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B
Artist
Bartoli (Cenerentola)
3+ albums
operaclassicvocalmusicalquiet
about
The Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli (born 4 June 1966, Rome) is a popular opera singer and recitalist. She is best-known for her Mozart and Rossini roles as well as for her performances of lesser-known Baroque music. Bartoli is considered a lyric and dramatic coloratura, with perhaps less of a "large voice" than some other mezzos, but with a highly individual timbre which she uses to great vocal and dramatic effect. She is one of the most popular (and one of the top-selling) opera singers of recent years. Bartoli is much liked by the concert-going public for her lively, vivacious onstage persona, while her lyric voice and investigations of other Baroque-era music have given her considerable recognition even among the non-opera-going public. Bartoli's parents were both professional singers and gave her her first music lessons. Her first public performance was at age nine as a shepherd boy in Tosca. Bartoli later studied, appropriately enough, at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome. In contrast to most opera singers, Bartoli came to prominence in her early twenties, unusual in a profession where vocal maturity is typically not achieved until the thirties. In 1985, at age 19, Bartoli appeared in a talent show on Italian television; the conductor Riccardo Muti saw her performance and invited her to audition at La Scala. Several years later, Herbert von Karajan invited her to sing at the 1990 Salzburg Easter Festival, though von Karajan's untimely death prevented th
