Bartoli – Diva Outside The Mainstream?

Cecilia Bartoli has made a specialty of singing repertoire off the beaten path. “She is not diva-ish in the old-fashioned sense – she doesn’t intimidate and, by all accounts, is an easy-going colleague when part of an opera cast. Her widely quoted falling out with Jonathan Miller at the Met in 1996 during a production of The Marriage of Figaro was untypical: in any case, she was standing up for a musical principle, not refusing a directorial command. She is tough, demanding, but no termagant. Yet there remain questions about the trajectory of her career…”