It has become an established tradition for the Salzburg Whitsun Festival to present a lavish gala concert starring Cecilia Bartoli. Last year it was a celebration of Rossini, featuring several of the world's leading Rossinians; the year before, it was a Mozart-Da Ponte pasticcio showcasing some of their most famous operatic scenes in a whimsical production by David Livermore. These events are usually light-hearted, entertaining and overflowing with joie de vivre.
This year’s show, Ciao, bella ciao, was conceived as an interview with Bartoli about her early life and career, complete with a nod to Federico Fellini’s Intervista. It was certainly light-hearted and full of vitality, but ultimately it missed the mark for several reasons. Making herself the sole focus of the evening felt excessively self-referential, even if a healthy dose of self-irony helped keep the tone buoyant. Bartoli spoke about her parents, both opera singers; we heard a recording of her mother singing La traviata, after which her mother stood up in the audience to receive warm applause. It was touching, but also, as younger generations might say, cringeworthy. Bartoli’s life and career are undoubtedly worthy of celebration, but this felt more self-congratulatory than celebratory.
Most of the programme consisted of popular music. Recalling songs she listened to as a girl, Bartoli performed hits by Italian pop stars such as Rita Pavone and Little Tony, accompanied by a swarm of chorus boys straight out of the Ziegfeld Follies dancing around her. She reminisced about crossing the Atlantic on an ocean liner and responded by singing the theme from Titanic, followed, inevitably, by New York, New York. Traditional Roman songs accompanied beautiful aerial footage of her native city created by D-Wok, while a sequence chronicling her Decca-sponsored train tour of the United States was illustrated with some truly dreadful AI-generated imagery. A slow, solemn rendition of Bella ciao – which ultimately came across as rather bathetic – accompanied the story of her grandfather, who fought against Facism in the Italian Resistance. All of this was performed with amplification, accompanied by Les Musiciens du Prince, expanded with saxophone, drum kit, electric guitars and more under the direction of Yvan Cassar.
There was also a substantial operatic component. Recounting her flamenco lessons, Bartoli launched into three excerpts from Carmen, complete with a “flamenco-ised” accompaniment (yikes). She also sang an abridged version of “Casta diva.” Once again, everything was amplified and performed with a microphone. Hearing operatic repertoire sung with altered accompaniments and electronic amplification in a temple of opera such as the Großes Festspielhaus is painful.
The whole evening strongly evoked a kind of “Pavarotti Without Friends”: Bartoli was the only singer on stage, and this pointed to another weakness of the concept. One of her greatest qualities as a cultural leader has always been her surrounding herself with outstanding singers, musicians and conductors. She has long understood that allowing others to shine only enhances her own success. This concert, however, was so relentlessly focused on her and on the details of her personal story that it felt oddly out of character.
Yet, despite all of this, the evening was an enormous success. Bartoli owns the stage completely and can sing virtually anything. There were several genuinely funny moments, as when she declared, “And then I came to Salzburg. But before Mozart and von Karajan, Salzburg was… Julie Andrews!” and burst into “The Hills Are Alive...”
Her immense artistry is in no way diminished by a questionable artistic choice. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with an artist presenting a more popular programme with less ambitious artistic or cultural aspirations. In itself, that means very little. But when the artistic director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival does so in Salzburg, it is hard to dismiss the concern that this may be a statement about the future direction of the festival itself.
