30.05.2006
Press Review from The Birmingham Post [Info]
of may 22nd 2006 about the FBO's concert with Cecilia
Bartoli at Birmingham on may 19th 2006
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26.05.2006
CD Release: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, "La Clemenza
di Tito"
For further information, please visit this site.
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26.05.2006
Press Review from The Scotsman [Info]
of may 23rd 2006 about the FBO's concert with Cecilia
Bartoli at Glasgow on may 21st 2006
Anyone who thinks classical music is a dead art should have come along to
Cecilia Bartoli's astonishing solo appearance in Glasgow on Sunday. Not that
they would have found a seat.
This final event in this season's Royal Concert Hall international series
was a complete sell-out, and I don't think any one of the 2,000 people there
will have returned home with anything less than a glow of overwhelming euphoria.
Bartoli rocked - which may seem strange for a concert of 18th-century oratorio
excerpts dating from a period of papal censorship accompanied by the period
instruments of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra.
But the bubbly Italian mezzo-soprano is unique in the way she combines artful,
precise virtuosity with a smile, a nod and a wink or a quick flit across the
stage.
I'd swear she caught my eye now and again, but then so, probably, would anyone
else in the hall. She has that intoxicating ability to make personal contact
with every one of her audience, even in as vast an auditorium as this.
And we certainly got our money's worth. How many other divas offer two-hour
programmes during which they hardly stop for breath? Bartoli breezed through
delicious arias by Handel (from his early Rome period), Alessandro Scarlatti
and Antonio Caldara, shifting seamlessly between heart-rending emotion (Caldara's
gaspingly beautiful Si, piangete) and the spectacular vocal fireworks of Handel's
Disseratevi, o porte d'Averno.
Intermittent instrumental numbers included one of Corelli's Op6 Concerti Grossi
and the heady introduction to Handel's La Resurrezione - almost a dazzling
organ concerto in its own right - and showed the Freiburg players to be just
as infectiously excitable as Bartoli.
This was supreme entertainment, from an artist who combines integrity and
intellect with irresistible charm and jaw-dropping technique. Her audience
responded with spontaneous ecstasy.
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08.10.2004
New CD is released: Joseph Haydn, "The Seasons"
For further information and a sound example, please click here.
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