Interview: Cecilia Bartoli – I’m more gifted with vocal cords than with my feet!

Cecilia Bartoli is the director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival (since 2012) and Monte-Carlo Opera (since 2023). She was the first woman to hold these positions.

True empowerment will occur when we no longer have to talk about empowerment. When we don’t have to emphasise, “the first woman”.

She also maintains her singing career in opera houses and concert halls.

Maybe [my energy] comes from my Emilia-Romagna genes – I was born in Rome, but my mum is from Parma and my dad was from Rimini… and, anyway, challenges keep creativity alive.

A sense of discipline and ability are common to both a singer and a director. Having made my debut at the age of 19 and sung immediately with von Karajan and then with several greats – Riccardo Muti, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Nikolaus Harnoncourt – I would say that my cultural background and experience are solid. My job is also to choose casts, to create collaborations, and this implies knowledge of the repertoire and voices.

Woman directors?

I meet more male artists with their heads in the clouds, I don’t know why that is… You have to choose a good administrator and know how to delegate. For us women, that’s not so easy as we’re used to having everything on our shoulders – family, children, work… I don’t have children, but I see my colleagues! It has made us control freaks… we’re obsessed with control.

Perseverance is very feminine, as Mozart pointed out in his opera – there is only one person who can save Don Giovanni and that’s Elvira. She foresees his terrible fate and feels like a baroque angel come to earth to save him.

Baroque. An important word in Bartoli’s career.

I consider myself a bit of a pioneer with the ‘rediscovery’ of Antonio Vivaldi. Let’s face it, until the 1990s his name was synonymous with The Four Seasons, a few concertos and, the Stabat Mater. Since 1999, when I recorded The Vivaldi Album with arias that had never been recorded, there has been a reappraisal of him as an opera composer. It’s one of the greatest satisfactions in almost 40 years of my career. Mamma mia, 40!

[Baroque music has] a ‘modernity’, with a rhythmic richness, and it allows improvisation that we are familiar with from jazz – in the score when there is the da capo, and the melody returns, this melody has to be varied. And the tunes are clean, crisp, bare. Its effectiveness lies precisely in its simplicity, and it goes straight to people’s hearts. It is no coincidence that composers such as Handel or John Dowland are adored by someone like Sting.

In the Monteverdi Festival in Cremona on 11 June, Bartoli will sing in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.

This edition of the festival is dedicated to the heroes of mythology, and Orpheus seemed perfect. It is a role of touching, shattering beauty, and I love singing it. I find that the voice, which is a magical instrument, perhaps the closest to the soul, is able to soothe minds and suffering in a special way.

She will be joined on stage by ‘her’ orchestra, Les Musiciens du Prince.

When I was thinking of a project related to the lesser-known Italian composers of the 18th century… Domenico Cimarosa… Giovanni Paisiello… I started looking, in vain, for manuscript scores. A musicologist told me, “You will find them in Russia where they were invited by the various tsarinas, who remained the owners of the works.” The Library of the Mariinsky Theatre was the source for my St. Petersburg album in 2014.

During that stay, I thought, “Wow, it would be great to create a group of European musicians in a European court.” I talked with Jean-Louis Grinda, then director of the Monte-Carlo Opera, who said that the proposal was so crazy ‘we have to try it!’ Prince Albert and Princess Caroline were all for it. The characteristic of the ensemble is to propose ‘historically informed music’ based on the original scores and played on period instruments or faithful copies.

This offers an experience similar to the original. For example, violins used to have gut strings and, as a result, sweeter sounds. Now they are made of metal and lack that velvety quality, though the voice has not changed, so singers have to make an effort to let themselves be heard.

As the General Director of the Monte-Carlo Opera, Bartoli has decided on a new season inspired by strong female figures.

In all its different facets! On the 50th anniversary of her death, there will be a tribute to Joséphine Baker, a wonderful artist who was very close to Princess Grace. She was both courageous and sensitive, and she served as a spy for the French Resistance, was a civil rights activist, and adopted 12 children of different origins that she called her ‘rainbow tribe’. There’s La Valkyrie, Pelléas et Mélisande, and a musical, Cats. There will also be Aida, with two strong women – Aida and Amneris.

I saw my first Aida when I was four years old at the Caracalla Baths, but for me and my brothers the fun thing was to play on the Sphinx and the lions… At school I was surprised that my classmates’ parents didn’t sing, unlike mine and their friends. They soon realised that I had a special ear, and at the age of nine I debuted in the role of the shepherd boy in Tosca [at Rome Opera].

When I was 13, I set my mind on becoming a flamenco dancer and joined a semi-professional group – I wanted to devote myself to that. In 1982, I even performed with my classmates on [the television show] Pronto, Raffaella? And that was the turning point. My mother said, “You can continue dancing, but you have to enrol in the conservatoire too.” And that was it… gradually it became clear that I was certainly more gifted with my vocal cords than with my feet!

Cecilia Bartoli was talking to Maria Laura Giovagnini for Io Donna magazine.

Gramilano Editor

Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Italian ballerina Carla Fracci.

Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.

He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.