Cecilia Bartoli - The Salieri Album

Antonio Salieri (Artist), Adam Fishcer (Artist), Cecilia Bartoli (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 30, 2003)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Decca
• ASIN: B0000A01J6
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90,849 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #13 in Music > Classical > Opera & Vocal > Featured Performers, A-Z > A to B > Bartoli, Cecilia > All Works Featuring Bartoli

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Importance of Cecilia Bartoli, March 5, 2004

By 

Eric Bergerud (Albany, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cecilia Bartoli - The Salieri Album (Audio CD)

Cecilia Bartoli is a genius and this is a great album. Buy it. End of review.

However, let's put Ms. Bartoli in a little perspective. I'll let others wax eloquent on her voice (or find fault for reasons beyond my comprehension). However, I would like to propose that Ms. Bartoli may be the most important performer of her generation because of the potential impact she is having or may have on the repertoire itself.

For a little perspective, recall that after 1945 "bel canto" opera, with the exception of a handful of works, had disappeared from the stage outside of Italy. Along come Maria Calas, Joan Sutherland and Beverly Sills and by the 1960's there are dozens of recordings of operas by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and even Cherubini (MEDEA is a genuinely great work). Cecilia Bartoli, with a little luck, will precipitate a rediscovery of what I am convinced is pure gold in the field of early classical and baroque opera.

Between 1640-1770 opera grew steadily in popularity. Many hundreds were written to please the eager patrons, from a surprisingly broad range of social classes, of the steadily growing number of opera houses that began to clog the continent. (Some opera even made it to the English Colonies in North America well before the little disagreement with the Crown.) If you read a standard history (Fred Plotkin's simple work is a good example) it will tell the following story. Composers of the baroque era, eager to please the unwashed peons and mindless aristocrats buying opera tickets, chose libretti, usually loosely inspired by classical mythology, of zero literary merit. The words were simple devices to get from one aria, duet or chorus to another. Mind you, this practice was, in the eyes of later critics, a bad bad thing. Sitting around and listening to beautiful (or perhaps merely pretty) songs was, I guess, a trivial pastime. The arch-villain in the piece was Pietro Metastasio an Italian poet and author of dozens of libretti. Frivolity by Metastasio and others led to the exhaustion of the art form. Then, like the cavalry, comes Gluck and his "reform" operas that attempted to balance the story with the music creating something profound. With a few bumps along the road (like Mozart or the bel canto masters who all put the music clearly on top of the musical heap) a new art develops and triumphs with mature Verdi and, especially, Wagner. If we accept the pundits' story, the road to heaven continues through Bizet (cigarette factories instead of Troy: a giant leap for mankind no doubt), Puccini, Britten and, heavens, pretty soon we have the pleasure of listening to NIXON IN CHINA.

Cecilia Bartoli sells CDs in mega-numbers in "classical terms" and has developed a fanatic following which is unlike that of any other singer. And how has she done it? She started by showing an uncanny skill for several roles in Mozart and Rossini. Well established as a rising star, one would think she would have moved more solidly into heart of opera-land. But Bartoli didn't know the script. Instead, she marched steadily backward, into the vapid artistic swamp of baroque opera. She hits the charts with an album of Gluck works - many from his decadent Metastasio period. The music's great. My books assure me that whatever his orchestral skills, Vivaldi's operas weren't worth the time of day. Cecilia Bartoli makes a spectacular Vivaldi album. My books assure me that whatever his orchestral skills, Haydn's opera's weren't worth the time of day (Metastasio you know). Cecilia Bartoli makes a spectacular Haydn album. To really show what she thought of a hundred years of musical criticism, Ms. Bartoli recorded a gorgeous album (THE IMPATIENT LOVER) that consists of songs composed by Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn and Mozart employing lyrics by - get this - Pietro Metastasio. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that she now chooses to bring Salieri, the Metastasio of his era, to the top of the classical charts.

I think Cecilia Bartoli is trying to tell the world's opera lovers that there exists a gold mine of unexplored musical beauty sitting right in the back yard. All that has to be done is to record it. Ms. Bartoli has thrown her big hat into the ring. Her most recent work is a DVD of a performance of NINA by Giovanni Paisiello, another "pre-reform" composer who committed the crime of not being Mozart. I don't have my clutches on it yet, but the buzz is that it's great.

All music lovers must want the repertoire to expand. I would like to think that modern composers can rediscover beauty and hope it will happen. (It does sometimes.) Until then, let's hope that opera companies bring to life a century's worth of music derided and discarded by late 19th Century critics. No doubt there are duds out there. Perhaps there are works that could be "staged" rather than performed (dump the recitative if it really is inane). And perhaps there are some really nice works out there ready to go. If Maria Callas was able to rescue Rossini and his immediate successors from a century of deaf pundits, we may hope that Cecilia Bartoli will do the same for a legion of Italian composers that entranced Europe for over a century. If she does so, or helps the process along, lovers of music will be in her debt.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not flawless, October 12, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Cecilia Bartoli - The Salieri Album (Audio CD)

I have been waiting for this recording to come out for a long time, and to be honest, I am slightly disappointed. I love Bartoli in the more lyrical numbers (especially tracks 2, 6, 9, 11 and 13), because of the wonderful timbre of her voice, and the way she delivers them with simplicity. She sings the other tracks very well, also, but she tends to make mouthfuls of certain words, and in my opinion, she can be a bit silly. Also, the top of her voice sounds a bit thinner than it was, perhaps, because the soprano register has taxed her bit; and her coloratura sounds more laboured than it was before. But if you love Bartoli, or want to discover a new composer (the music reveals Salieri to be an extremly competent compser, not quite on the level of Mozart) then buy this CD, but other Bartoli CDs are probably a better introduction into her wonderful singing.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bartoli And The Salieri Movement, May 1, 2004

By 

Rudy Avila "Saint Seiya" (Lennox, Ca United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cecilia Bartoli - The Salieri Album (Audio CD)

With the release of this album, I hope that the classical music and opera scene embraces the works of Antonio Salieri (1750-1825). Salieri's music, mostly instrumental and opera, as well as sacred music for the Catholic Church, was being composed and performed at the same time as Mozart. The 1984 film Amadeus, which won Best Picture that year, scarred the reputation of this great Italian composer. In the movie, Salieri comes off as a vengeful, raving jealous man who was personally involved in the death of Mozart. The movie is complete fabrication for the sake of an Oscar-winning drama and totally false. Salieri and Mozart were contemporary figures that generally got along very well and it's actually Mozart who should have been jealous of Salieri. In their time, Salieri was the more well-received composer. Salieri lived better than Mozart ever did and was the court composer of Vienna, while Mozart struggled with censors and patrons because he was far too independent and radical in his persona. This album, gorgeously sung by the one and only Cecilia Bartoli, showcases much of the great opera that Saleri wrote for the female voice. Cecilia Bartoli's mezzo-coloratura soprano dramatics, lyrical legato and control of breath, as well as the ability she has to sing graceful melody, makes her the perfect choice for Salieri opera.

The album opens with Son Qual Lacera Tartana from La Secchia Rapita. This fiendishly difficult aria is delivered with virtuoso skill by Cecilia Bartoli, whose bravura and fiery vocals at one point range from G to D in the lines "Vinca"
and "Casca". The voice paints in words the scene of a ship caught in a tempest. Such word painting is a trademark of Salieri's music. He does this again in the aria from La Cifra "Non Vo Gia Che Vi Suonino" in which a bride describes to her groom what kind of music she wants played at her wedding. Her voice mixes blissfully with each instrument being played. A lot of the arias from the operas on here "Palmira", "Armida" "La Finta Scena" etc are pastoral dramas of great noble beauty, in the style of Gluck or echoes of Baroque drama, in which romantic love and virtue are the signature theme. Cecilia's coloratura magic is ever present in the arias "Vi sono Sposa e Amante" from La Fiera Di Venezia and "Sulle Mie Tempie" from La Secchia. Observe how in these arias Bartoli has the agile speed and acrobatic high notes that are all over the map. Miss Bartoli has started a new movement in which Salieri can finally emerge out of the unfair shadow cast upon him in Amadeus and triumphantly take his place in the Classical Composers Hall of Fame.