on hearing him for the first time in 1729, Mrs Pendarves wrote described his voice as ‘sweet, clear and firm … he sings like a gentleman, without making faces, and his manner is particularly agreeable he is the greatest master of musick that ever sang upon the stage’.
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