Cecilia Bartoli - Casta Diva

Decca Classics has assembled some of Cecilia Bartoli's finest recordings, mixed with previously unreleased material, for a celebration of the operatic genre that has defined her career: bel canto.

Across her nearly four decades on the opera stage, coloratura mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli has proven to the world that bel canto is a more wide-ranging approach to Italian vocal music than generally assumed. On Casta Diva, Bartoli draws on her famous charm, dramatic intensity, and energetic force to reveal that behind the vocal fireworks, bel canto is a musical style that opens up a beautiful and deeply emotive musical world through a sound and well-controlled technique.

Included are unreleased recordings of two arias from Handel's Alcina as well as duets with Luciano Pavarotti, Bryn Terfel, Juan Diego Flórez, Sumi Jo and Alessandro Corbelli.

Cecilia Bartoli reminds us that the bel canto mindset stretches far beyond the works of the 19th-century Italian masters Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini most associated with the term, which has long denoted a particularly florid, decorative form of singing. Through scholarly research into 1800s vocal technique and orchestral sound, and her own experience on the opera stage, Bartoli has arrived at the strongly held conviction that bel canto's emphasis on expression through a particularly Italian form of "beautiful" and "proper" singing is rooted in the stylistic traditions of the Baroque and Classical eras.

From repertoire ranging from Handel and Porpora through Gluck and Mozart to the height of what is usually termed the Italian bel canto period, Bartoli brings her unrivalled vocal craftsmanship, articulation, evenness of timbre and expressive powers to bear on some of the most stunning arias and duets ever written. To this she adds the most important ingredients: her singular way of sharing with her audience human drama and her unique feeling for both comedy and tragedy.

"Porpora's opening aria reveals just what has made Bartoli unique in this field - a stupefying range, fearless vocal leaps and the sort of relentless passagework that makes you suspect the singer might be on a heart-lung machine."
(William Dart NZ Herald)