Cecilia Bartoli

Grammy-winning opera singer Cecilia Bartoli is regarded as one of the finest mezzo-sopranos of her generation, known for her coloratura style and for taking more creative risks than most of her contemporaries. Both of Bartoli's parents were professional singers who performed in the Rome Opera Chorus and began giving her music lessons when she was 13, filling their home with recordings of Mozart, Beethoven and Vivaldi. After studying at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia, she was part of a television talent show featuring Leo Nucci called 'Fantastico' when she was 19, and was signed soon afterwards by Decca Records and widely acclaimed as a major new star.

Conductors Daniel Barenboim and Herbert Von Karajan were early admirers of her talent, and the strict discipline of Nikolaus Harnoncourt had a profound influence on her as she made her debut performance in Verona in 1987 taking on roles such as Rosina in 'Barber of Seville', Cherubino in 'The Marriage of Figaro' and Isolier in 'Le Comte Ory'. Her albums 'Rossini Arias' in 1989 and 'Rossini Heroines' in 1992 further helped cement her reputation as a leading interpreter of Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, and she also became known for specialising in the works of Mozart and Bellini, impressing critics with her incredible technique and perfectionist attitude. In 1997 she performed an emotional benefit concert at Carnegie Hall in New York, at which her brother - who was suffering from cancer at the time and died three months later - played the viola while in a wheelchair.

Despite record sales in the millions, she forged a special relationship with the Zurich Opera House where she was able to perform more experimental and obscure work and her love of Baroque music led her to release a series of albums dedicated to 18th century music. One of these was 'Opera Proibita' in 2005, on which she performed little known arias composed during a time when the Catholic church had banned opera and secular music, and she launched the album with a recital at an ancient church in the Fori Imperiali forum in front of the Colosseum in her home town of Rome.

She later turned her attention to the 19th century bel canto era of Italian romanticism and paid tribute to her hero Maria Malibran on the album 'Maria' in 2007, while her historically accurate landmark performance of Bellini's 'Norma' reclaimed the role for mezzo-sopranos after it had been reworked for soprano Maria Callas. She also won her fifth Grammy Award in 2011 for the album 'Sacrificium', on which she recorded arias originally performed by a castrato and in 2019 she celebrated her 30-year career with the Zurich Opera House with a gala concert of Handel's 'Semele'. In November 2019, Bartoli launched the album 'Farinelli' which includes the single 'Morte Col Fiero Aspetto' from Hasse's opera 'Marc'Antonio e Cleopatra'.