Baroque sex crime
Cecilia Bartoli goes castrati in 'Sacrificium'
Published 01/14/2010
by Erin Blackwell
http://www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=music&article=682On the cover of her new album Sacrificium , Cecilia Bartoli's head has been Photoshopped onto an antique marble torso complete with fissures but lacking tits, whose stone genitals have been knocked off. Hmmm. Cecilia, what are you trying to tell us?
The diva-cum-avid musical archeologist is projecting herself into the body of a castrato, the male instrument produced in Enlightenment Europe to replace the women's voices banned by papal edict in 1668. "On pain of severe punishment," decreed Pope Clement IX, "no female person shall deliberately learn music in order to be employed as a singer." God, the church has a lot to answer for.
