A Bartoli Touch of Rossini: Cecila Bartoli Rossini Recital CD Review

There are very few opera stars today who are popular enough to be a household name even to non-opera fans. Cecilia Bartoli, the versatile Italian ...er... mezzo-soprano(?) (she's singing so much of soprano music now that I'm reluctant to categorize her), is one of them. Some are more willing to attribute her fame to good marketing than others, but only real skills can keep any good marketing from flopping after a while. This CD provides ample evidence that skills are what Bartoli has... in abundant.

This is an expressive singer, though in a different way than what you would hear from a Vesselina Kasarova (another very expressive mezzo-soprano who specializes in bel canto, Mozart, and the Baroque opera). Bartoli's expressiveness comes out more in her phrasing than in the voice itself (and the voice itself is an instantly recognizably beautiful, well focused, and clear purple-ish brown lyrical thing... similar to the background color of the CD front cover). She is superbly musical, blessed with an amazingly wide vocal range and jaw-dropping agility, and is very mindful with the meaning of the words she sings... sometimes at the expense of spontaneity. She doesn't disappear into different characters in her interpretation, but convincingly presents different sides of her own personality in them.

This CD contains a collection of songs composed by the bel canto master Gioachino Rossini after he had given up writing operas. They are sung accompanied only by a piano, and are designed mainly for private entertainment at Rossini's famous parties and were sung by a few of his favorite virtuoso mezzos (one, Olympe Pélissier, was his second wife). The songs are perfect vehicles to show off the singer's amazing ease with vocal pyrotechnic and versatility... Not only does the young Bartoli delivers the cleanest of roulades, scale runs, legato, melisma, etc, she manages to convey her thoughts on the music while she's at it. On this CD she also has an apt music-making partner in Charles Spencer, a wonderfully sensitive pianist with a superb knack for adapting to the style of his many highly individualistic concert partners.

Cecilia Bartoli (mezzo-soprano) & Charles Spencer (piano)
TRACKS:
1. La pastorella
2. Beltà crudele
3. Il trovatore
4-6. La regata veneziana
7-11. Mi lagnero tacendo
12. Il risentimento
13. La Grande Coquette
14. Ariette à l'anncienne
15. L'Orpheline du Tyrol
16.La Légende de Marguerite
17. Nizza
18. L'âme délaissée
19. Canzonetta spagnuola
20. Giovanna d'Arco (wrtten for Olympia Pélissier)

Samples:
Not from CD
www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2iF_rHgVpk (La pastorella)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUyC6Mk6muY (Canzonetta spagnuola)
From CD
www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3Lrpii1o_U (excerpt from Giovanna d'Arco)

The recital opens with three Italian songs that are just about as different from each other as can be. La Pastorella is rendered by a rather irrelevant girl (in the mode of Mozart's Dorabella from 'Cosi fan tutte'), while Beltà crudele reveals a more vulnerable creature. Il trovatore combines the two previously presented side in a lament of someone who is too good at 'appearing to be happy' for her own contentment.

Tracks 4-6, La Regata Veneziana (The Venetian Gondola), is a set of three descriptive songs a young Italiana sings as she watches her beloved Momolo enters and wins a Venetian gondola race. It is a perky set that benefits greatly from Bartoli's spunky personality. You can close your eyes and almost see the rowdy crowd of Italian lining the canal and the boats jockeying for position as our narrator (Bartoli) jumps up and down, literally willing her man to beat all the other racers to the finish line... where she sonically plants more than a few approving kisses on his cheeks while bathing in the glory of victory. One would think they'd get married and live happily ever after, but then the gaiety is followed by...

Mi lagnero tacendo (I will complain in silence)(#7-12)... six different setting of the same text from Metastasio's Siroe that give us different tastes of a lover's romantic resentment; from the hardly silent indignation of the first variation to the extended scene of mournful despair of the sixth (#12, Il risentimento). It is a testament to Rossini's compositional skills in being able to use the same text to say 6 different things!

#13-18 are French songs (Rossini spent the last decade of his life in Paris). All well rendered, if not as histrionically secure as in the Italian ones. La Grande Coquette is the most convincing (perhaps because its pathos match up well with the singer's natural sense of fun and bubbly nature). These are followed with an evocatively Spanish Canzonetta spagnuola, which presents an apt dramatic shift to prepare you to a most ambitious final track.

Closing the recital in grand style is Rossini's 1832 cantata, Giovanna d'Arco (Joan of Arc), a decidedly operatic grand scene of the last night the heroic French girl spends at home before leaving her beloved mother to go off to war against England. It is spectacularly sung with intensity and very musically apt nuances. Whether you like the 19 previous numbers or not, this rendition of the amazing cantata is worth buying the whole CD for.

Just because Cecilia Bartoli is very popular doesn't mean that she isn't also one of the best singers of her very richly endowed generation. This CD gives ample evidence that the fame she enjoys is earned rather than given. If you love the female voice, Rossini's music, and spectacular Italian singing in less dramatic setting than actual opera, this CD demands a place on your recordings collection! Highly recommended with no reservation.

1 CD. Play-time: 70:59 minutes. Sung in Italian and French. Booklet contains tracks list, a scholarly note on the music, and libretto in original language and English translation.