Cecilia Bartoli: The Passion of Song

by Kim Chernin

Book Overview

Biography of the glamorous, famous and intriguing opera singer, Cecilia Bartoli, explores her background and character and goes in search of the mystery behind the legend. Exclusive interview material... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060186445
• ISBN13: 9780060186449
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A Fan's Passion

Some may be skeptical of a biography of Cecilia Bartoli at such an early point in her - hopefully long - career. Not to worry. This book is really a description of a fan's passion. Ms Chernin's writing is both rapturous and down to earth, and extremely readable, to boot. This first section describes the author's experience of five recitals or concerts; a lengthy interview; and a description of a master class given by Ms. Bartoli's teacher and mother. It is a delight, and would appeal to all music lovers. The second section, by Ms Stendhal, is more objective. It details ten years of performances, with all the statistics that any die-hard diva fan would want. Thus the combination of the two sections produces a book of broad appeal. Highly recommended.

page turner

I am writing from Paris to celebrate this gorgeous book about my favorite singer. It's a real page turner and gets you deep in Cecilia's mystery. Also great to discover these two authors. Mille fois merci.Odil.

The Importance of Having Feelings

Have you noticed that critics are not supposed to feel when they criticize? Feelings are taboo to the so-called critical mind. The reviews of this book are a living proof of this fact. The boldness of authors who dare to admit to powerful feelings about a singer triggers astonishing aggression and ridicule from people keeping their emotional responses in an iron corset. They sadly miss what music and great singing and writing about passions is all about. If you ask me, a musician myself, I can only congratulate the writers. How often do we have the pleasure of sharing an intelligent, cultivated reception of art, coupled with the capacity to reflect on the effect an artist has on us? Next to the capacity of having AND analysing emotions, the critics and would-be critics in their tight cultural corsets look quite ridiculous.

An engaging portrait of opera diva Cecilia Bartoli

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

Bartoli will never get a better book!

I am a music student from Copenhagen and an eternal fan of LA Cecilia! I just found this book in London, and nothing would translate better than these words of passion what I think about that great artist. Perhaps the greatest young artist of singing in our time... I can't understand why people are moaning and groaning endlessly about biograpy yes, biogrophy no. Bartoli will never get a more sincere hommage and artistic recognition than from true writers who have studied music and find words to express the almost inexpressible, exactly like she does in her singing! Compare with Hoelterhoff's flat journalism and you will see what I mean. You will hardly find more than a sentence or two in Hoelterhoff's book on what it is that makes Bartoli a genius and such a world success. I myself cannot say it either, but a book aout Bartoli should at least try! I want to share a quote from a prestige newspaper *The Scotsman" from over here about Chernin and Stendhal's book to tell American readers what people think elsewhere: "...a book which deals frankly and exstatically with the profoundly erotic relationship is sees sweeping up and subsuming both the diva and her (prototypically female) fan. ...more questioning opera lovers might find much here to stimulate, to provoke and intrigue. Conventional lives have tended to objectify and elevate the performer: without diminishing or demystifying Bartoli's magnetism, this book attempts to go beyond euphoria to identify the nature of her appeal and the part the punter plays in it all..." By Michael Kerrigan I am a male fan, and I agree completely. 5 stars, at least! Leo Jacob