Cecilia Bartoli once played to packed houses, and her recitals invariably occasioned massive queues for return tickets. Not, it would seem, any longer. At her concert with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, there were a handful of empty seats and no returns queue in sight.
Whether this marks the start of a decline in Bartoli's popularity remains to be seen. What the concert did reveal, however, was something of a decline in her vocal powers, the result, perhaps, of the demands she has placed upon herself in pursuit of her chosen repertoire. Once an immaculate interpreter of Rossini and Mozart, Bartoli has gravitated of late towards obscurer works by composers like Gluck and Vivaldi, most of them written for the army of castrated men that populated the 18th-century operatic stage.
This seeming obsession has been called pioneering in certain quarters, and it is certainly true that we owe to Bartoli our awareness that some of Gluck's later music, often deemed revolutionary, was lifted wholesale from his earlier works. She could, however, also be accused of unearthing second rate music for the express purpose of showing off, for what she now presents us with is a vocal Olympiad, at which we are primarily invited to marvel at her technique.
That this remains staggering is beyond dispute. In arias from Vivaldi's Bajazet and Gluck's La Corona she flings out coloratura with athletic exactitude. A chunk of Gluck's La Clemenza di Tito - not to be confused with Mozart's opera - finds her spinning out phrases like fine thread. Turning to an aria written by Riccardo Broschi for his brother, the famous castrato Farinelli, we find her coping with a vocal line that swirls vertiginously over an immense span.
The problem, however, derives from the fact that mastery of the difficulties of this repertoire has been purchased at the price of both tone and naturalness of delivery. Her voice itself is now less than beautiful. The lower range of her once velvety mezzo is occasionally harsh.
High notes are either glanced off or approached with caution. Her irritating habit of constantly changing the vowel sound in order to facilitate the flow of a lengthy vocal line is becoming more pronounced.
Bartoli is always impressive, but rarely moving. Ultimately, what we are listening to is artifice rather than art.
