Cecilia Bartoli - Sacrificium

CD cover for Cecilia Bartoli's Sacrificium. Photo / Supplied

Rating: * * * * *

Cecilia Bartoli may still be best known as one of the spunkiest Susannas on record, playing opposite Bryn Terfel in Jonathan Miller's 1998 staging of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, but these days, she devotes herself to less well-trodden paths.
In 2005 the mezzo's Opera Proibita CD showed how cunning composers overcame papal disapproval of the opera house by unleashing their most operatic music in the church itself. Two years ago, her Maria was a moving tribute to the tragic 19th century singer, Maria Malibran.

Bartoli's latest, Sacrificium, offers 100 minutes of glorious music, written for singers who had endured the unkindest cut of all.

Dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of boys sacrificed in the name of music, Sacrificium unearths some wonderful arias, by turns tizzy and touching, penned for castrati, in most cases by composers who are now footnotes in musical history.

Handel is the only generally familiar name here (represented by a surprisingly restrained take on Ombra mai fu), the rest of the line-up running from Porpora, Graun, Leo and Caldara to the splendidly named Geminiano Giacomelli.

Porpora's opening aria reveals just what has made Bartoli unique in this field - a stupefying range, fearless vocal leaps and the sort of relentless passagework that makes you suspect the singer might be on a heart-lung machine.

Il Giardino Armonico provide a full gamut of musical backdrops. While rampant horns and oboes surge behind Porpora's nautical vision, his later portrait of an unhappy nightingale has amorous flutes and fluttering strings behind the trilling singer. When Bartoli hails the almighty Jove in Vinci's Chi temea Giove regnante, even the thrill of brazen trumpets is not enough - the track comes with sensurround thunder effects.

If Decca was giving us just the music, this would be a more than generous release, but Sacrificium comes in a handsome hard-bound book featuring a 32-page Castrato Compendium. This is an A-Z of everything you wanted to know about the phenomenon and as well as famous names and places, you'll find quirky entries for "Celibacy", "Hormones" and "X-rated".

Incidentally, the faint of heart are assured that the various surgical instruments illustrated are of veterinary provenance.

William Dart



Pictured above: The CD cover for Cecilia Bartoli's Sacrificium