SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Cecilia Bartoli in concert - Handel, N.Porpora and R. Broschi : Orchestra La Scintilla, Conductor: Ada Pesch. Auditorio El Baluarte de Pamplona. 19.4.2010 (JMI)

There is no doubt that Cecilia Bartoli is one of the artists with the most ticket office appeal in the operatic world. She is, in fact the only major singer who can afford the luxury of refusing to sing on in staged productions. In the last three years she has engaged in a great deall of musical activity, but has only sung complete opera in Zurich.

 

On this visit to Spain Cecilia Bartoli is offering a series of seven concerts between April 8th and 20th, almost all of them dedicated to promoting her album Sacrificium. In Pamplona and Vitoria however she is singing a different program, devoted mostly to Handel.

 

Most of my Spanish readers, if not all of them, will have had some opportunity to see or to hear Cecilia Bartoli. This is her third concert tour through Spain in the last four years, not to mention a few sporadic appearances. To describe Ms Bartoli’s qualities in detail is therefore mostly superfluous, since everyone knows her strong and weak points: she is an artist with a huge capacity for communicating with an audience, as well as having musicality and technique available to very few other singers anywhere. In the past, her interpretations of bravura arias have left the audience breathless with their outstanding vocal agility but this time however, there was more interesting spianato singing in the concert requiring different levels of vocal volume.

 

The majority of the concert was devoted to music by Handel, starting with three of Armida’s arias from Rinaldo, where Ms Bartoli was every bit as good as might be expected. She continued with Adelaide’s aria from Lothario, where she was still very good but then offered "Che sento, o dio... Se pietá" from Giulio Cesare’s Cleopatra, in which she was truly superb, with some beautifully floated piani. She finished the first part of her concert with Melissa’s aria "Desterò dall' empia Dite", from Nicolò Porpora’s Amadigi, in which she returned showing off her coloratura.

 

In the second part she began two more of Cleopatra’s arias from Giulio Cesare, "Venere bellal" and "V'adoro pupille", and shone particularly brightly in the second one. She was excellent again in Alcina’s aria " Ah, mio cor", as well as in the Daphne aria from Apollo and Daphne, with its beautiful bird song effects. She finished the concert with the aria "Da tempeste", also from Giulio Cesare.

 

As encores she offered a magnificent rendering of "Lascia la spina" from Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno followed by Almirena’s aria “Bel Piacere” before finishing with a fine exhibition of fiato in “Son qual nave” by Riccardo Broschi, an aria dedicated to his brother, the famous castrato Farinelli.

 

Ms Bartoli was nicely accompanied by La Scintilla, the Baroque orchestra from Zurich, with Ada Pesch conducting and playing first violin. This concerts was a major success, although enthusiasm was perhaps not quite as obvious as on some previous occasions. Obviously enough, the hall was completely sold out but I wondered if the element of stunned surprise at Ms Bartoli’s singing might actually be wearing off slightly.

 

José M Irurzun