i fagiolini

Monteverdi Vespers 1610
Director: Robert Hollingworth
English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble
Wednesday 22 October, 2025
7pm
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£28 adult, £10 child (Booking fee applies)
St. Thomas's Church, Salisbury 
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Sponsored by NFU Mutual Salisbury
"Off the charts brilliant... utterly enthralling" ★★★★★ The Arts Desk

Celebrate Voice 2025 launches in spectacular fashion as internationally acclaimed ensemble I Fagiolini returns to Monteverdi’s iconic 1610 Vespers. Renowned for nearly four decades of boundary-pushing performance, recording, and film, the group brings fresh intensity to this masterpiece—performed as Monteverdi originally imagined it: a vivid dialogue of solo voices, each infused with drama and emotional depth.

Joined by the brilliant English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble, I Fagiolini delivers a one-to-a-part performance that is both intimate and breathtakingly powerful. Expect dazzling virtuosity, daring improvisation, and a kaleidoscope of colours from wind, strings, and brass, all in service of Monteverdi’s revolutionary sound world.

This is not just a concert—it’s a visceral, 21st-century reimagining of one of choral music’s greatest works, as I Fagiolini celebrates its 40th anniversary.
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I Fagiolini director, Robert Hollingworth, observes: “Over different projects from The Full Monteverdi to our five albums of his music, I’ve watched these singers become world-class exponents of Monteverdi’s fearsome coloratura - but also at channelling the raw emotion in his music.  Our performance combines the full-on dramatic treatment that the music demands, with a lifetime’s experience of drawing out every dissonance, every semiquaver - every little trick of Monteverdi’s. The latest scholarship then helps us to row with the music not against it so we can do our job as powerfully and expressively as possible: with splendour, flair and sensual intimacy.”
REVIEWS

​"Utilising the stage, galleries, … even directly behind the audience, this was a 3D, surround sound, high definition Vespers for the 21st Century… a sustained standing ovation for surely one of the most impressive performances so far this century.”  
Planet Hugill

“This was without doubt a defining performance of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers”
​5* Bachtrack 
 
“In such sure hands (and throats) as these, Monteverdi’s psalm-settings reach their fullest capacity to enchant and astonish.” 
Gramophone
  
“a performance packed with riches… the shivery thrill of being totally immersed.”  
The Times

sponsored by NFU Mutual Salisbury

Sponsors of Celebrate Voice Festival for 11 years