Piece Description

Cecilia Bartoli can skip through virtuosic passages with verve and agility. She can sing with a lament in her voice, or with a laugh, and when she burst onto the world stage 15 years ago she quickly earned a passionate following. Today, Bartoli is widely considered one of the world's great operatic voices. She is touring the US in February. In this feature, Bartoli describes how approaching her voice as an instrument helps her as a singer. She talks about what she gained from her years of studying the trumpet. And she describes how she thinks of her voice in conversation with a violin when she sings a familiar melody from Vivaldi. As in all the pieces in David Schulman's CPB-supported Musicians in their own words series, the story is told through a mix of the performer's voice and music. There is no reporter's voice heard, allowing the feature to be seamlessly incorporated into station news, talk, or music programming. Scripts for intro and outro are attached, and may be edited at will. This piece debuted on PRX, and has aired on stations including KUSC, WAMU, and Colorado Public Radio.