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New York Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Cecilia Bartoli Knows What Makes Good Opera and Ragù: Time
Cecilia Bartoli would be back at the ballet in a moment. She just needed to get murdered first. It was early June, during the long weekend of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival in Austria, which she runs. When the curtain dropped on the first half of John Neumeier's ballet 'Death in Venice' at the Grosses Festspielhaus, she got up from her seat and briskly exited the auditorium. She followed a corridor through a courtyard that brought her to the lobby of the Felsenreitschule, a theater built into the side of a mountain. As she crossed the threshold, she shook off her role as the festival's artistic director and stepped into the persona she is best known for: Cecilia Bartoli, star mezzo-soprano. Inside the Felsenreitschule, members of the orchestra Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco were seated onstage, and their conductor, Gianluca Capuano, was waiting at the podium. Bartoli entered, waved hello with both hands and shared cheek kisses with friends on her way to the stage. She took her place in a chair, closed her eyes and let her head go limp. Then she winked. She wasn't resting but acting, transforming into the sleeping Desdemona in her death scene from Rossini's 'Otello.' When Bartoli rose again, it was to sing dramatically alongside the tenor Sergey Romanovsky, before collapsing as he stabbed her with a stage knife. After about 20 minutes of refining the scene, she grabbed her purse, hustled back to the Grosses Festspielhaus and took her seat for the second half of 'Death in Venice.' Since 2012, this kind of bustle has been the Whitsun Festival routine for Bartoli. She is both its artistic director and its biggest attraction, shifting constantly from performer to audience member, from party host to cheerleader. This would be enough for any one person, but unlike most opera stars or artistic leaders on her level, she has a lot else going on: She is a busy singer beyond Salzburg, she founded an orchestra, and she is the director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in Monaco. Bartoli is 59, an age when many opera stars wind down their careers. But she is on an opposite trajectory. Her voice remains in remarkable shape, her tone still plush, with the control and coloratura of a much younger vocalist. And she is far from done being an artistic director. Her contract at the Whitsun Festival was approaching its end when she and the festival announced this month that she would extend through 2031. By that point, she will be its longest-serving leader, eclipsing even the tenure of its founder, Herbert von Karajan. 'I will stay,' Bartoli said in an interview, 'as long as I feel I have something to say.' With her own opera company and festival, as well as an orchestra and expanding repertoire, Bartoli is teeming with things to say. And her rare longevity as a singer has been made possible through extreme care; she has always kept tight control over what she performs and where, and has never stopped training her voice. Bartoli, who was born and raised in Rome, and who values excellent food, compared her artistry to ragù. 'What is the secret of a good ragù?' she said. 'It's time. You cannot make a good ragù sauce in five minutes.' She then made the bloop-bloop sound of a simmering sauce and said that slowness is just as necessary in music. 'Your voice, your muscles, everything needs to adjust slowly,' she said. 'Otherwise you end up like a watery ragù.' It seems as if Bartoli were fated to become an opera star: Her parents, both singers, named her after the patron saint of music. (Her mother, Silvana Bazzoni, is often by her side and was a fixture throughout the Whitsun Festival; her husband, Oliver Widmer, is a bass-baritone.) She spent much of her childhood in theaters, watching her parents and other vocalists at work. She didn't see herself as a singer, though. She was more interested in flamenco, and wanted to join an amateur group in Rome. Her parents didn't like the idea but made a deal with her: She could keep dancing if she also studied at a music conservatory. 'It turns out,' Bartoli said, 'I was much faster with my vocal cords than with my feet.' From time to time she still dabbles in flamenco, as some disgruntled hotel guests could attest. 'I always loved to do a little zapateado in my room on tour,' she said, 'but in the United States someone called and asked, 'What is that strange noise?'' Bartoli's mother was an early teacher, but after school she attracted mentors with global reach, chief among them the conductor Daniel Barenboim. They met in the late 1980s, when she was performing in Rossini operas, and he nudged her toward Mozart. 'He told me I could do characters like Cherubino, Dorabella, Zerlina,' she said. 'And it turned out to be fantastic advice, because with Mozart there is such a pureness to the music, you must control your instrument 200 percent.' Control is a hallmark of Bartoli's sound. Even at the top of her range, she is capable of extreme softness and focus, whether in 'Hotel Metamorphosis' at this year's Whitsun Festival or, famously, her performances of 'Casta diva,' from Bellini's 'Norma.' In an aria already scored at a prayerful whisper, she is quieter than many of her peers. Above all, Bartoli is a master of ornamentation. Her repertoire covers centuries of music, but the finest displays of her vocal acrobatics are in her recordings of works from the Baroque through the bel canto eras. In 1999, she released 'The Vivaldi Album' on Decca; it sold over a million copies and inspired renewed interest in a composer rarely thought of in opera. 'It was a crossover hit,' Bartoli said, 'but with the idea that people will cross the bridge to come to us, and not the other way around.' Lea Desandre, a 32-year-old mezzo-soprano and fellow star in 'Hotel Metamorphosis,' said that she grew up listening to Bartoli's albums and loved 'the freedom and the joy that she has while singing, and really the energy.' Bartoli's quick successes brought her to the Metropolitan Opera in New York at 29, as Despina in Mozart's 'Così Fan Tutte.' But she hasn't performed at the house since 1998. Because she's afraid to fly, her career has been far less robust in the United States than in Europe. When she has traveled to the United States, it has been by boat. 'It's actually a fantastic experience,' she said. 'You see the aurora borealis, you don't get sick, and you don't have to worry about jet lag. The most amazing part is arriving in New York and seeing the Statue of Liberty from far away, just thinking about all the migrants who made the same trip.' During the Whitsun Festival, Bartoli repeatedly teased that she may return to New York soon; so did Capuano, her close collaborator with Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco, suggesting that they would come together. She founded Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco in 2016 with Jean-Louis Grinda, her predecessor at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, because she wanted to create a period ensemble in a place that could resemble the courts of Baroque palaces. That summer, Capuano took over a performance of 'Norma' at the Edinburgh Festival on short notice. It was his first time leading Bartoli in an opera, and the two had, he said, 'a really special alchemy.' He became the chief conductor of Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco in 2019, and today his schedule is intertwined with Bartoli's; the orchestra is even in residence at the Whitsun Festival. 'I learned a lot from Cecilia,' Capuano said. 'She taught me the freedom of doing music, to breathe and not be too square, with the art of rubato she uses all the time.' The Salzburg performances of 'Hotel Metamorphosis' demonstrate how their musical relationship plays out. Conceived and directed by the opera luminary Barrie Kosky, the show is a pasticcio, a kind of operatic jukebox musical that tells Ovid stories using scraps of Vivaldi's music. In the pit, the orchestra performed with broken-in comfort, free yet unified, especially when supporting Bartoli. Before Bartoli came to the Whitsun Festival, it lacked the sparkle and touch of glamour it is known for today. It struggled to find an identity after the death of von Karajan, in 1989, mostly serving as a showcase for Baroque music led by guest conductors. Riccardo Muti became the first modern artistic director in 2007. He stayed for five years, and used his platform to revive obscure Italian operas. Bartoli came to the Whitsun Festival with a clear idea of what it should be. Each year has been organized around a theme, and has included a new opera production, with Bartoli as its star. At the after-party for 'Hotel Metamorphosis,' Markus Hinterhäuser, the artistic leader of the main Salzburg Festival, said, 'If the Whitsun Festival has a heartbeat, and that heartbeat has a name, it's Cecilia Bartoli.' She has sung her Norma there, worn a beard in Handel's 'Ariodante' and, most sensationally, starred as Maria in a 'West Side Story' framed as an older woman's flashback. Along the way, her voice has changed, but she has tailored her repertoire accordingly, and, Capuano said, the best aspects of her artistry have remained. 'In Cecilia, you cannot distinguish the melodic line and inner meaning because they are the same,' he said. 'And the way she can still give different colors is just stunning.' Unchanged, too, is Bartoli's reputation for professionalism. Kosky called her 'a force of nature' and described her as extremely dedicated. 'She is one of the most authentic people I have ever worked with,' he said, 'and when you combine that with one of the great voices of the last few decades, it is impossible to resist her.' Capuano said that she is often the first to arrive at a rehearsal and the last to leave; Desandre was struck by her ability to focus quickly and 'always be there in the moment' and make 'the group feel like a group immediately.' In June, Bartoli entered each room like a gust, her default greeting a smile with a look of wide-eyed excitement, sometimes accompanied by a hug or a kiss. A kind of roving pep leader, she didn't even give a speech at her opera's after-party, instead announcing, 'Dobbiamo cominciare la festa, mangiamo!' ('We need to start the party, let's eat!') When Bartoli wasn't performing, she was attending other shows and handing out bouquets during curtain calls. After the Hamburg Ballet's 'Death in Venice,' she rushed to hug Neumeier and whisper 'I'm so proud of you' into his ear. She lingered backstage, rapidly switching among Italian, French and English, and posing for photos. She closed the festival with a gala of pyrotechnic Rossini arias, an evening that included multiple costume changes and comic delights that showcase her charisma, like 'Nella testa ho un campanello' from 'L'Italiana in Algeri.' During an encore from 'Il Barbiere di Siviglia,' she threw in a little bit of flamenco dance. 'I had to since we're in Spain!' Bartoli said as she entered her dressing room afterward. For her, the long night wasn't over yet. There was still a gala dinner to attend, though she would try to duck out early to sleep. She had to leave the next morning to star in Gluck's 'Orfeo ed Euridice' that night in Cremona, Italy. And, of course, she would be getting there by car.
The Guardian
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Potato Eaters review – a descent from visceral dread into full-blown terror
There are strong Death in Venice vibes to the setting of Romeo Castellucci's site specific production at the Venice Biennale Teatro. The show, by the Italian writer-director and his company, inhabits its own island – a long, lizard-like colony. The audience boards a shuttle and skims across the water to arrive at a building that was once a lazaretto – a hospital for leprosy patients. Associations with fatal infection and social isolation are chillingly resonance of the Covid pandemic. But as you wander into this disturbing promenade piece, things turn chilly in more ways than one. The building's interior is stripped of its skin so that its brick and rafters lie bare, and there is a low electronic rumble of sound along its corridors which is as disquieting as the near darkness. Windows are boarded up, as if deliberately concealing activity inside. Further along, there are bags lying in empty rooms that at first look empty but which twitch with still-living and breathing bodies inside them. The suggestion is that of a torture chamber whose violence has taken place or will do so imminently. There is deepening alarm as you venture into this unaccounted, warehouse-like space, where, you imagine, more people lie gasping in body bags. The full terror of the show manifests in a bizarre and baroque scene of ritualised but unexplained tyranny, enacted through choreographed movement by an eight-strong cast (Luca Nava, Sergio Scarlatella, Laura Pante, Vito Ancona, Jacopo Franceschet, Marco Gagliardi, Vittorio Tommasi, Michela Valerio). A total blackness descends in a central room which is filled with thundering sound that barrels towards us (brilliantly, terrifyingly, designed by Scott and Oliver Gibbons). There is, for this cowering critic, the discomfiting feeling that things could turn genuinely dangerous within this rumbling darkness. Creepy images emerge out of smoke, from a giant winged creature – a deity, an extraterrestrial or a symbol of totalitarian terror reminiscent of the Third Reich? – to a slow-moving group of miners carrying pickaxes and a body unzipped from a bag, naked, blood streaked, as pale as death, who performs a kind of dance of death. There are no words spoken, no explanation for who these people are and what their cult-like rituals represent. The story is all the more ominous for its opacity. The winged creature and the miners seem to be proxies for a more dreadful, unseen, force. It is a gnomic work but full of visceral dread. The building looks neutral and unremarkable once you are outside it again but the threat stays with you as you board the boat back to the mainland, to light and safety. Until 15 June as part of the Biennale Teatro 2025. Arifa Akbar's trip was provided by Venice Biennale
Daily Mail
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Tragic fate of 'the world's most beautiful boy': Actor now looks VERY different after cult 70s film that turned him into a sex symbol at 15 ruined his life and plunged him into alcoholism
When he was only 15, Bjorn Andrésen was declared the 'most beautiful boy in the world' after Luchino Visconti cast the unassuming Swedish teen as Tadzio in Death in Venice. The embodiment of 'pure beauty', Bjorn was handpicked by the Italian filmmaker to play the sailor-suited adolescent opposite Dirk Bogarde in one of the world's most famous queer films. His turn as Tadzio, whose youthful, boyish looks drove Bogarde's character - an ailing, ageing composer - to temptation, catapulted Bjorn to stardom and gained him international recognition. The Italian auteur's film also 'f***ed up a lot of things' for Bjorn, whose blond-locked, almost unearthly beauty earned him comparisons to Michelagenelo's David when he was still a child. Bjorn, now in his seventies, condemned Visconti, who died in 1976, as a 'cultural predator' who allegedly exploited his looks and sexualised him to promote the movie -before throwing him to the wolves. The moniker became a millstone around Bjorn's neck, as the actor admitted Death in Venice remained the unmoving grey cloud that totally eclipsed his life. Five decades after Visconti hailed his Tadzio as the world's most beautiful boy, Bjorn was relegated to life of relative obscurity - marked also by a profound personal sadness and mental health struggles. In 2021, it was reported that Bjorn was living alone in a squalid flat, chain smoking and bickering with his long-suffering, on-off girlfriend and getting into trouble with his landlord for leaving his gas stove on. He also looked world's away from the fresh-faced teenager that inspired a generation of manga artists and became one of Japan's first Western idols, with Bjorn now sporting a perpetually nicotine-stained beard and long, flowing white hair. Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Bjorn was 10 when his mother, Barbro, died by suicide before he was sent to live with his maternal grandparents. His bohemian mother had never told him the identity of his father and, before her death, made no secret that she wanted more from life than being mother to Björn and his half-sister. Growing up, Bjorn had no interest in acting and wanted, instead, to be a musician but his grandmother continued to send him to auditions in the hope that at least one of her grandchildren would become famous. That was how Bjorn found himself standing before Visconti, whose search for Tadzio's 'pure beauty' had taken him across Europe - but to no avail. A documentary about Bjorn's life - titled 'The Most Beautiful Boy in the World' - includes black-and-white footage of his audition for Death in Venice in a room full of young boys and casting directors. 'How old is he? Older right?' Visconti asks a Swedish-speaking casting director as Andrésen poses self-consciously for them at a casting call in Stockholm one chilly day in February 1970. 'Yes, a little. He's fifteen,' the casting director replies. 'Fifteen? Very beautiful,' Visconti observes. 'Could you ask him to undress?' Bjorn, visibly taken aback, eventually strips down to his trunks, as a photographer snaps away and a delighted Visconti makes clear he has found exactly what he was looking for. Looking back on his audition, Bjorn told Vanity Fair, Visconti 'sexualised me' and admitted he 'wasn't comfortable' taking his clothes off. 'When they asked me to take off my shirt, I wasn't comfortable,' he said. 'I wasn't prepared for that. 'I remember when he posed me with one foot against the wall, I would never stand like that. When I watch it now, I see how that son of a b**** sexualised me.' The 15-year-old was signed to the film and paid $4,000 for his role in Death in Venice - one that, he had no idea, would define him for the rest of his life. Filming was an incredibly isolating experience, as Visconti reportedly instructed the crew to stay away from Bjorn. In his 1983 memoir, Bogarde, who played the musician enamoured by the young Polish boy in Death in Venice, described the strict rules Visconti imposed on Bjorn to preserve his beauty. He was, Bogarde said, 'never allowed to go into the sun, kick a football with his companions, swim in the polluted sea, or do anything which might have given him the smallest degree of pleasure'. Bjorn 'suffered it all splendidly,' the late British actor revealed. The reason for Visconti's unyielding rules would later be revealed as he unveiled Bjorn as 'the most beautiful boy in the world' at the London premiere of Death in Venice that was attended by Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Anne. A marketing ploy, the remark piqued such interest in Bjorn that he was turned into an overnight celebrity with the world's most fawned-over face. 'It felt like swarms of bats around me. It was a living nightmare,' Andrésen previously of the fame and attention for which he was woefully underprepared. 'I was a sex object - Big Game.' The 2021 documentary about Bjorn's life, which charts his rise to fame and its life-altering consequences, raised unsettling questions about the ethics of a production that has become a cult gay film. Bogarde was openly homosexual as was Visconti, who said his male lovers included Italian director Franco Zeffirelli and Umberto II, the last King of Italy. He was 63 when he made Death In Venice (based on a novella by German writer Thomas Mann, also gay) with a mostly gay crew, too. But Bjorn wasn't gay — and even if he had been, he had only just turned 15 when he auditioned. Far too young to be turned into a sex object whom Visconti took to gay nightclubs and who later became a trophy for rich Paris men who lavished him with presents and meals so they could parade him around. After Death in Venice premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Visconti and his friends reportedly took Bjorn to a gay nightclub where he felt the waiters and guests leered at him. 'It was extremely uncomfortable,' he described the outing. 'I think [Visconti] was testing me to see if I was gay.' He recalled drinking himself in a stupor 'just to shut it out' but it was too late to turn a blind eye to his newfound status as a sex symbol and - for some - a gay icon. After Death in Venice, the then-young actor was inundated with sackfuls of fan mail from besotted teenagers and grown men alike According to Yokogaomag, Death in Venice sparked an intense wave of Bjorn fandom in Japan that eventually made him one of the country's first Western idols. When Bjorn visited the country to promote the film, before Death in Venice was released across Japan in October 1971, he was met with screaming female fans in scenes comparable to Beatlemania and, in fact, recorded a couple of songs. Hailed as the 'pinnacle of beauty' in Japan, Bjorn's delicate features captured the imagination of legendary manga artists, including Riyoko Ikeda who modelled the character of Lady Oscar in her series 'The Rose of Versailles' on his likeness. Back in Europe, he continued acting but struggled to shake off his 'world's most beautiful boy' moniker. In 1976, he came to Paris for a film. It never came to anything but he stayed a year despite being penniless. His lifestyle was funded by a string of rich men who showered him with expensive meals, gave him a 500-franc weekly allowance and even provided him with a flat, the 2021 documentary revealed, as Bjorn admitted he was 'bloody naive' about their intentions towards him. 'I must have been bloody naive because it was sort of like: 'Wow! Everyone's so nice,' ' he reflected. 'I don't think they treated me out of the kindness of their heart ... I felt like [a] wandering trophy.' While the documentary doesn't explore Bjorn's own sexuality, he previously told The Daily Mail he felt a fleeting confusion about his sexuality in his 20s and had one homosexual experience. 'I did it more or less to be able to say I'd tried it but it's not really my cup of tea. It wasn't more serious than that,' he said at the time. Bjorn has maintained he's always been attracted to women, but struggled to form relationships with them as he grew older. After growing used to clicking his fingers and having girls come running, he admits he never learnt how to flirt. Even so, he married a poet named Suzanna Roman after they had a daughter, Robine, in 1984. However, tragedy again struck three years later when their nine-month-old son Elvin, died. Bjorn had been lying in bed beside him, insensible after a night out drinking, while his wife took their daughter to kindergarten. Bjorn fell into a deep depression after Elvin's death as he blamed himself for being an inadequate father. 'Their diagnosis is sudden infant death syndrome but my diagnosis is lack of love,' he said in the documentary. 'I descended into depression, alcohol, self-destruction in all ways imaginable - it was an ego trip. Poor me, me, me.' He disappeared from public view so completely that some thought he was dead until he re-emerged in 2003, when a photo of him was used to illustrate the front cover of The Beautiful Boy, Germaine Greer's ode to the beauty of young boys. Bjorn publicly complained he'd never given permission and said, having been exposed to it, adult lust - by men or women - for adolescents was nothing to celebrate. According to the documentary, Bjorn still suffered from depression at the time as its makers, Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri, caught up with the man who was once the world's most beautiful boy. Reflecting on that fateful day that forever altered the course of his life, and Visconti's role in shaping it, the greying Bjorn said: 'Life and career-wise, it f***ed up a lot of things'.
