Classical music has a few certainties: Götterdämmerung will always be that little bit longer than you remember, it will reliably rain if you pack a Glyndebourne picnic, and if Cecilia Bartoli invites you to a party, you drop everything and go.
Which is why I found myself in Paris earlier this week, along with most of the record industry, prepared for serious music and some even more serious thrills at the launch of Bartoli’s new disc St Petersburg.
There are times when only a palace will do. For most of us those times are few and far between, but if you’re mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli – ‘La Gioiosa’, a classical music phenomenon and one of its biggest-selling stars – then life, and art, are far from everyday.
But when your launch parties are already as legendary as your coloratura (and every bit as extravagant), how do you up the ante? By taking over the Palace of Versailles, of course, for an evening of music, food and audacious spectacle that the Sun King himself would salute.
Bartoli’s latest album sees the mezzo don fur hat and jewels for a trip to 18th century St Petersburg. Previous discs have her gender-bending as a bald-headed monk (Mission), or flirting with the androgyny of the castrato (Sacrificium), but St Petersburg is all woman – women, in fact. For almost a century Russia was ruled by a triptych of tsaritsas, cosmopolitan creatures with as much interest in culture as politics. The result was an influx of Italian composers, imported to delight a court whose ears as well as eyes were turned towards Europe.
Theirs was a repertoire lost until Bartoli herself fought and cajoled her way (with a little help from Gergiev) into the Mariinsky Theatre library, emerging with 11 premiere recordings of music by Araia, Raupach and Manfredini that offer a keyhole glimpse on an extraordinary musical scene – one unlike any other, as Bartoli explained to me, ‘What is fascinating is the deep and melancholic style of this music, which isn’t really what you expect from Italian composers. It’s what Italian composers decided to create in Russia, for Russians – a musical search for a kind of Russian soul.’
It was a search that found its quarry in the glittering expanse of Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors (pictured below). As Diego Fasoli and I Barrochisti set chandeliers dancing with a March gilded with trumpet fanfares, Bartoli herself stalked the length of the room, train sweeping behind, arriving on stage not with a shout but a musical whisper – a crooning aria by Araia as far removed from Bartoli’s signature shock-and-awe pyrotechnics as the simplicity of a contemporary concert hall from Versailles.
But even as we adjusted expectations to these exquisite, long-limbed melodies, Bartoli was already turning up the heat, adding bird noises, costume changes (three at last count) and – at last – some explosive virtuosity. If you’re going to perform in a palace you’d better sing like a queen, and Bartoli brought out the crown jewels.
In an age in which opera singers increasingly shy away from the term ‘diva’, competing for who can prove themselves more approachable, more down-to-earth, Cecilia Bartoli wears it like a diamond brooch. There’s no apology and no recession adjustment for her big-money music-making, and when there’s substance at the centre of so much circus it’s easy to understand why. Bartoli doesn’t just appear in the ballrooms; she’s there in the library and the rehearsal room, shaping each disc from first concept to final product with the same relentless passion that we see on stage. Of how many artists can you still say that?
But somewhere among the champagne and the lobster soufflé, the artful amuse-bouches and the frescoed salons, there’s a metaphor. Place the ancien régime of the record industry in Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors and it writes itself.
Evenings like this are rare; whether they are knowing throwbacks or glorious denials is hard to say. But one thing is certain when it comes to classical music: if there’s an artist who’ll still be ruling the scene, still selling CDs, filling coffers and concert halls when the digital revolution storms the palace, it’ll be Cecilia Bartoli.
Buy Cecilia Bartoli’s new album St Petersburg on Amazon
Alexandra Coghlan is a freelance writer, and has contributed to the Independent, Times, New Statesman, Prospect and Opera magazine
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