This is another of
those "total products" that
comes in the form of a neatly-bound
booklet of sixty pages with a CD slipped
into the back cover, apparently as an
afterthought. A cover picture of Cecilia
Bartoli in a sexy position with a dangerously
low hemline, against the dimly writhing
background of what looks like a digitalized
waterfall (later revealed to be a still
from Fellini’s film "La Dolce Vita")
and ‘OPERA PROIBITA’ stamped across
it in red letters would seem to promise
a sleazy hour or so of arias from operas
so salacious that they can never be
performed. Inside the cover a double-page
spread of Rome at its most decadent
(this one’s a still from Rossellini’s
"Roma, città aperta"),
with another ‘OPERA PROIBITA’ red stamp
across it, narrows the field geographically
while raising expectations to the boil.
Yet another page and there is Bartoli
again, cavorting under her watery background,
but then we have the title page and
the track-list and the secret’s out
– it’s a disc of arias from early 18th
century Roman oratorios by Handel (who
made a stop there in the 1700s), Alessandro
Scarlatti and Caldara.
A con? The equivalent
of a vicar putting a pin-up outside
his church to pull in the crowds for
his sermon?
Not a bit of it. There’s
a serious point to it all which is explained
as you read on. In the first decade
of the 18th Century the Roman
Catholic Church, even today a heavy
presence in Rome, forbade (for reasons
explained fully in Claudio Osele’s essay)
all public performances except those
held in Church institutions. In short,
the Italian genius for opera had to
make do with oratorio. But the curious
thing is that, instead of buckling down
to penitential fugues and the like,
the composers and their librettists
went out of their way to find ostensibly
religious subjects with operatic or
even erotic undertones.
However, Osele takes
the argument a stage further. Don’t
stop turning the pages of the booklet
when the translations into French, German
and Italian start, for the images of
Bartoli cavorting under her waterspout
mingle thick and fast with others from
"La Dolce Vita" – and don’t
miss Bartoli dolled up for the Anita
Ekberg role and superimposed on a still
of St. Peter’s Square. The point is,
he explains, that there are certain
parallels with Roman life in 1700-1710,
when secret libertinism flourished under
the mask of religious sobriety, and
the Roman society portrayed in Fellini’s
surreal masterpiece when, following
the death of Pope Pius XII in 1957,
a relaxation in attitudes to the city’s
nightlife brought into the open the
erotic tensions which had been seething
beneath.
Having worked our way
through to the disc itself, does it
match the expectations thus aroused?
Well, baroque music is obviously never
going to sound like Scriabin and Handel
wears his usual air of manly vigour
(or so his music sounds today’s ears).
However, the fact that the aria "Lascia
la spina" proves to be an early
version of "Lascia che pianga"
from Rinaldo (i.e. an opera) suggests
that in his own mind that inveterate
self-borrower rated his Roman oratorios
as operas in disguise. The Handel pieces
are uniformly very fine, but those by
Alessandro Scarlatti prove no less so,
and here his use of the orchestra, and
the treble recorder in particular, bears
out Osele’s thesis in effects that range
from the shimmeringly sensual to the
joys of the country dance. Not even
Bartoli can quite persuade us that Caldara’s
music is a little more ordinary than
that of the other two.
Which brings us to
the performances. Having had an unhappy
experience with a recent baroque disc
by another much esteemed mezzo (von
Otter) and having complained at times
that Bartoli’s vibrato and her trill
seem interchangeable and immoderately
applied, I can only say she has either
overhauled her approach to singing or
at any rate straightened out her vibrato
in the interests of a good baroque style.
Her tone is everywhere firm and supple,
with neither an excess of vibrato nor
that "choirboy" straightness
which some singers apply to early music.
Unchanged is her ability to deliver
the agile passages with astonishing
clarity and accuracy, as is the range
of expression and sheer gut conviction
she brings to everything she does. Some
of the "da capo" arias are
decorated in a manner which calls for,
and gets, the sort of stunning virtuosity
which alone can make them credible.
There are still traces of that eager-girl
breathiness which is another sticking
point with her detractors, but much
less than of old and always kept well
in hand. In short, Bartoli has done
it again: an interesting project (only
the Handel arias are not first recordings)
brought to life with a capacity for
self-renewal. Neither in her repertoire
nor in her singing has she been content
to stand still, much less to fall back
on self-parody. In an age well-endowed
with mezzo-sopranos she still stands
out as a phenomenon. Amid all the death-knells
for the classical record industry that
are being sounded, it’s heartening that
a major artist, rather than lapse into
crossovers and the like, is willing
to produce a record like this.
Christopher Howell
Cecilia Bartoli (mezzo-soprano) 
