Cecilia Bartoli OMRI (; born 4 June 1966) is an Italian mezzo-soprano widely known in the music of Vincenzo Bellini, Handel, Mozart, Rossini and Antonio Vivaldi and for lesser-known music of the Baroque music and Classical periods. She has also sung soprano and alto repertory.
Bartoli is considered a singer with an unusual timbre. According to Nicholas Wroe in 2001, her voice was known for its "fully developed sumptuousness of the lower register, the vibrancy of the middle range...the top was limpid and powerful", and she was one of the most popular opera singers of recent years.
Early life
Bartoli was born in Rome. Her parents, Silvana Bazzoni and Pietro Angelo Bartoli, were professional singers and gave her her first music lessons. She first performed publicly at age nine as the shepherd boy in
Tosca.
[ Her mother's song got some peasant power ] Bartoli later studied at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
[Blyth, Grove Music Online] At the age of 19, she made her singing debut on the Italian television show
Fantastico. She did not win the competition but was asked to sing with
Paris Opera for an homage concert for
Maria Callas.
Performing career
Bartoli made her professional opera debut in 1987 at the Arena di Verona. The following year she undertook the role of Rosina in Rossini's
The Barber of Seville at the
Cologne Opera, the Schwetzingen Festival and the
Zurich Opera earning rave reviews.
Working with conductors
Daniel Barenboim and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Bartoli focused on Mozart roles, such as Zerlina in
Don Giovanni and Dorabella in
Così fan tutte, and from then on her career developed internationally.
In 1990, she made her debut at the Opéra Bastille as Cherubino in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and her debut at the Hamburg State Opera as Idamantes in Mozart's Idomeneo, followed by her La Scala debut as Isolier in Le comte Ory in 1991, a performance that solidified her reputation as one of the world's leading Rossini singers.
In 1996, Bartoli made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Despina in Così fan tutte and returned in 1997 to sing the title role of La Cenerentola and in 1998 to sing the role of Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro. In 2000, she sang in another Mozart soprano role, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 2001, she made a long-awaited Royal Opera House debut, taking the roles of Euridice and the Genio in the London stage premiere of Joseph Haydn's L'anima del filosofo.
She is foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
Work in Baroque music
In addition to Mozart and Rossini, Bartoli has spent much of her career performing and recording Baroque and early Classical era music by such composers as Gluck,
Antonio Vivaldi,
Joseph Haydn and
Antonio Salieri. In early 2005, she sang Cleopatra in Handel's
Giulio Cesare. She often performs with the Baroque ensemble Il Giardino Armonico.
In 2012, Bartoli produced a project entitled Mission, which premiered the works of Agostino Steffani, a lesser-known Baroque composer. Bartoli produced the music of the composer in CD form as well as an extended music video that portrays her as the priest-composer Agostino in the palace of Versallies. The video is known for its historic and visual accuracy of the Baroque period. Cecilia Bartoli's performance and production of Mission reflect the music and aesthetic of Steffani's time period through the setting, wardrobe, and cinematography."[Caverly, C. "Bartoli's Mission: A Modern Woman and Baroque Music." MHS 123 Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century, 28 November 2017]
Work in bel canto
In 2007/08, Bartoli devoted her time to studying and recording the early 19th-century repertoire – the era of Italian Romanticism and
bel canto – and especially the legendary singer
Maria Malibran, the 200th anniversary of whose birth was celebrated in March 2008. The album
Maria was released in September 2007. In May 2008, Bartoli sang the title role written for Malibran in a revival of Fromental Halévy's 1828 opera
Clari at the Zurich Opera.
In June 2010, she sang the title role of Bellini's
Norma for the first time with conductor Thomas Hengelbrock in a concert at the Konzerthaus Dortmund.
In March 2011, Bartoli toured five Australian cities with two programs drawn from
Sacrificium and
Maria.
[ "Flying visit" by Hugh Canning, The Australian (12 February 2011)]
Administration career
Salzburg Whitsun Festival
In 2012, Bartoli became the artistic director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, an extension of the traditional Salzburg Festival, which produces performances during
Whitsun (Pentecost) weekend. Forgoing the academic programming of her predecessors, she reformulated the festival's programming—returning to "the old recipe of organizing beautiful programs and inviting great artists"—resulting in record ticket sales and placing the festival on the international opera calendar. In 2012, she sang Cleopatra in Handel's
Giulio Cesare, in 2013 the title role in
Vincenzo Bellini's
Norma, and in 2014 Rossini's
La Cenerentola.
Opéra de Monte-Carlo
In December 2019, it was announced that Bartoli would succeed Jean-Louis Grinda as the director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, effective on 1 January 2023.
She became the first woman to hold the position.
Personal life
Bartoli lives with her husband, the Swiss
bass-baritone Oliver Widmer, in
Zollikon on the north shore of
Lake Zurich, Switzerland, and in Rome part of the year. The couple married in 2011 after twelve years together.
Bartoli lived in
Monaco in the early 2010s.
[Alan Jackson. "Cold Call Alan Jackson calls Cecilia Bartoli.", The Times, London, 10 May 2003]
Awards and honours
Bartoli was appointed Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1995), and Commander of Monaco's Order of Cultural Merit (November 1999).
[ Sovereign Ordonnance n° 14.274 of 18 November 1999 : promotions or nominations]
In 2003, she received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music at the Classic Brit Awards.
In 2010, she was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music from University College Dublin.[[5], "World-leading Mezzo-Soprano, Cecilia Bartoli honoured by UCD" Retrieved 11 October 2020]
In 2011, she won a fifth Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance for Sacrificium.[[6], grammy.com] In 2012, she was voted into the magazine's Gramophone's Hall of Fame.
Discography
Opera
-
Rossini: La scala di seta (Fonit Cetra, 1988)
-
Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia (Decca, 1989)
-
Mozart: Così fan tutte (Erato, 1990)
-
Mozart: Lucio Silla (Teldec 1991)
-
Rossini: La Cenerentola (Decca, 1993)
-
Puccini: Manon Lescaut (Decca, 1993)
-
Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro (DG, 1994)
-
Mozart: La clemenza di Tito (Decca, 1995)
-
Haydn: L'anima del filosofo, ossia Orfeo ed Euridice
[ ] (Decca, 1997)
-
Rossini: Il turco in Italia (Decca, 1998)
-
Mozart: Mitridate (Decca, 1999)
-
Haydn: Armida (Teldec 2000)
-
Handel: Rinaldo (Decca, 2000)
-
Mozart: Don Giovanni (Arthaus, 2001, DVD)
-
Bellini: La sonnambula (Decca, 2008)
-
Halevy: Clari (Decca, 2008, DVD)
-
Rossini: Otello (Decca, 2012)
-
Bellini: Norma (Decca, 2013)
Recitals with orchestra
-
Rossini Arias (1989)
-
Mozart Arias (1991)
-
Rossini Heroines (1992)
-
Mozart Portraits (1994)
-
Mozart Arias (1996)
-
The Vivaldi Album (1999)
-
Cecilia and Bryn Terfel (1999)
-
Gluck Italian Arias (2001)
-
The Salieri Album (2003)
-
Opera Proibita (2005)
-
Viva Vivaldi! Arias & Concertos (Arthaus, 2005, DVD)
-
Maria (A Tribute to Maria Malibran) (2007)
-
Sacrificium (Arias written for Castrato) (2009)
-
Mission (Arias and duets of Agostino Steffani) (2012)
-
St. Petersburg (2013)
-
Antonio Vivaldi (2018)
-
Farinelli (2019)
-
Queen of Baroque (2020)
-
Unreleased (2021)
Recitals with piano
-
Rossini Recital (1990)
-
If You Love Me – "Se tu m'ami": Eighteenth-century Italian Songs (1992)
-
The Impatient Lover – Italian Songs by Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Mozart, Joseph Haydn (1993)
-
Chant D'Amour (1996)
-
An Italian Songbook (1997)
-
Live in Italy (1998)
Recitals with cello
Sacred
-
Rossini: Stabat Mater (1990)
-
Mozart: Requiem (1992)
-
Scarlatti: Salve Regina, Pergolesi: Stabat Mater, Salve Regina (1993)
-
Rossini: Stabat Mater (1996)
Cantatas
-
Rossini Cantatas Volume 2
Compilations
-
A Portrait (1995)
-
The Art of Cecilia Bartoli (2002)
-
Sospiri (2010)
Notes
Sources
-
Alan Blyth: "Cecilia Bartoli", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 20 October 2008), (subscription access)
-
Chernin, Kim, and Renate Stendhal. Cecilia Bartoli: the Passion of Song. Women's, 1999.
External links
