What a shock it was to suddenly see Cecilia Bartoli (accompanied by pianist Lang Lang) on TV, performing the Olympics anthem at the Opening Ceremonies of the Milano-Cortina Winter Games, February 6, 2026. For many years, I’ve neither heard nor, frankly, thought about her.
It wasn’t always so.
There was a time when such neglect was psychologically impossible, as friends can attest. The following recollection was written over two decades ago, but apart from being shared with a few friends, it remained unpublished until now. It contexualizes my psychological self-diagnosis.
My übertolerant wife, divining that it was but a phase, enjoyed Friday night’s performance next to me.
La Gioiosa[1]: My Encounter with Cecilia Bartoli
Cecilia Bartoli, the mezzo-soprano superstar, is my latest obsession. It began in 1995. The occasion was a PBS special I caught by accident. The remote was in my right hand, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s fudge ice cream in my left. Coming under her spell took about five minutes.
After an hour of paralysis, my left arm alchemized into a chocolate Easter bunny.
I had not been a fan of opera up to that time, or much of one since. I had seen, heard, and read about “divas,” but never felt compelled to get closer to them. Their music wasn’t mine. But none of them ever looks the way Miss Bartoli looks when she sings. Her expression always had a way of communicating to me, “What do you mean, you’re not into this?!”
Over the years, I acquired several of her CDs, hoping to recapture that magical moment of discovery at will. That hope was not entirely misplaced. Her glorious voice is there, and it thrills. But it is disembodied, and her total power lies in how her expressive face serves as a jewel case for her voice.
Her considerable physical beauty is not that of a “cover girl.” It is not the genetic perfection of, say, the Perugian Monica Bellucci or the Sicilian Maria Grazia Cucinotta. The latter are fine actresses, but their dramatic gifts do not convey a fraction of this Roman’s explosive vivacity. Her beautiful soul supercharges her corporal assets, making one want to get close indeed.[2]
What do I know of her soul? The answer, as Bill Buckley used to say, in due course.
Not having learned in time about her Newark (September 27) and New York City (October 6) engagements (inexcusable, given my perpetual online existence), I was left with this one opportunity to rekindle the magic: she would be signing her new CD, The Art of Cecilia Bartoli, at [the long-gone] Tower Records, 66th Street and Broadway, on Monday, October 7, starting at 6:30.
I spent Friday night scouring shelves, closets, nooks, and crannies for books that were convertible into the universal medium of exchange. Having performed this ritual many times before, I didn’t believe that any remained that I could bear to part with. The quiz, “This book or her face?,” however, caused bags to be filled faster than scraps of loaves and fishes ever filled baskets. The next day, trips to several book resellers yielded $40, more than enough for the CD. I visited the Carnegie Hall box office, hoping there might be a $36 ticket left, but the show was sold out (except for a seat with an obstructed view at $58.)
Monday arrives; it’s hard to concentrate on work. A cynical spirit overtakes me.
Tower’s going to be a madhouse. She’s going to be late, or tired or, worse, a no-show. Bouncer types will hover over the signing table like bats to “keep da line movin’.” My only consolation is that I will be no worse off for having tried.
Shortly after 5:00 PM, the M66 bus propels me westward from my job on 
York and 67th to the store. I’m in Tower’s classical music room on the second floor by 5:20. People have been on line since the morning, but for all their sacrifice, they do not beat me by much: I hold perhaps the 20th place in the line. I struck up conversations with Bartoliacs who had seen her the night before at Carnegie Hall and a week earlier at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. One gentleman who had seen her perform many times tells me the atmosphere inside Carnegie was as electric as a football stadium on Super Bowl Sunday.[3] (Both contain grown men yelling at the top of their lungs.) And from the stage, after delivering three encores, she invited everyone to visit her at Tower Records tonight.
Around 6:00, loudspeakers begin to pour forth her music, heightening our sense of anticipation. “Everyone” isn’t here, and given that there is no riot-control police presence, that’s all to the good. The number of fans will grow only to about 200. Surely, I thought, at least a thousand of Tower’s Upper West Side neighbors would drop in, having seen the posters in the window all week or heard it advertised on WQXR? But, no: the line may snake around the aisles of merchandise, but it never leaves the room, let alone spills down the stairs and out the door. So much for my fear of a “madhouse.”
Meanwhile, I learn more about Miss Bartoli from Those Who Know. By all accounts, critical and popular, she is the most un-diva-like superstar in the operatic firmament.[4] Good news, but not too surprising. In a documentary about her that I recall seeing on TV about ten years ago (well before the chocolate incident), she gave off an air of endearing simplicity, honesty, and modesty (my ears, at the time still defective receptacles for her vocal gifts, could not block my perception of these virtues). What was revealed in her recent National Public Radio interview,[5] however, was not only a vastly improved command of English, but also a scholarly mind. Eighteenth-century Italian vocal music is her specialty. She regularly unearths “lost” music and records it.[6] When the interviewer pressed her on her comparison between Italian and American audiences—she said that she loves the “naïveté” of Americans because they are “not afraid to express their own sentiment”—she clarified that whereas Italians are more critical of operatic performances and think they know all there is to know about them, Americans generally have no such pretensions. More good news on which to meditate.
At precisely 6:30 P.M, Miss Bartoli emerges through a door to the right of the platform she will soon occupy. (Cynical prediction number two is shot down.)
Her casual outfit, topped by a leather jacket, is solid black. Accompanying her are two refined young adults. (Not a goombah in sight. There goes number three.) The young man, I’m told, is probably her “just in case” translator, although apparently this service is not needed tonight. The young lady who will sit next to Miss Bartoli seems to be from Decca Records.
La Gioiosa is living up to her title, rubbing her hands together eagerly, getting a lay of the land. She takes her seat and indicates to the usher (I don’t know what else to call him) that she’s ready to begin. At once, there’s a request for a photo with her, so she darts to the platform’s edge and, bending down and leaning forward somewhat awkwardly, puts her arms around two fans who remain on the store’s floor.
(The diminutive Miss Bartoli knows that if they all stand on the floor, the lens will naturally be trained on her face, and the heads of her fans will be photographically lopped off.)
As each fan-in-waiting gets their turn, I notice how relaxed her exchange with each of them is. No one is rushed. The atmosphere is charged with excitement, but there is no general frenzy.
There is, however, particular frenzy.
As my turn approaches, I gravitate from the center of the room toward the table, so her face comes more sharply and steadily into view due to fewer obstructing heads. Every expression now registers, every gesticulation, every shake of her copious, lush, black hair, rustling and swaying like a field of willows.
It may be a positive, happy occasion, but the butterflies are atwitter. Tower’s sound system is filling the room with her magnificent voice, and I’m approaching its living source. I should be relieved by the openness with which she is receiving everyone, the kisses she is getting and giving, the laughter, but I am not.
I’m not ready for prime time.
You see, before I met Bernard Lonergan, or Murray Rothbard, or Eric Voegelin, I had already read thousands of pages of their writings. So, when I finally had the opportunity to break the ice with any of these intellectual heroes, the context of their thought was familiar to me. Meeting them was not an unnerving experience.
But I have never been to an opera. I know Miss Bartoli only through a televised performance, four of her CDs (one of them for less than twenty-four hours), and several interviews. I do not understand a word of what she sings without notes. I appreciate her only at the level of raw aesthetic impact (a limitation I intend to transcend).
So, in my fiftieth year, I’m the emotional equivalent of a teenage girl about to “Meet the Beatles,” except instead of screaming hysterically, I’m melting like the Wicked Witch of the West (but in a nice way).
To the usher, however, I’m not the puddle I feel myself to be, and so instead of calling the janitor, he invites me forward. Now Miss Bartoli really comes into view. She’s beaming at me with the same ear-to-ear grin that enhances the cover of her CD, The Impatient Lover. I congeal in time to blurt out,
“I’m Tony . . .”
“Ah, Tony!,” she interrupts a nonexistent train of thought.
“. . . and I first saw you on TV back in ‘95. You held my attention as no one had before. You are my window into your world of opera . . .
“Oh, that’s wonderful!”
“. . . and I only wish I had been exposed to it in my childhood as you were. . .”
She leans forward a couple of inches. Bear in mind that the platform is only about a foot high, and her table, flush with the platform’s end, is only about 18 inches deep. So, we’re eye-to-eye, and she—this force of nature and of spirit—is drawing me in like a Star Trek tractor beam. I have her undivided attention, but I’m unable to exploit it. I wonder if it shows.
I orient the cover of The Art of Cecilia Bartoli and slide it toward her, saying something like:
“. . . I’m only a student, and I regard you as my teacher.”
“Oh, . . .” She tilts her head girlishly and takes her pen.
As she returns the CD, I spontaneously take her right hand in mine to say goodbye:
“You’ve really made a difference in my life.”
She leans forward a bit more, clasping my hand with both of hers, her eyes drilling holes in mine, and whispering:
“Arrivederci, Antonio!”
For a millisecond, I drink it all in and then turn to leave. For two minutes,
my life’s path intersected hers, and I feel blessed. The next time we meet, however, my quiver of conversational arrows will be at bursting point, for I vow to learn every public fact about her and her music.
I need to recover. I try to remember where I live, what train I take.
As I descend the escalator, however, the nonsense reverberating throughout the rest of Tower cures the amnesia, cruelly. What greets my eyes on the streets below, and in the subway I must take home, is worse than nonsense.
As I settle into my seat on the “7,” I remember my precious cargo. I remove the orange Tower bag from my briefcase and slip out the CD, which bears the proof that I am not delusional (at least, not about tonight’s encounter):
“To Tony, with Love, Cecilia Bartoli”
2026 Postscript:
When I got home, I signed the guest book on her Decca Records site:
Thank you for your gracious and warm welcome to me, an unknown fan, at Tower Records in New York tonight (Oct. 7, 2002). I told you that you became for me a window into your world, of which I am quite ignorant, and that you are my teacher.
Clichés like “You are God’s feminine voice” must sound trite after a while, but that only demonstrates the inadequacy of words to describe how your gift lifts the human spirit. For one minute, my life’s path intersected yours, and I feel very blessed. – Tony
I have no photo of her and me from that evening in 2002; the chap in the photo at the head of this post is clearly not my narrative’s human puddle; the lady is not wearing a leather jacket; the pic is from over a year later, November 11, 2003, to be exact (and so I labeled this JPEG). To that Tower meeting, I brought a camera borrowed from a co-worker (and used by a gracious Tower employee) and a manila envelope (visible on the table) containing a jar of Parmesan cheese, an item that, I had read, she longs for when travelling but can’t easily get. She was equally surprised and delighted.
And she autographed my copy of her The Salieri Album:
Between those two meetings, there was another, longer encounter. It was after a New York Times interview at on the Hunter College campus where, backstage, near the emergency exit doors that open out onto 68th Street (I can still visualize them), I stood nearby as she spoke to fans in fluent French and English. Unfortunately, I didn’t write up this episode. All I can distinctly recall is that when I handed her yet another CD (which I’m trying to locate) to sign and, sure that she didn’t know me from Adam, I humbly reminded her, “I’m Tony.”
Momentarily halting her inscription, she lifted her head, looked me squarely in the eyes, smiled, and emitted a breathy “I know.”
Notes
[1] “[P]erhaps the single most heartening and loveable Bartoli characteristic is the generosity of her response to a live audience, her effortless ability to make natural, direct contact with it, and her gift of spreading joy through her singing. . . . In the words of one concert hall director, ‘She has this wonderful quality of conveying all this enjoyment. People come out with smiles on their faces.’ In the world of ‘classical’ singers, female stars of the order of Callas and Sutherland have tended to be given Italian sobriquets during their careers, in recognition of their special powers—Callas was La Divina, Sutherland La Stupenda. In the Loppert household, Cecilia Bartoli has long been known as La Gioiosa—the joyous one—and I now wholeheartedly offer the nickname for wider usage.” Max Loppert, The Art of Cecilia Bartoli, Decca, 2002. “She came. She thrilled. She entirely, completely and absolutely conquered. . . . Take away the agility, take away the stage exuberance, and you still have this gossamer, spinning, silvery ribbon of sound; this is the heart of her magic.” The Star-Ledger, September 29 2002. “Cecilia Bartoli bustled purposefully onstage last night to open the FleetBoston Celebrity Series season. Her smile was spontaneous and radiant, her personality refreshingly direct and natural, and she scooped up a couple of thousand hearts even before she started to sing. And she held those hearts fast for the next 2-1/4 hours. Her dress was crimson interwoven with purple, like her voice, and like the ripe plum her voice suggests. Bartoli is sublime. . . She ravishes the ear with the play of colors, of dynamics, of textures. . . she touches the soul with the emotion she invests in every word. She kept our hearts when she left the stage, but no one minded because she had given us hers.” Richard Dyer, “Bartoli’s Soprano Steals Hearts,” The Boston Globe, October 5, 2002. “Cecilia Bartoli’s fascination with Baroque and early Classical opera is particularly welcome, not only because the music itself deserves a reviving jolt from a superstar with a sincere interest but also because she sings this music with such a sense of excitement and joy.” Allan Kozinn, “Reviving Jolt for the Baroque,” New York Times, October 10, 2002.
[2] As a Philadelphia-area opera critic with whom I’ve been corresponding about Miss Bartoli put it: “She’s also very sexy. I did her first major U.S. interview some ten years ago. I asked her if there was ‘anybody special’ in her life, she looked at me meaningfully and said, ‘If there were only one, I wouldn’t be modern, would I?’” E-mail to author, October 8, 2002.
[3] Electricity: “[T]here are times when her singing becomes a welter of vocal color, grace notes, and other ornaments that obscure the pitch. Even that isn’t the problem it would be with other singers because such moments deliver shocks of exhilaration not unlike sticking your finger in a light socket. No doubt that partly explains why she had listeners jumping to their feet in the middle of the first half . . . .” David Patrick Stearns, “Bartoli Makes Philadelphia Debut,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 1 2002.
[4] “I caught her this summer in Zurich, doing Il Turco in Italia, and during the first-act finale, when she’s supposed to be having a bitch fight with her romantic rival, Bartoli rolled over on the stage floor and bit this woman in the butt. I wouldn’t have believe it if I hadn’t seen it.” Philly-area critic, e-mail to author, October 7, 2002.
[5] September 25, 2002. You may access this interview here. It also provides tantalizing video clips. Another wonderful interview, from November 9, 1998, given to PBS’s “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” may be heard or read here.
[6] Loppert again: “The [Christoph Willibald] Gluck disc [of arias], indeed, is unlike any other ever made, entirely devoted as it is to rediscoveries from the neglected Italian operas, most of which he wrote before Orfeo ed Euridice. This thrillingly bold venture into the unknown, executed with total commitment, has achieved not just triumphant results but long-term consequences that cannot be overstated: in its wake, all the operatic history books with their repetition of ‘received wisdom’ about the insignificance of these works in Gluck’s oeuvre relative to his ‘reform operas’ may have to be rewritten.” Ibid.