Cecilia Bartoli, Gyorgy Fischer - Arie antiche: Se tu m'ami (1992)

The aria anticha has at last shaken off any remaining Cinderella rags, and been swept off to the party. Cecilia Bartoli, not surprisingly, has provided the vocal finery which reveals the true nature of these songs: they are not made to be confined to warming up exercises or to the singing studio, but to release their own little emotional vignettes in a voice simply delighting in what it is dared to do.
The voice almost laughs its way up the scale in Gia il sole dal Gange, and revels in Spesso vibra per suo gioco, as Scarlatti's wordplay tickles the larynx. Bartoli makes one believe that hers is exactly the quality of voice for which the melody of Caro mio ben was first heard and written: tasting the colour of each passing register, essentially youthful, yet with a dark underside of period melancholy.
For the two Caldara songs, Bartoli focuses on the voice as wind instrument, living in the air moving through their languid legato. This changes to a more austere, matt surface for the Caccini. This way of drawing out the essential character of each song by putting her own imprint on it is quintessential Bartoli. For Scarlatti's Se Florindo e fedele she moves from coyness to hauteur in her ever richer low register, as if she were in the midst of a neo-classical pastoral. Her dialogue with the piano is particularly telling here: Gyorgy Fischer's playing is a delight, making even the most trying passages of manner and mannerism ever-vigilant, never matter-of-fact.
The rhythmic muscle of these arie is toned up considerably by Bartoli. In Lotti's Pur dicesti she tugs against the jaunty accompaniment and teases the melody with rubato and ornamentation which never loses sight of its contour. The old war-horse of Se tu m'ami is turned into a lively pony, with its frisky tempo changes matched by the reveilles of Bartoli's final ''Vittoria!'''