Cecilia Bartoli - Mission

More than 80 minutes of music included

Featuring four duets with Philippe Jaroussky

Autumn 2012 marks the release of Mission, a sensational release from the world's best-selling classical artist — singer Cecilia Bartoli — and a project with international politics, religious conflict, diplomatic secrecy, spying and sensational music at its heart.

Following the exceptional artistic and commercial success of 2009's Sacrificium (which earned Cecilia her fifth Grammy award), Cecilia Bartoli now turns to the early baroque period for the first time in her recording career and uncovers a treasure of beautiful music in an album almost entirely composed of world premiere recordings. The album showcases the music of little-known Italian composer Agostino Steffani (1654 1728), and includes solo arias of various moods and styles, several duets, solo numbers with a chorus — all sung in Italian — and instrumental interludes that create an organic transition from one piece to the next and an arc that reaches from the beginning to the end of the album.

Steffanis' story is mysterious at the very least; his name is largely absent from studies of Italian music despite holding senior court positions during his lifetime and contemporary accounts acknowledging him as one of the greatest opera composers of the period and the acknowledged master of the vocal duet (Colin Timms, author of the booklet note).

Such was the appeal of the project that longtime Bartoli admirer and global best-selling author Donna Leon decided to write a mystery novel — "Jewels of Paradise" — to accompany Cecilia's album, which uses the mystery surrounding the composer's story as the center of its plot. "Jewels of Paradise" will be released simultaneously with Cecilia Bartoli's album in English (UK and USA), German, French, Dutch, Spanish and Catalan.

Among the distinguished names appearing on Mission is star French counter-tenor Philippe Jaroussky who features in a first-time collaboration with Cecilia on a selection of duets, alongside the Coro della Radiotelevisione Svizzera, the period orchestra I Barocchisti from Lugano, Switzerland, and conductor Diego Fasolis.

 

 

 

 

Side 1

Schiere invitte, non tardate

Ogni core può sperar

Ove son? Chi m'aita? In mezzo all'ombre...Dal mio petto

Più non v'ascondo

Amami, e vederai

Side 2

T'abbraccio, mia Diva...Ti stringo, mio Nume

Mie fide schiere, all'armi!...Suoni, tuoni, il suolo scuota

Sposa, mancar mi sento...Deh non far colle tue lagrime

Non prendo consiglio

Si, si, riposa, o caro...Palpitanti sfere belle

Notte amica al cieco Dio

Combatton quest'alma

Side 3

A facile vittoria

Tra le guerre e le vittorie

Foschi crepuscoli

Dell'alma stanca a raddolcir le tempre...Sfere amiche, or date al labbro

La cerasta più terribile

Serena, o mio bel sole...Mia fiamma...Mio adore

Side 4

Dal tuo labbro amor m'invita

Deh stancati, o sorte

Svenati, struggiti, combatti, suda

Padre, s'e colpa in lui

Timori, ruine

Morirò fra strazi e scempi

Non si parli che di fede

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