Cecilia Bartoli: The Passion of Song

Rating:
Summary: An engaging portrait of opera diva Cecilia Bartoli
Review: Cecilia Bartoli: The Passion of Song By Kim Chernin, with Renate Stendhal HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1997. I have just finished reading the brief and engaging portrait of opera diva, Cecilia Bartoli, and want to offer a thumb's-up to fellow classical music enthusiasts. Author Kim Chernin, who is best known for her feminist texts and fiction, has focused her creative attention and literary skills on a new subject and genre with the publishing of this intelligent, informative profile, and readers can relish in the fruits of her efforts. The story of Bartoli's meteoric rise from promising young talent to "the hottest young singer in the world," according to an October 1994 review in Newsweek, unfolds gracefully and thoughtfully in a mere 142 pages, much like a satisfying New Yorker portrait, in the good old days when New Yorker articles were virtually book-length. Chernin's profile of the mezzo soprano, which draws on interviews and conversations with Ms. Bartoli, her mother and music coach Silvana Bazzoni, her manager Jack Mastroianni, and other colleagues, is accompanied by a performance guide and discography meticulously assembled by Chernin's collaborator, Renate Stendhal, the German-born writer and translator. In the last sjx years, Cecilia Bartoli, who is now thirty-one years old, has accrued remarkable credits. She was named "The 1992 Top Recording Artist" in both classical and popular categories by Time Magazine. In 1992 she was named "Singer of the Year" by Musical America. The following year, in 1993, she received the unique distinction of being named both Billboard's "Artist of the Year" and "Top Selling Classical Artist," having become the third highest paid opera singer in the world, following Pavarotti and Domingo. Her recording of Mozart's "Portraits" sold over 200,000 copies in the United States within the first six months of its release. At the 1994 Classical Musical Awards in London she was named "Female Classical Artist of the Year." And in 1995, she received the Grammy Award for Best Vocal Album and was also honored with the French Chevalier of Arts and Letters. The awards and accolades go on and on. Kim Chernin's interest in Cecilia Bartoli's career did not develop in response to the widely publicized acclaim being bestowed upon the mezzo soprano. It was her own first experience of Ms. Bartoli's performance in a Berkeley, California concert hall in 1991 that captivated the author, predating the global recognition of the gifted opera singer. "I thought I was hearing one of the greatest voices I ever heard," she explained in her first meeting with Bartoli in Houston after a1993 performance of The Barber of Seville at the Houston Grand Opera. Chernin was swept away and set out to intimately know, and capture in writing, the source of her inspiration--an opera singer, a young woman, a legend in the making. Chernin is shameless in her adulation, which she recounts in her book, and admirably so. She manages to steer clear of force-feeding inspired moments upon the reader; instead she recreates the bursts of sensation and perception she experiences as she delves into--and surrenders to--the rapture that music has the power to evoke. She succeeds, partially because she is neither overbearing nor indulgent, but refreshingly vulnerable and thoughtful in the personal insights she chooses to share. She also succeeds because she varies the narrative, allowing it to flow from intimate, first-hand accounts of the opera singer in concert and teaching a master class with her mother, to insightful comparisons with other opera legends such as Maria Callas, to wonderful anecdotal accounts of singers and their audiences, to the nitty gritty, biographical details of building an opera career (choosing a manager, competing for public performances, coping with stardom, striving for open-throated perfection). I am not a music expert; I am a member of the audience and a critical reader, who thoroughly enjoyed this well-written, original, first portrait of the still-to-be-known Cecilia Bartoli. By Shana Penn

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful, spiritual, passionate book
Review: If what you're after is a self-indulgent opus created by the representative of an elitist club apparently bent on rediscovering their own sexuality by squatting over a mirror, then The Passion of Song is for you.

One cannot help but feel that, not unlike Cecilia Bartoli's first TV appearances on Fantastico in her native Italy, this book was completely out of her control, and that that show, together with The Passion of Song, could go a long way towards creating completely the wrong perception of the singer.

Apart from the second half of the book, which dispenses mildly interesting details about what are presumably key performances in Bartoli's career, this publication has precious little to offer. For heaven's sake, we all know Bartoli is a beautiful, sensuous young woman, with an extraordinary voice and astonishing talent (they're not the same thing) - that's why we bought The Passion of Song... to find out where she came from, and where she's going! The book didn't say...

I should have given The Passion of Song to someone I don't like on or shortly after page 18, where the author buys her Bartoli CDs and then takes them home in order NOT to listen to them, while she replays the singer's Berkeley concert over and over in her mind. It was at that point that I started suspecting that what I was in fact reading was not a biography, but an autobiography, during the course of which the author was turning herself into a sort of operatic Nelson Mandela, with a monkey the size of the original Fafner on her back.

I am an unadulterated Bartoli fan, and I'm very sad about having bought and (partly) read The Passion of Song. It's going to be a long old time before I can listen to the Bartoli voice again without feeling like having a bath afterwards... and I have this author to thank for it. Incidentally, I never did finish reading it - I was dreading the moment I turned a page, only to be told that Bartoli is a Leo, with Mars (who is Female, now you come to mention it) in the ascendant in Aquarius, or something equally, well, shall we settle for "startling?"

Rating:
Summary: Perfect Harmony
Review: This book achieves a remarkable balance between the authors' enthusiasm for Ms. Bartoli and their obvious knowledge of opera and music. What distinguishes this book from others of this genre is its well-modulated emotional timbre and the willingness of its authors to express their emotional as well as intellectual analysis of Ms. Bartoli's work.

This book is a treasure for current Bartoli fans and could tempt even the most devoted heavy metal rocker to venture with her into the intense and passionate world that Chernin and Stendhal so deftly portray.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect Harmony
Review: This book achieves a remarkable balance between the authors' enthusiasm for Ms. Bartoli and their obvious knowledge of opera and music. What distinguishes this book from others of this genre is its well-modulated emotional timbre and the willingness of its authors to express their emotional as well as intellectual analysis of Ms. Bartoli's work.

This book is a treasure for current Bartoli fans and could tempt even the most devoted heavy metal rocker to venture with her into the intense and passionate world that Chernin and Stendhal so deftly portray.

Rating:
Summary: Dreadful
Review: This book could have been much better had the writers been not so blinded by Ms. Bartoli's voice. There are a few serious flaws with this title, the first being that Ms. Bartoli was too young to be the subject of a biography. She simply hasn't sung enough yet, nor has she hit her prime. These ladies fawn so much on her voice that I couldn't continue reading. Please, I know it's beautiful but get passed it! It further offers no critical insight and remains quite superficial. I wonder what Ms. Bartoli's take on this project was? Although an ardant fan of the lady, those looking for an exploration into the world of opera and what Ms. Bartoli hopes to achieve, will be sadly disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful, spiritual, passionate book
Review: This is a beautiful book, and very informative for a student of the art of singing. People have written here that the book is too self-indulgent, not objective enough - I don't think it is meant to be objective. This is a book written by two people very much in love and moved by the voice and the person, Cecilia Bartoli. I love that they are not afraid to mention and explore the spiritual side of singing, something too often missing in music reviews and commentary. I have learned so much from this book. If you are looking for an analytical review or Bartoli, this is not for you, but for a deeper, more personal account read this book!