There is an irony at the heart of Cecilia Bartoli's current concert tour and associated CD, inspired by the career of the great Maria Malibran, one of the nineteenth century's very biggest opera stars. Malibran achieved huge fame singing operas in the greatest opera houses of her day, and the fact that this fame had an intercontinental reach is truly remarkable in the era before the recording industry existed. Bartoli seldom appears in opera owing to the limitations inherent in her very beautiful voice, which is too small for most roles in most theatres. Bartoli instead is hugely reliant on the recording industry, with most of her schedule of live performances being taken up with concert tours to promote her latest disc. I therefore found Malibran a strange point of departure for Bartoli's latest venture, and the results were mixed.
After a brilliantly spirited and fantastically detailed performance of the overture to García's La figlia dell'aria played by Orchestra La Scintilla Zürich, Bartoli strode out, every inch the diva in dazzling diamonds and a dress which, although not made explicit in the programme, I believe was intended to resemble those worn by Malibran with its strapless bodice and huge embroidered skirt complete with train. This, along with a vigorous but slightly unnecessary defence of the claim that Malibran was probably a mezzo-soprano in the programme, did make me wonder if an attempt was being made to align the two singers in the audience's minds.
Bartoli launched into a recitative and aria from the above mentioned García opera which displayed everything I find so perplexing about her as an artist. Her facial expressions and stance during the orchestral introduction were very affecting. She is an irresistable personality and looks great on the stage. She is always very well prepared with clear consonants (if not always clear vowels) and a fine, instinctive musicality. Vocally, the sound is very beautiful, but it always surprises me how small it is in live performance. Furthermore, hers is the only voice I can think of that gets smaller as it rises up the stave, and also the only one where she appears to get noticeably less audible the more effort she puts into trying to sing loudly. Her soft singing carries very well, but she appears to get a negative return on the energy she expends to sing forte, which is disconcerting and indicative that all is not as it should be. And then there is the much talked and written about aspirated coloratura. It is not necessary to aspirate coloratura to sing it cleanly and precisely, as evidenced by countless other singers, among them Sills, Sutherland and Callas, and so it is difficult to understand why some singers choose to do so. At the beginning of Bartoli's career, it was less pronounced and did not detract excessively from her singing. But now, it is very invasive and spoils the line, and it lends every phrase in which it is employed a frantic, slightly ragged nature. Granted, it may assist her in tackling her repertoire at such exaggeratedly fast tempi, but Marilyn Horne pointed out in her last Guildhall masterclass that there is simply no need to perform this music so fast, and it is questionable whether the results are entirely desirable. That said, it was clearly thrilling the audience at the Barbican at this concert.
There were some very touching moments in the programme. The low cadence which closed the aria from Persiani's Ines de Castro showed how beautiful this voice can be when the pressure is taken off and the line sinks below the stave. The whole of Desdemona's 'Willow Song and Prayer' from Rossini's Otello was a great demonstration of her excellent musicianship, as she phrased this essentially strophic scene with simplicity but variety, always with a clear direction through her beautiful sense of rubato. The lilting ballad from Balfe's The Maid of Artois was another highlight, and this featured some particularly notable, delicate timpani playing which punctuated Bartoli's line beautifully. But all these pieces are slow, sustained and intimate, with no extended coloratura, loud singing or moments of high tessitura. Her performances were decidedly less polished when such effects were called for. The faster, tormented section of Mendelssohn's Scene and Aria 'Infelice' was quite simply beyond her means, with the voice scarcely audible through the orchestra, and the panic-stricken air the singing had appeared, to me, to be more a consequence of her being uncomfortable with the tessitura rather than any interpretative passion. It was pleasing to hear her come up with some new gestures in the rondo finale of Rossini's La Cenerentola, and this calling card of hers delighted the audience at the close of the second half, but I found the hammered-out semi-quavers and the constricted top notes prevented me from sharing in the general rapture.
The orchestra, directed from the violin by Ada Pesch, was excellent throughout. They are a period instrument ensemble affiliated with the Zurich opera, and they were a real revelation to me. All the instrumental interludes were characterized by finesse, clarity and flare. The 'Tempesta' from Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia was amazingly precise, particularly given the absence of a conductor with a baton, but it was also very humourous and colourful. The second half opened with the 'andante sostenuto' from Donizetti's Concertino for clarinet in B flat played with melting tone and mesmerizing phrasing by the orchestra's clarinetist, Robert Pickup which for me was the highlight of the evening.
In the end, it was Bartoli who brought most of the audience to its feet in a standing ovation, following her second encore. In truth, she is a hugely entertaining and engaging personality who has the ability to really communicate a text to an audience, and it is this, along with a few fireworks, to which I must attribute her immense popularity and her triumph in this concert. Judging her with the same parameters I would apply to any other top flight lyric mezzo-soprano, I find her wanting in terms of voice and technique. But her celebrity is such that the only parameters appropriate to her are those that are uniquely her own, and to the partisan, her powers are unlikely to wane for some time yet.
By John Woods