Suffering for art’s sake

Cecilia Bartoli
Barbican

Messiah
Coliseum

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Gavin Mortimer

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After a brief but inspissatedly tedious overture by Porpora, played by Il Giardino Armonico, the curtains at the Barbican were pulled aside and Cecilia Bartoli, dressed like a highwayperson from a 1940s escapist movie, sprang on to the stage, flung off her feathered hat, rocked with superabundant energy as the orchestra played the introduction to her first aria, from another opera of Porpora’s, and launched into the first of many elaborate analogies between love and other conditions which might give an excuse for lots of drooping and even more giddy coloratura. She was on amazing form, and was greeted and received with almost hysterical rapture.

Last year I was not the only reviewer to feel that her concert was reminiscent of late Schwarzkopf, but that couldn’t have occurred to anyone this year.