Cecilia Bartoli's been busy: not only getting ready for her new tour featuring the extraordinarily difficult arias by Agostino Steffani that are featured on her new CD Mission, but also doing the promotional rounds with radio, television and newspaper interviews. The content is mostly the same - why Steffani? who was he? - but it takes a specialist magazine like Italy's … [Read more...]
Cecilia Bartoli on discovering a new composer, vocal styles, and bella Italia
Cecilia Bartoli's new album will be on the shelves in a couple of weeks' time. If Mission is successful it should put early Baroque composer Agostino Steffani (1655-1728) back on the musical map. He largely fell off it because his 'day job' as a diplomat and priest made it necessary for him to write many of his works in secret or under another name. The Repubblica's Giuseppe … [Read more...]
Cats are flying out of bags as the secrets of Bartoli’s new album come to light
It is suitably apt that moles, defectors and double agents have been lurking waiting to destabilise Decca's secret project. So the new Cecilia Bartoli album, Mission, will be released on October 2. The tracklist is as follows: 1. "Schiere invitte, non tardate" (da Alarico il Baltha) 2. "Ogni core può sperar" (da Servio Tullio) 3. "Ove son? Chi m'aita? In mezzo … [Read more...]
We’re on a mission… with Cecilia Bartoli. Part 3
With the third 'clue' at the end of the new Cecilia Bartoli Youtube video we are rewarded with a (gorgeous) 90 second clip of “Ogni core può sperar”, an aria from Agostino Steffani's opera Servio Tullio. So we certainly guessed correctly in the last update. However, is Mission an album of arias by Steffani, or is he one of the composers featured? As Bartoli has already … [Read more...]