Música que ha cambiado mi vida 3

Cecilia Bartoli es una de las razones por las cuales he aprendido a cantar. De alguna manera, de cierto modo debía ser posible aprender a transmitir emociones y/o exaltaciones como la Bartoli. The Vivaldi Album me llevó a interesarme, en primer lugar por la música no contemporánea, y en segundo lugar por descubrir mi propia voz. Recuerdo muy poco de la movida musical de los primeros años de la presente década, y es que me enganché de manera rápida al bel canto y a lo barroco. Nada más escuchaba a Bartoli y demás música dieciochesca, fantaseando sobre aquel pasado y aprendiendo a escuchar sobre mundos de los cuales nunca antes había percibido. La Bartoli es una diva muy italiana, es decir, simpática, enigmática, virtuosa y muy exagerada. Me encanta que presuma sus cualidades vocales, me encanta que arme circo, maroma y teatro en sus shows, me encantan sus efectismos divescos, es una diosa. Posteriormente ha editado The Gluck Album, cuyo repertorio también me lleva a lugares insospechados, pero la cosa comenzó con Vivaldi.

http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=411

THE VIVALDI ALBUM
ANTONIO VIVALDI
Various arias

Cecilia Bartoli (mezzo-soprano)

Il Giardino Armonico
Arnold Schoenberg Choir


Decca- 469 569-2/4(CD)
No Reference Recording

Even diehard opera lovers may be unaware that Vivaldi, in addition to composing hundreds upon hundreds of concertos, also penned 50-plus operas. Sadly, most are lost, but some are easy to find and arias from others have surfaced due to some passionate operatic exploration. This CD presents many works never before recorded, and that alone would make it worthy. The fact that so much of it is actually fascinating and is performed so well here is a special bonus. Cecilia Bartoli's vocal charms are well-known--her ability to communicate instantly, her rapid-fire, almost unbelievably accurate coloratura, her many degrees of soft singing--and they're all in evidence here. The arias' subjects are typical Baroque fare--if a character is excited about his/her amorous feelings, we get the metaphor of a storm-tossed ship at sea; we get pastoral scenes mirroring inner peace; there's plenty of depair and rage. All of it gives the singer ample room to peddle her wares, and there's some amazing peddling going on here. "Zeffiretti, che sussurrate", accompanied by two harpsichords, two violins, and the usual strings, is gently and exquisitely murmurred; "Anche'il mar par che sommerga", originally composed to highlight castrato Giovanni Manzoli's phenomenal breath control and wild way with fiorature does the same for our singer here. And musical sleuths will be happy to find small bits of The Four Seasons used here: "Spring" is heard at the start of the opera Dorilla in Tempe (sung by the chorus) and "Winter" shows up in "Gelido in ogni vena". Throughout, Bartoli amazes, although her constant aspirating during rapid coloratura passages begins to grate after a while, her trills are occasionally not quite pure (they're more like two adjacent notes having a fight), and some of her whispering makes you want to send her to her room. But I'm looking for trouble--this CD is delicious, and the help Bartoli gets from Il Giardino Armonico is priceless, as is the assistance from Decca's engineers. Love Bartoli? Love the Baroque? You'll love this!
--Robert Levine
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Mezzo Cecilia Bartoli could easily rest on her laurels as one of today's most charismatic, character singers for her lively portrayals of Mozart and Rossini heroines. But it's been particularly exciting to observe her growth as an artist in exploring the exuberant world of baroque opera, with its range of pyrotechnic demands--both vocal and emotional. Bartoli's show-stopping virtuosity in a Vivaldi aria from her Live in Italy recital gave a tantalising sample of her finesse in that style. For The Vivaldi Album, Bartoli conducted extensive research into the composer's manuscripts (a documentary tracing her quest is planned for subsequent screening). Although he's best known for his concertos--in typically baroque fashion, two of the arias in fact recycle material from The Four Seasons--Vivaldi was a ferociously prolific composer of operas for the cutting-edge theatres of his time and the arias gathered here demonstrate the word-painting magic of his music, from the sylvan setting of duetting flageolets in "Di due rai languire costante" to the storm-tossed passions of "Anch'il mar par che sommerga", where Bartoli spins out ripples of rapid-fire coloratura with a gravity-defying accuracy that will leave your head spinning. In addition to many such examples of vocal acrobatics, Bartoli brings exquisite nuance and limpid tone to the delicate echo effects of "Zeffiretti, che sussurrate" and there's no better test for the remarkable flexibility of her range--full and dusky at the bottom and thrilling at the top--than the huge intervallic leaps of "Dopo un'orrida procella". With her naturally large voice, Bartoli can at times tend to histrionic excess (in the recitative to the short aria from "L'Orlando finto pazzo"), but the expressive colour of her phrasing is wonderfully matched throughout by Il Giardino Armonico's lively panache. All power to Bartoli in her goal of reviving this neglected aspect of Vivaldi's output. --Thomas May