Cecilia Bartoli

She appeared at Tower Lincoln Center on September 22, 2005 and 'wowed' the participants during the Q&A by her sheer presence and her absolute pleasantness. Besides, anyone who records music forbidden by the Vatican [some things never change] deserves our attention.


Cecilia Bartoli Champions "Opera Proibita"

“A new CD by Roman mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli is always an event…she is a singing actress of virtually boundless range.”
— Wall Street Journal


“Everything I’ve learned from living in Rome I find in this music: the continuous movement in the architecture, the dramatic play of light and shade that only a southern climate can create, the majesty of the ruins of the Forum, the sinuous curves of water in the fountains, the sound of voices in the ancient alleys, the pleasure of eating ice cream on hot days, the sense of the infinite you get from watching the Tiber flow by and, especially, the joy of discovering something new that you’ve never noticed before.” — Cecilia Bartoli on Opera Proibita

A native of Rome, soprano Cecilia Bartoli has used her worldwide fame and tireless musical curiosity to bring to light rarely heard operas, oratorio and song from centuries past. Her recent Decca recordings devoted to unearthing musical treasures by Vivaldi (resulting in the multi-platinum selling Vivaldi Album), Salieri and Gluck have met with broad critical and commercial acclaim. Opera Proibita, Bartoli’s newest and most intriguing project yet, offers world-premiere recordings of newly-recovered works by Handel, Alessandro Scarlatti and Antonio Caldara — repertoire created in Rome in the earliest days of the 18th century, in an atmosphere of censorship and subterfuge.

The Pope Bans Opera
By edict of the Pope (acting as the Bishop of Rome at the time), there were no staged performances of opera in Rome in the first decade of the 18th century. This was partly a municipal sacrifice in thanks to God for the minimal loss of life during a major earthquake in 1703, but also reflected the Pope’s conviction that theaters were places of sin and corruption, and that the works staged therein promoted immoral behavior and promiscuity. This Papal ban on opera lasted until 1710.

A Unique Musical Solution
Despite the official restrictions of the Church, the leading patrons of the arts were senior members of the priesthood who employed composers to create splendid entertainments for parties in their ornate residences. Forbidden to write operas, the creative forces of composers like Handel, Scarlatti and Caldara were directed towards the composition of new forms of dramatic-musical expression: oratorios and cantatas which were not only strikingly rich in orchestral color but unusually full of expression and emotion. On the surface virtuous in nature, these sacred works had a subversive undercurrent of sensuality hidden behind their cloak of sanctity. The works depicted the worldly lives of saints, Biblical figures and allegorical characters in productions that varied from opera only in their lack of staging (visual theatricality being seen as profane). While the texts were at least superficially pious and moral in tone, this music resembled more closely the stage drama forbidden by the papal doctrine than traditional sacred works of the time. These works were performed in the vernacular and by the same players who were active in opera before the ban.

Reclaimed by the Female Voice
Thanks to the tireless efforts of Cecilia Bartoli’s longtime researcher and collaborator, Claudio Osele, these glorious arias by Handel, Scarlatti and Caldara – many of them world premiere recordings – are now revealed in their true light by the world’s most breathtaking artist. Because women were also forbidden from public performance in 18th century Rome (a further example of the tension between Catholic morality and the performing arts), some of these works are being sung here by a woman for the first time.

Worldwide Tour
In October of this year, Bartoli will embark together with the musicians of La Scintilla on a major US tour of this repertoire with performances in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Washington, DC and New York. Following her US tour Bartoli will head to Europe where she will perform these works in Zurich, Berlin, Amsterdam, Basel, Brussels, London, Paris, Munich and Cologne.