Cecilia Bartoli


Mezzo-soprano

Cecilia Bartoli’s singing defies comparison. Critics have had to find new metaphors, as their usual vocabulary does not suffice. It has been said that her throat must ‘conceal a nest of nightingales’ and that the only adequate way of describing her is with confessions of love. The Bartoli phenomenon can neither be captured in prosaic words nor in simple facts and statistics, but at least the latter can illustrate how Cecilia Bartoli is able to stir us with her music.

More than ten million of her audio and video recordings have been sold worldwide, making her today’s best-selling classical artist. She has become one of the most well-loved singers of her generation without making any attempt at popular marketing strategies. Constantly open to new ideas, she has achieved global success with exquisite projects whose thematic content is meticulously planned. The Vivaldi Album, Italian Arias (by Gluck), The Salieri Album, Opera proibita, Maria, Sacrificium, Mission and St Petersburg have all received numerous awards including five Grammys. Cecilia Bartoli is an exclusive artist of the Decca Music Group.

Cecilia Bartoli sings in the most important concert halls in Europe, America, Asia and Australia. The companions in her more recent musical explorations have been leading ensembles specializing in historical performance practice such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Les Arts Florissants, I Barocchisti, Concentus Musicus Wien, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Il Giardino Armonico, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, Les Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble and La Scintilla in Zurich. She has also worked with many leading symphony orchestras, one such highlight being the programmes she developed and performed with the Vienna Philharmonic.

She recently founded the Monaco-based orchestra Les Musiciens du Prince and will appear with them for the first time in summer 2016.

In 2012 Cecilia Bartoli became artistic director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, and her contract was recently extended to 2021. Her ability to create links between the conceptual and the artistic made this an ideal role for her. Salzburg has also become a central venue for her work as an opera singer, including her stage debut in the role of Norma in 2013, an important milestone in her career. The 2016 edition of the Festival is dedicated to the theme “Romeo and Juliet” – with a new production of “West Side Story”, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, with Cecilia Bartoli performing the role of Maria.

She has also performed at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, La Scala, Milan, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Zurich Opera and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. In autumn 2015 Zurich formed the first stop of a tour of the Salzburg production of Norma. Following performances in Monte Carlo, Cecilia Bartoli will sing the role at the Edinburgh Festival, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and in Baden-Baden in 2016.

Cecilia Bartoli was born in Rome and began singing lessons with her mother Silvana Bazzoni who remained her only teacher. She has never pursued a special career plan but has been guided solely by her wish to make music. Daniel Barenboim, Riccardo Muti, Herbert von Karajan and Nikolaus Harnoncourt sought to work with her at an early stage in her career. Cecilia Bartoli has received many awards including the Léonnie Sonning Music Prize (2010), the Herbert von Karajan Prize (2012) and the Polar Music Prize (2016). www.ceciliabartolionline.com

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