Nature's Rejects Nov 10, 2009
It's not the pyrotechnic pieces that are the most difficult, Cecilia Bartoli says. "The beautiful sad arias are the hardest to sing, because I am moved almost to tears. I know they were singing those arias out of their own sorrow." Bartoli is talking about her new recording, , which concerns the most exquisitely unsettling episode in the history of music: the castrati and the music written for them. (Slate)
Lévi-Strauss, the total anthropologist Nov 8, 2009
Celebrating opera s grim side ON HER NEW album, Sacrificium, the opera star Cecilia Bartoli sings music originally written for castrati, men who (to put the point gently) had been surgically altered as boys, so that their voices would never break. They sang in high registers associated today with women but had the powerful bodies and lung capacities of male singers, enabling distinct, and apparently sublime, artistic effects. (Boston Globe)
Cecilia Bartoli's new album: Celestial sacrifice Oct 28, 2009
Cecilia Bartoli's new album ... Cecilia Bartoli, a mezzo-soprano and one of the few classical artists today who can claim sports-star fees of her own is trying to resurrect the art of the castrati with her new Decca album, Sacrificium. (The Economist)
Classics reinvented as recording stars change their tune Sep 15, 2009
To put that in perspective, among the contemporary greats, a Renee Fleming CD sells 500 to 1000 in Australia, Cecilia Bartoli 1000 to 1500 and Bryn Terfel, when he was a regular visitor, about 9000, according to Cyrus Meher-Homji, the marketing director of classics and jazz for Universal Australia. That is encouraging for Matthews, but the real point comes when the CD is released in Europe next year, while she is singing there. (Sydney Morning Herald -- Entertainment)
Passing The Baton May 4, 2009
Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli ... Just this year I was able to hear Cecilia Bartoli one night and the Afro-Cuban All-Stars the next. (San Francisco Chronicle -- Entertainment)
Review: Met offers elegant revival of 'Cinderella' May 2, 2009
The production, created 12 years ago for Cecilia Bartoli by Cesare Lievi, remains a curious mix of silliness and eccentric effects (like the dressing room that descends on a giant hook to bring Cinderella her gown for the ball). Conductor Maurizio Benini had some problems coordinating the singers and the orchestra, but presumably those will be smoothed out by the final performance next Saturday afternoon, to be telecast live into movie theaters in high-definition. (Anchorage Daily News)
Classical TV Debuts With the Web's Richest Array of Free and Pay-Per-View Performing Arts Videos, at www.classicaltv.com Apr 20, 2009
99, include the Dutch National Ballet's Giselle; the Metropolitan Opera's 125th Anniversary Opening Night Gala Starring Renee Fleming; the Zurich Opera's Cosi Fan Tutte, with Cecilia Bartoli; and a "Celebration of Dance" from the Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet. . (Canada Newswire)
Spice and variety, and an acute sense of vocal colour Apr 20, 2009
Last month Cecilia Bartoli sang two concerts of 19th-century rarities at Roy Thomson Hall, and on Friday soprano Ren. e Fleming devoted half her concert to relatively recent songs by Olivier Messiaen and Henri Dutilleux. (Globe and Mail -- Entertainment)
So who should get the lead role in the Anna Nicole Smith opera? Feb 14, 2009
Magdalena Kozena or Cecilia Bartoli as Anna Nicole. Take your pick before the Royal Opera House beats you to it. (guardian.co.uk)
