The grandiose Cecilia Bartoli arrives at the Teatro Pérez Galdós
The Italian mezzo-soprano is to perform on Sunday 21st and Tuesday 23rd February
The mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, considered by the international critics as being one of the best classical artists of modern times, is to perform in the Teatro Pérez Galdós on Sunday 21st and Tuesday 23rd February at 20:30 hours. The artist is to perform pieces by Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Bizet in the two concerts and is to be accompanied by the phenomenal pianist Sergio Ciomei.
The Gran Canarian audience has clearly high expectations from these concerts, as can be seen by how quickly the tickets have been sold. Almost all the tickets have been sold with the only seats available being those with reduced visibility.
Cecilia Bartoli continues to light up a stage whenever she sets foot on it, thus attracting the media wherever she goes and making her a personality known by the public at large. In fact, the Teatro Pérez Galdós is being used as a framework for some scenes of a report that Euronews is carrying out on the singer. A team from this television channel is coming to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to record the artist during the preparations and rehearsals of the two performances.
Cecilia Bartoli arrives at the Gran Canarian capital city at a busy time in her life. In addition to the recitals of the repertoire programmed long beforehand, she is in the middle of promoting her latest album, Sacrificium, where she aims to uncover the music of the castrati.
Biography
For more than two decades, Cecilia Bartoli has undeniably been one of the leading artists in the field of classical music. All over the world, her new operatic roles, her concert programmes and recording projects – in exclusivity with Decca - are expected with great eagerness and curiosity. The exceptional amount of 8 million CDs sold, more than 100 weeks ranking in the international pop charts, numerous Golden Discs, 4 Grammys (USA), 8 Echos and a Bambi (Germany), two Classical Brit Awards (UK), the Victoire de la Musique (France) and many other prestigious awards reflect the immense success of her solo albums "Vivaldi", "Gluck", "Salieri" and "Opera proibita" and that she is firmly established as today’s "best selling classical artist".
Thus, Cecilia Bartoli brings Classical Music close to the hearts of millions of people throughout the world. Apart from that, she is proud that through their popularity, her projects have caused a wide-spread re-evaluation and rediscovery of the neglected composers and forgotten repertoire which she puts up for discussion.
It is not surprising that Herbert von Karajan, Daniel Barenboim and Nikolaus Harnoncourt were among the first conductors Cecilia Bartoli worked with. They noticed her talent at a very early stage when she had barely completed her vocal studies with her parents in her home-town Rome. Since then, many further conductors, pianists and orchestras of highest renown have been her regular partners.
In recent years, her work has begun to focus on collaborations with the most significant period instrument orchestras (Akademie für Alte Musik, Les Arts Florissants, Concentus Musicus Wien, Freiburger Barockorchester, Il Giardino Armonico, Kammerorchester Basel, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Orchestra La Scintilla). Projects with orchestras where Cecilia Bartoli assumes the overall artistic responsibility have become increasingly important to her and were crowned by the jointly developed and performed programmes with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Cecilia Bartoli regularly sings in the most important concert halls in Europe, the United States and Japan. Her stage appearances include prestigious opera houses and festivals such as the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, La Scala in Milan, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Salzburg Festival and the Zürich Opera House, where she has presented many of her operatic roles for the first time.
Most recently, her roles have included Rossini's Fiorilla in "Il Turco in Italia" at Covent Garden and two Handelian heroines, Cleopatra (in "Giulio Cesare" with Marc Minkowski) and Semele (with William Christie) in Zurich – the latter in a Robert Carsen-production which was successfully released on DVD. Cecilia Bartoli’s debut as Bellini’s Norma is planned for June 2010 in Dortmund (Germany) in concert performances with the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock.
Recently, Cecilia Bartoli devoted her time to the early 19th century - the era of Italian Romanticism and Belcanto - and especially the legendary singer Maria Malibran. Her 200th birthday on 24th March 2008 was marked by a historical day in Malibran’s birthplace Paris: Cecilia Bartoli sang 3 concerts in one day as the centre-piece of a Malibran-Marathon at Salle Pleyel – collaborating with Lang Lang, Vadim Repin, Adam Fischer and Myung-Whun Chung – while the City of Paris showed her Barcelona Concert on a big screen outside the Hôtel de Ville, where Cecilia Bartoli’s mobile Malibran Museum was stationed to honour that special day. Further bicentenary events were the CD “Maria”, the DVD “The Barcelona Concert/Malibran Rediscovered”, extensive concert tours as well as operatic appearances as Cenerentola, Sonnambula and Halevy’s Clari – in a Malibran-opera which had not been performed since 1829. The first complete recording of “La Sonnambula” with period instruments and a mezzo-soprano in the title role (with Juan Diego Florez as Elvino) rounded off this great homage to Maria Malibran.
Cecilia Bartoli has been endowed with the Italian Knighthood and is an "Accademico effettivo" of Santa Cecilia, Rome, a French "Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres" and “Officier dans l’Ordre du Mérit”, an "Honorary Member" of the Royal Academy of Music, London. Most recently she was given the prestigious Italian prize “Bellini d’Oro”, a “Medalla de oro al merito en las bellas artes”, one of the highest awards of the Spanish Ministry of Culture. On the occasion of the Handel Jubilee Year, Cecilia Bartoli was made Honorary Member of the advisory board of the Handel House Halle Foundation. In June 2010, in Copenhagen, she will be awarded the renowned Danish Léonie Sonning Music Prize.
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