My favourite opera singer, Cecilia Bartoli, (heard her sing live 9 times already – pix with her here) has just released a new album. The disk’s web site is here and you can listen to tracks there as well. It’s not exactly a rock n’ roll album so be warned. She’s on the cover on this month’s ‘Le Monde de la Musique’ and will be singing in Paris on December 11th at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées: I’ll definitively be there.
Background on her album:
“Forbidden Opera
In the first decade of the eighteenth century, opera in Rome was, to all intents and purposes, prohibited. The new century had indeed opened with the jubilee of 1700, and therefore without any sort of public entertainment, as this was forbidden during the solemn celebration of holy years (apart from performances taking place in religious institutions such as seminaries and colleges).
In 1701, Clement XI placed a ban on all public performance (setting the seal on that imposed three years earlier by Innocent XII) because of the worsening political conflict which was soon to lead to the War of Spanish Succession. A year later, as the bloodshed worsened, he declared another, extraordinary, jubilee. Then, in January and February 1703, Rome was struck by two violent earthquakes, although no one was killed. As a sign of thanksgiving, it was therefore decreed that for the next five years all forms of theatrical performance would be rigorously outlawed. The first tentative attempts to begin staging operas again only came in 1710.
Such bans clearly reflected the difficult and unresolved relationship between contemporary Catholic morals and the very idea of theatre, with or without music. In the previous century too, the papacy had veered between unreserved support for melodramma and absolute repression of the theatre (especially public performances), condemning it as the bringer of sin and damnation. Such views were also behind the reaffirmation of the decree
of 1588 which prohibited women from apppearing on the public stage and thus made Rome the kingdom of the castrati. All those in Rome whose lives revolved around music (composers, singers, musicians, and even patrons) and who were not allowed to pursue achievements in the operatic field, chose to focus on oratorio instead. Escaping prohibition because of its religious nature, oratorio flourished during that period as never before.If we remember that barely a month before Michelangel's death the Church censored his revealing representation of the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, then it is clear that the ban on opera at the beginning of the eighteenth century was not the worst case of censorship in the history of Roman art. However, the modern music-lover is less interested in the Church authorities' measures than in the imaginative ways in which influential members of those same authorities circumvented the ban.
Theatres have always been places where eye and ear, mind and body are tempted and easily seduced, where there is only a step between exaltation and perdition. It is not surprising that some seventeenth- and eighteenth-century popes should have worried about the state of morals in their city, given that in the years when public operatic performances were permitted, even members of the clergy were seen in theatres enjoying themselves openly at the side of courtesans or castratos (the latter predilection being generously termed the "peccato nobile" or "noble sin").
Closing theatres and forbidding public performances did not prevent powerful and wealthy art-lovers such as Cardinals Pietro Ottoboni and Benedetto Pamphilj or Prince Francesco Maria Ruspoli from commissioning and even contributing to lavish musical works staged at their own private palaces.
Nothing could stop the dramatic, operatic element in music from thriving. It simply persisted under the assumed name of "oratorio", as both the music itself and the elaborate stage designs for some of these oratorios bear witness. Plots, on the other hand, became somewhat less "operatic", being now based on allegorical discourses or colourful sacred and biblical narratives. Nevertheless the eroticism of a dialogue such as that between Beauty (Bellezza) and seductive Pleasure (Piacere) in Handel's Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (The Victory of Time and Disillusionment) would have not escaped the attentive listener. Audiences were very receptive to the sensuality of convoluted stories such as Caldara's Il Trionfo dell'Innocenza (The Victory of Innocence). One can imagine that the piquancy of this story of a girl courting another girl - whom she assumes to be a hermit - would have been considerably enhanced when, according to the practice of the day, the two female characters were very probably sung by male castratos.”
The rest is on the official site 
