Review: Cecilia Bartoli’s sweet, tormented Love Songs in Rimini
Graham Spicer sees Cecilia Bartoli in concert with ‘Si dolce è ‘l tormento – Canzoni d’amore’, still weaving the Bartoli magic.
Baroque
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Interview: Mezzosoprano Giuseppina Bridelli – enjoying what I have
Mezzosoprano Giuseppina Bridelli talks about being a mum and singer, her new album, Cecilia Bartoli, and her neighbour Giuseppe Verdi.
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Interview: Jakub Józef Orliński – freedom of movement
An interview with countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński – not about his singing for an opera magazine, but about his dancing for Dancing Times.
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Review: William Christie and Les Arts Florissants at La Scala with The Fairy Queen
A standing ovation at La Scala for William Christie and Les Arts Florissants’ hip-hop flavoured version of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen.
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Jakub Józef Orliński‘s new album ‘Beyond’ with music by early baroque composers
Jakub Józef Orliński‘s sixth project with Erato features music by Monteverdi, Caccini, Frescobaldi, Kapsberger, Saracini, Netti, and Jarzębski.
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[Review] Carlo il Calvo – Fagioli, Lezhneva and Cenčić give explosive performances in Porpora’s opera
Max Emanuel Cenčić (countertenor/director) was shrewd to cast ‘rival’ countertenor Franco Fagioli to share the stage with him. Julia Lezhneva too was exquisite.
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[Review] Italian countertenor Raffaele Pe’s exuberant Purcell recital
Highlights of Italian countertenor Raffaele Pe’s festival Orfeo Week were an all-Purcell programme and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater.
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New charity raises £100,000 to aid period-instrument ensembles
After the widespread concert cancellations since March 2020, former City director and classical music lover Tina Vadaneaux founded a new charity, Continuo Foundation (“Continuo”).
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[Interview] Cecilia Bartoli: Baroque music is for the soul
Cecilia Bartoli talks about Baroque music; Salzburg, Monte Carlo and Rome; supporting young musicians; and opera for children.
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Countertenor Franco Fagioli’s new CD of Baroque music to be released in May
Franco Fagioli’s latest solo album presents rediscovered treasures by Neapolitan opera composer Leonardo Vinci.
Fagioli – the first countertenor to sign an exclusive recording deal with Deutsche Grammophon – teams up once again with the thrilling Il Pomo d’Oro orchestra.
Veni, Vidi, Vinci features a dozen da capo arias, including seven world premiere recordings, with…
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Interview with contralto Delphine Galou: “making music together with love”
Two new recordings for Naïve’s Vivaldi Edition have just been released by the Accademia Bizantina, conducted by Ottavio Dantone. These albums are the 59th and 60th in the series which aims to record the entire archive of Vivaldi’s work – nearly 450 works – housed in the Italian National Library in Turin. French contralto Delphine…
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Cecilia Bartoli pulls out of her Baroque project at La Scala in October
Cecilia Bartoli has cancelled her participation in the baroque trilogy at La Scala, which was created around her. The project will present three Handel operas over the next three seasons, in the autumn of 2019 (Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare in Egitto), 2020 (Semele) and 2021 (Ariodante). When tickets went on sale yesterday for Robert Carsen‘s…
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Alek Shrader directs Dido & Aeneas in the Catacombs of New York
Henry Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas will be presented in the Catacombs of the Green-Wood Cemetery, in Brooklyn, New York, with performances from 4 – 8 June. The run will launch the second season of the The Angel’s Share series, which continues until October. Tenor Alek Shrader will be directing and he’s chosen to incorporate spoken dialogue from…
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Countertenor Philippe Jaroussky talks about his new album “Ombra mai fu”
French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky explores the arias of Francesco Cavalli on his new album Ombra mai fu, which was released digitally on 8 March and physically on CD and vinyl on 22 March. Why Cavalli? Jaroussky says, Beyond the great musical interest that Cavalli offers, his operas are notable for their richness and modernity, and for…
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In conversation with Jakub Józef Orliński
Jakub Józef Orliński is the new countertenor name to add to an ever-growing roster of artists who are selling discs and selling out concert halls in this once rarefied area of the vocal arts.
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Cecilia Bartoli Baroque Project announced at La Scala – Giulio Cesare, Semele, Ariodante
Today, La Scala announced a project to widen the knowledge and appreciation of Baroque music, in a country that has produced so much, yet now often overlooks a genre that is booming in other parts of the world. Cecilia Bartoli — who made a guest appearance last night at the end of Javier Camarena’s Italian…
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Interview with Cecilia Bartoli on religion, the Sistine Chapel and Salzburg
This evening, Cecilia Bartoli will become the first woman to sing in the Sistine Chapel. Though, strictly speaking, she was already the first – albeit in a private form – when she recorded the disc Veni domine there, earlier this year. The Sistine Chapel Choir is made up of men’s voices and boy sopranos, yet Bartoli…
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Preview peek at La Scala’s new production of Tamerlano starring Domingo, Mehta, Fagioli, Crebassa and Schiavo
La Scala‘s Baroque Orchestra returns, after last year’s successful Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, for a new production of Handel’s Tamerlano, again conducted by Diego Fasolis. An impressive cast features Bejun Mehta as Tamerlano, Plácido Domingo as Bajazet, Marianne Crebassa as Irene, Franco Fagioli as Andronico, and Maria Grazia Schiavo as Asteria. It…
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Claudio Monteverdi, opera’s first master, was born 450 years ago
Two events make 1567 a watershed year in the history of music’s relationship to words. In Rome, Palestrina (c. 1525- 1594), the greatest master of Italian Renaissance polyphony, published his most famous composition, the Missa Papae Marcelli (Pope Marcellus Mass); and in provincial Cremona, Claudio Monteverdi was born. One style of music reached its apogee…
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Cecilia Bartoli and Antonio Pappano in conversation and concert in Rome
Cecilia Bartoli and Antonio Pappano celebrated Mozart’s 261st birthday with a concert in Rome. Pappano was conducting his orchestra and chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia at the Parco della Musica auditorium, which is Bartoli’s choice venue on the few occasions when she sings in her home town. ANSA wrote that, Mozart couldn’t…
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Cecilia Bartoli – the enchantress casts her spell at the Lucerne Festival
After a couple of years of not hearing La Bartoli live, I was a little apprehensive before her concert at the Lucerne Culture and Congress Centre, KKL, after having read Rupert Christiansen’s Telegraph review of her concert with Rolando Villazón last December describing her voice as ‘worn and threadbare’, having followed her calendar with its…
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Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno at La Scala… what a disillusion
Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno (The Triumph of Time and Disillusionment) is an oratorio by Handel which the Opernhaus in Zurich decided to stage as an opera in 2003, when La Scala‘s CEO Alexander Pereira, was head of the company. He decided to bring Jürgen Flimm’s production to Milan as part of a…
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Coin du Roi’s Serse is musically on the right track
In a climate of crises and cuts, how glorious that a Baroque formation has been created in Italy. Coin du Roi opened their first season, which consists of three titles, with Handel’s Serse in Milan. The work was last seen in the city in 1962 with a young cast consisting of Mirella Freni, Fiorenza Cossotto,…
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Cecilia Bartoli to head Monte-Carlo Opera’s new baroque ensemble
Les Musiciens du Prince is a new baroque group under the umbrella organisation of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo which will have Cecilia Bartoli as its artistic director. She has signed a six-year contract with the opera company lasting until 2021. Les Musiciens du Prince should give its first concert in a year’s time. It is assumed that Bartoli will perform with…
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Cecilia Bartoli: “Contemporary composers can’t write for opera singers like me”
I’ve been following this project for eight years and I’ve been to St Petersburg many times in train or by ship, because I don’t like flying; one of the most beautiful trips was on the icebreaker from Lübeck in Germany. I put on gloves and rummaged through the archives of the Mariinsky Theatre, through documents that are…
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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…
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The Bartoli investigation continues with a crime writer and a priest who wrote operas in secret…
Decca continues its cat and mouse game, urging Cecilia Bartoli fans to ‘investigate’ her latest project, Mission. The new YouTube video with the second ‘clue’ takes us inside Radio Svizzera Italiana’s major recording studio, Auditorio Massimo. We see conductor Diego Fasolis and his players, Bartoli’s dressing room, and a map of Turkey… The titles of the music scores…
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Acclaimed baroque orchestra La Petite Bande will fold after spending cuts
From January 2013 La Petite Bande will cease to have state funding. The Netherlands’ baroque orchestra was formed in 1972 by Sigiswald Kuijken, but they say that the elimination of subsidy will mark the end of the orchestra. Until this year annual funding has been €575,000. It will now be €0. Kuijken was astonished by the decision…
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Vivica Genaux: a bit like dancing on pointe: bizarre and unnatural, but compelling when done well
Coloratura singing, as a wise observer remarked, is a bit like dancing on pointe: bizarre and unnatural, but powerfully compelling when done well. Vivica Genaux does it very well indeed. The American mezzo-soprano made an all-too-rare return to the Bay Area on Friday night, appearing in Herbst Theatre with Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque…
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Anna Caterina Antonacci ‘simply stunning’ at the MITO Festival in Milan
It may be a cliché, but Anna Caterina Antonacci has, like a fine Italian wine, got better with time. Twenty years ago she was floundering with vocal problems, and it was probably this that gave her a nervy stage presence. She took time off, trained hard, and climbed her way back to the top. Her perfect technique lets her…
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