Cecilia Bartoli: birthday gala performance of Rossini’s “Il viaggio a Reims”
The date of 8 August was dedicated to Cecilia Bartoli: the singer and artistic director of the Whitsun Festival was rapturously cheered by the audience in the gala performance of the opera Il viaggio a Reims, honoured by the Salzburg Festival Directorate with the highest accolade the Festival has to bestow, and offered musical gifts by her
ensemble colleagues and long-time musical companions: Rolando Villazón, Plácido Domingo and Pretty Yende, Antonio Pappano, Lang Lang and Maxim Vengerov all celebrated Cecilia Bartoli.
Festival Brooch with Rubies presented by the Directorate
After the musical birthday programme, the Salzburg Festival’s Directorate presented Cecilia Bartoli with the Festival Brooch with Rubies. In their presentation, the Interim Artistic Director Karin Bergmann, Festival President Kristina Hammer and Executive Director Lukas Crepaz honoured Cecilia Bartoli as an “exceptional phenomenon”. She first performed at the Salzburg Festival in 1993, giving an acclaimed song recital. Since 2012, she has directed the Salzburg Whitsun Festival with outstanding leadership. “During all these years, she has inspired her audience over and over. Her versatility is the stuff of legend. Not only does she leave listeners wildly enthusiastic, she takes people along on her musical journeys, and everyone follows with the greatest passion.” It was the Directorate’s “special wish and greatest joy to present the Golden Festival Brooch with Rubies to her”.
Laudation by Barrie Kosky
Barrie Kosky, the director of Il viaggio a Reims and one of Cecilia Bartoli’s artistic companions, delivered the laudation on stage at the Haus für Mozart: “Cecilia has become one of the most inspiring and joyful people in my life. There are many great opera singers, but there is only one Cecilia Bartoli. There is no separation between her life and her art: it’s one great, continuous, joyful dance. She views the world as a world of tomorrow – that is a
rare gift.” Furthermore, Kosky praised Bartoli’s outstanding radiance: “She radiates from within. When Cecilia walks on stage, she brings her own light – and that is her soul.” Cecilia Bartoli expressed her thanks: “I am deeply moved. Salzburg is my second home. Enormous thanks to all the artists and collaborators in Il viaggio a Reims, to Barrie Kosky, to Gianluca Capuano, to the Directorate and the Salzburg audience, which has grown with me for many years.”
In 1993, Bartoli first performed at the Salzburg Festival. To this date, she has performed 83 further times in opera productions and ten times in concert in twenty Festival summers. Furthermore, since 2012 she has made her distinct mark on the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, whose artistic director she is; there, she has performed 35 times in operas and 14 times in concert.
Kammersängerin Cecilia Bartoli has established herself as one of the world’s leading musicians over almost 40 years of a magnificent stage career. A passion for lesser-known repertoire and a profound interest in questions of historically informed performance practice have inspired her work as a singer. A native of Rome, she was trained by her mother, the vocal pedagogue Silvana Bazzoni, and discovered by Daniel Barenboim, Herbert von Karajan and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Each of the three influenced her international career in special ways. One of the hallmarks of her work are innovative projects dedicated to music that has fallen into oblivion, resulting in extensive concert tours, bestselling recordings, stage productions, innovative film formats and multimedia events.
Since 2012, she has been artistic director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival; the contract was extended last summer through 2031. In 2023, she was appointed director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo.
Milestones of her career include the very first production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1997, the Vivaldi album of 1999, which has sold millions of copies, the 2008 concert marathon in Paris celebrating Maria Malibran’s 200th birthday, and her radically new approach to Bellini’s Norma in 2013, which also led to an academic edition of the reconstructed original score.
The Cecilia Bartoli Music Foundation was established in the course of Cecilia Bartoli’s philanthropic work. Here, she pursues the goals of working with talented young musicians and making classical music accessible to a broader audience. Among other achievements, the foundation has created a new label in cooperation with Decca entitled “mentored by Bartoli”.
Previous Festival artists to receive the Golden Festival Brooch with Rubies include Grigory Sokolov, Riccardo Muti, Christa Ludwig, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Zubin Mehta, Mariss Jansons, Daniel Barenboim, Franz Welser-Möst, Wolfgang Rihm and András Schiff.
