Family studies

Cecilia Bartoli was born in Rome in 1966 in a musical home with both parents being musicians. Her childhood and adolescence were filled with music, and she started vocal training with her mother Silvana Bazzoni by the age of 10.

Until today, Mrs Bazzoni remains Bartoli’s sole vocal teacher during her life and career, even when she studied at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome.

Stage debuts

Bartoli actually made her debut on stage already at 9, playing the shepherd boy in Puccini’s Tosca, where her father was part of the chorus. Then, at 19 years old she made her ”grown up debut” in Rossini’s Barbiere di Siviglia at the opera house in her home city of Rome.

There was no real career plan for music, Cecilia Bartoli herself remembers, she ”simply just made music, music and always more music…” But her career began slowly to ascend, a talent show brought her to the Radiotelevisione Italiana in front of the cameras, and she continued to perform the classics on the Opera stages in Europe. It was during a gala concert in memory of Maria Callas that Daniel Barenboim, at the time leader of the Orchestra de Paris, saw her and invited her to work with him.

Historical music

In recent years, her work has begun to focus on collaborations with the most significant baroque orchestras, playing and interpreting faithfully on period-instruments from 16th century and onwards; Akademie für Alte Musik, Les Arts Florissants, I Barocchisti, Harnoncourt's Concentus Musicus Wien, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Il Giardino Armonico, Basle Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Matheus, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Zurich period orchestra La Scintilla…

Projects with orchestras in which Cecilia Bartoli assumes the overall artistic responsibility have also become increasingly important to her and were crowned by programmes jointly developed and performed with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Naturally Cecilia Bartoli has also sung with many leading symphony orchestras. The highlights of this work were programmes, which she developed and performed with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Sacrificium

The album tells the stories of the 18th century castrats, young boys in Italy who, as a consequence of poverty, were castrated in order to keep their childhood voices, and therefore bring fame and fortune back to their families as spectacular singers. The range of the castrates can today be compared to the one of the mezzosopranos, Bartoli tells a whole and initiated part of musical history by reinterpreting the roles of famous castrates such as Farinelli and Carestini.

”The castrats, Bartoli says, were the pop stars, the Michael Jacksons of the 18th century.”

Maria

With the release of Maria in 2008, Bartoli guides the listener through the early 19th century and the age of Italian Romanticism and bel canto, through the story of legendary mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran (1808-1836). Bartoli  combines story telling and interpretations of bel canto that Malibran was famous for. The album marked Malibran’s 200th birthday, and received the Edison Award and Belgian Prix Caecilia.

Rounding off this homage to Maria Malibran and the “Romantic Revolution” were the first complete recording of La sonnambula with period instruments and a mezzo-soprano in the title role (with Juan Diego Flórez as Elvino) and a historically informed rendering of Norma at the Dortmund Konzerthaus in June 2010, with Cecilia Bartoli in the title role.

Opera, music and arts

In 2012 Cecilia Bartoli became the Artistic Director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival – the first woman in this position. Here she also interpreted the powerful portrait of Norma (Bellini’s opera from 1831) and also debuts as Maria in West Side Story in 2016.

Awards

Cecilia Bartoli has received the highest state honours – in Italy she is "Cavaliere", in France "Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur" and "Officier des Arts et des Lettres."

Famous institutions such as the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Swedish Music Academy have made her an honorary member; others such as University College Dublin have awarded her an honorary doctorate. In 2010 she was honoured with the Léonie-Sonning Music Prize. Cecilia Bartoli received the Herbert-von-Karajan Prize in Baden-Baden in 2012.

More than 10 million of her audio and video recordings have been sold worldwide. Her recordings have occupied the top positions in the international pop charts for more than 100 weeks. According to these figures, Cecilia Bartoli is currently the world's most successful classical artist.