Cecilia Bartoli - Hardcover

Renate Stendhal; Kim Chernin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0704350815 ISBN 13: 9780704350816

Publisher: London : Women's Press, 1998

Synopsis

Physical description; xvi,234p,[16]p of plates : ill, ports ; 25cm. Subjects; Bartoli, Cecilia. Mezzo-sopranos - Biography. Singers - Italy - Biography.

About this title

Review

Cecilia Bartoli--The Passion of Song is really two books in one. The first is author Kim Chernin's account of a growing fascination with Bartoli's voice and the desire to meet the singer and interview her about her art. The second is a performance guide by coauthor Renate Stendhal that traces the singer's career from its beginnings on Italian television to her debuts at La Scala and the Met.

Neither author takes a particularly critical look at Cecilia Bartoli's talents or her career, but fans of the singer will find plenty of information about their idol, from her early years studying opera under the tutelage of her mother Silvana Bazzoni, also a singer, to the master classes she now teaches in concert with Ms. Bazzoni.

From Publishers Weekly

Wayne Koestenbaum started something with The Queen's Throat about gays and their frenzy over opera, and now we have a lesbian take on diva worship, at least Chernin and Stendhal's Bartolimania. Stendhal, who here contributes the performance guide to the mezzo coloratura's 14 appearances in staged opera, is the more restrained, while Chernin pulls out all the stops in a text she thinks "should be written in a pitch of high ecstasy." The adjectives erupt like lava, as in one sentence Bartoli is described as "voluble, intelligent, quick, clever, fiery, intense, authoritative, gracious." Stendhal expresses fear that the gods may cause the 29-year-old singer to die young in payment for her perfection; but, she speculates further, perhaps Bartoli is "here" on a mission that could protect her. The authors, who previously collaborated on Sex and Other Sacred Games, fell in love with Bartoli on first sighting in 1991, when the then unknown performer sang in an almost empty concert hall on the UC Berkeley campus. A couple of years later, they interviewed her in Houston at her American stage debut in The Barber of Seville. They talked with Bartoli again briefly at a master class she and her mother conducted in Germany. And it's these few encounters that have been tarted up into this frilly valentine. Photos. $25,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: London : Women's Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0704350815
• ISBN 13: 9780704350816
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 262