The Queen of Excess
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The phenomenon that is Cecilia Bartoli blew into Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night, kicking up the usual fuss. With a Swiss original-instruments group, the Italian mezzo-soprano performed a program of Caldara, Alessandro Scarlatti, and Handel.
What is there left to say about Cecilia Bartoli? One can only repeat. Where she is concerned, the battle lines have been drawn for about 10 years. Some people think that she’s vulgar, disgraceful, and unmusical. Other people think that she’s stylish, magnetic, and musical. Some of us think that she is both – all of those things. Call us “conflicted” about Cecilia Bartoli.
It is her pattern to tour with music from whatever her current album is. For example, two seasons ago, she came to Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, for a program of Salieri. You remember him, don’t you? He was F. Murray Abraham, seething at Tom Hulce, in that movie. This season, the album is “Opera Proibita,” and the backup band is Orchestra La Scintilla, from Zurich.
“Opera Proibita” means “Forbidden Opera,” and the conceit is this: In the first decade of the 18th century, opera was banned in Rome, by a Church wanting to stress more elevated things. So composers wrote a lot of oratorios, into which they’d put plenty of “operatic” music. The notion of “forbidden opera” gives Miss Bartoli’s album, and concerts, a sexy, daring feel, and I suppose the lady is entitled.
And the three composers highlighted by Miss B.? Antonio Caldara is responsible for many enduring hits, including the song “Alma del core.” Alessandro Scarlatti is not to be confused with his son, Domenico, who wrote about a million keyboard sonatas, or esercizi, as he called them. And Handel … he did the Hallelujah Chorus, plus a couple of other numbers.
Much more than a concert, an evening with Cecilia Bartoli is a Happening, an Event. The buzz begins in the hall long before she appears. And when she walks onstage, she is almost electric (without yet having opened her mouth). She grins, beams, squeezes her eyes closed in girlish glee, clutches her hand to her heart. She is soaking in the love, and the audience is happy to pour it on her. This is not a Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recital: The German baritone really didn’t care what you thought of him; he knew he was supreme. Miss Bartoli seems to need to be loved, and to give love in return. Which is just fine.
And I have always thought of her as that rarest of creatures: the sincere ham. She milks it – everything – like the dickens, but she is without falsity.
On Wednesday night, she sang as she usually does: You either admire this singing or you don’t (or, like me, you’re sort of disgusted and wowed at the same time).We heard the quick vibrato, the detached (rather than legato) passagework, the little yodels. Her technique comes off as homemade, and, in fact, her teacher was her mother. Miss Bartoli knows how to breathe, and she knows how to shape an aria. She can play her voice like a violin – it seems an instrument other than one that would emerge from a throat, even an extraordinary throat.
I’ve said that she can shape an aria, and that is true, but she can also misshape one, because her self-indulgence is great. She can be emotional to the point of clownishness. Frankly, she bit her lip, and pouted, like a little girl, when – in a Handel aria – she sang the word “infelice” (“unhappy”). And yet you excused it in her.
In some of her soft singing, she showed exquisite purity, and she almost always demonstrated a very clean line. Now and then, you couldn’t hear the words – Miss Bartoli is more interested in the note or musical phrase than she is in her diction. But that’s okay. And her range remains a marvel: A freestanding high B – one that has no leading notes – is nothing for her (and recall that she’s a mezzo, not a soprano).
About that backup band: Nine years ago, some members of the Zurich Opera Orchestra formed a subgroup, a “period” group, playing on Baroque instruments. They called themselves “Orchestra La Scintilla,” “scintilla” meaning “spark” in Italian. (Nice name, but isn’t it a little presumptuous, too? I mean, isn’t the group’s sparkiness, or lack of it, something for others to judge?) On Wednesday night, they were a bit ragged, and when they played by themselves – overtures and the like – you had the impression they were just killing time while Cecilia rested the voice.
And sometimes they covered that voice, did the orchestra. They are a small group, but Miss Bartoli’s is a tiny voice – although tiny like a Yorkie’s: It can command your attention, if it wants to.
Leader of Orchestra La Scintilla is the concertmistress, Ada Pesch, not a Swiss, but a Clevelander who studied at Indiana with Josef Gingold. The actual leader of the orchestra, however, was Miss Bartoli herself, who did a lot of conducting: with her hands, shoulders, and other parts. And she conducts like she sings – theatrically. She made Leonard Bernstein, a Sarah Bernhardt of the podium, look like Fritz Reiner (who barely moved).
There is often a sameness to Miss Bartoli’s programs, and there was to this one. An evening of Salieri is a lot; an evening of these arias from 1700-10 is a lot, too. But she undeniably handled it well: With slow arias, she left the audience spellbound, and with fast ones, she dazzled it. She is, in a sense, beyond criticism – I mean, she is what she is, take her or leave her, she ain’t gonna change.
Over the years, I’ve walked up the aisle, after a Bartoli concert, muttering, “She’s the Queen of Excess.” And yet I have never been unaware of her talent. And I’d hate to miss her act.