Cecilia Bartoli opens debate on music and gender
OperaThe Italian mezzo, who loves playing male roles, is behind a public debate on Music and Gender at the Vienna State Opera on June 30 (free admission here).
Hers is the only recognizable head above the parapet.
The other participants are:
Cecilia Bartoli
Gudrun Mancusi
Arnold Jacobshagen
Heinz Sichrovsky
Alexandra Kautzky-Willer
Eva Schernhammer
Christa Brüstle
Bernhard Riebl
Luka Kusztrich
Gaspard Stankovski-Hoursiangou
Martina Miedl
Herbert Mayr
Anna Gruchmann
Julia Zulus
Paul Blüml
Kathrin Fabian
Daniela Ivanova
Sonja Schadler
Manfred Hennenberg
Laura Fabinyi
Katharina Paul
Just as this lobotomised debate is being ushered towards the exit everywhere else. Now it’s time for the next ill-founded fad to win support among the hard of learning.
What an incredible waste of time. I can’t imagine having nothing better to do.
When will all this nonsense stop?
The main news is that she’s singing Cleopatra there three times next month.
Until 2022 she had never sung in staged opera in Vienna’s main house.
And only once, in 1994 in Così, did she ever sing in staged opera for the Vienna company, when the run was at another theatre.
Also next month, she takes part in a “gender duel” with John Malkovich.
I just wanted to clarify that the 1994 performances of „Così fan tutte“ were co-produced by Wiener Staatsoper and Wiener Festwochen. The stage was that of Theater an der Wien (a better/smaller house for Mozart than the House on the Ring), and the conductor was Riccardo Muti, in a project which offered new productions of the three Mozart/da Ponte collaborations between 1994 and 2001.
The „gender duel“ starring Bartoli and Malkovich is a play with music written and directed by Michael Sturminger; its title is „Their Master’s Voice“.
A welcome discussion especially since the Vienna State Opera orchestra/Vienna Philharmonic forbade membership to women for decades in contradiction of both Austrian and EU law–while the world stood by in silence.
Yes I also find that that oldfashioned orchestra stop with giving preference to men, as if we cannot do the same and better! Preferring men in these enlightened times is really ridiculous. We are better in so many ways! You can see that with that mandoline ensemble in Italy, my aunt is a member and they have real fun. We all know how damaging the existence of men’s clubs is in London, it winds people up, they go into the streets these days, all these muslem people, they can’t get in with their wives. We can only get total freedom and self-determination when these silly males are forced to give-up their privileges! It’s all about FREEDOM, girls.
Sally
Your comment is sad and your spelling is worse: “…all these muslem people”. The word is “Muslim” and it’s capitalized. I suspect most of “these people” are British.
It’s my version of English. I identify as a British woman with her own speling. If that singer can grow a beard, I can spell as I want.
Sally
As a young person, the old people I see at the concert halls in Europe seem friendly, but I really wonder if their worldview is just like the people who downvoted you, or the religious bigot down below. Perhaps you’re the person who who would say it’s fine for men to sing Schumann’s Frauenlieben!
I’ve heard male altos sing Frauenliebe und Leben. It sounded gorgeous but it was definitely a case of cognitive dissonance to watch – the love and grief was perfectly credible, but the ones about the baby rather less so.
Since Schumann based Frauenliebe und Leben on a cycle of poems written by a man, and since Schumann himself was a man presuming to write about women, it shouldn’t be overwhelming to consider that anyone with the voice could put forth a version of the song cycle. Art is queer and democratic like that.
All songs are, as in opera, make-believe. It’s about the text and the music.
Frauenliebe und Leben was premiered by Julius Stockhausen, baritone and Clara Schumann at the piano. The poetry, written from a man’s perspective the poetry is well suited to a performance featuring a baritone.
Free entry. Exit, credit cards accepted.
While I have my reservations about Ioan Holender, one thing he did right during his directorship of the Vienna State Opera is keeping this small voice overrated mediocrity at arms length.
Grotesque photo!
Transitioning?
No, she had a bad hair day.
Genesis 1:27 “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
The Liberal Arts Programming has clearly yet to figure out how many genders are there.
I once saw a tasteful encore by Bartoli on youtube. Once. Must have been decades ago.
The bible was wrong on so many accounts that it is very tricky to quote it in any context.
How very interesting. The church in my neighbourhood here in Germany says that “God’s family is large and colorful”, so if you want to join up with like-minded bigots espousing similar beliefs like you, please do move to other countries where God’s family is hateful and exclusionary
Are you not being hateful and exclusionary in telling them to move to another country?
(I am using “hateful” in its modern meaning as “thinks something different from what I think and I don’t like it.”)
What debate? What does that headline even mean?
What debate? The one that ensued after white men thought it advantageous to chop off the testicles of young boys to make them sound like female angels. That one.
She will be the whale on whose back they will all sail.
Which reminds me that her coloratura is also fake, and the voice barely audible.
So tedious. Research shows (at least in north American populations) that those identifying as transgender represent less than one percent of the general population. Why is this such a big thing??
It appears to be a big thing since it touches the gender insecurity of many people.
Mr Borstlap was speaking in his capacity of expert psychologist. Such people tend to be a bit insecure.
What’s all the hullabaloo? Maybe it is just a discussion on pants roles in the works of Rossini.
I am anti-LBGTQxyz and I think my beloved Bartoli has gone to the Dark Side, for shame.
Happily, it’s obvious that you’re standing in the light!
Are you anti every single one, taken separately, of those covered by the indefinite initialism you allude to, or is it only the lumping them all together under one initialism you object to (like using “RCSW+” to refer to the community of all Roman Catholics and all social workers plus others as well)?
Who gives a hoot-nanny, for all I care she can come in shorts if she wanted to, or like you’re about is the quality of her voice, and her professionalism.
What tiresome, and disturbing, nonsense.