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LA
DOLCE
BARTOLI
Superstar
mezzo Cecilia
Bartoli explores
forbidden
treasures
BY JOSEPH K. SO
The CD cover is more eyepopping
than usual – a newly
slimmed down Cecilia Bartoli,
wet hair and all, in a low-cut,
strapless black gown, posing
seductively in a fountain. Any
resemblance to Anita Ekberg – sans blond hair
– in La dolce Vita, Fellini’s ode to mid-20 th century
Roman decadence, is purely intentional.
Across the photo are the words “Opera
Proibita,” stamped in blood-red letters, much
like something one encounters in an Italian
tabloid. To be sure, there is nothing salacious
about sacred music from the early 18 th century.
But Bartoli – and undoubtedly the advertising
executives of Decca Records – came up
with the idea of a parallel between music from
that period in Rome, a time when opera was
considered immoral and thus banned, and the
attempt by the Vatican to ban the Fellini movie
when it came out in 1960.
Just an exercise in clever marketing, you say?
La Bartoli doesn’t think so. “I want to visualize
the (recording) project; to find a parallel,” she
explains by phone from Paris. “In 1957, the
Vatican and Pope Pius XII did not accept night
life, so Rome was a ‘dead city.’ After the Pope
died, there was a kind of explosion, around the
time when La dolce Vita was released. Of
course the Vatican wanted to forbid it, but