Could new Pope answer Cecilia Bartoli's prayers?

While researching Mission, her recent Agostino Steffani recording, Cecilia Bartoli discovered many of the composer's documents were taken to the Vatican on his death. Frustratingly, she couldn't get her hands on any of them. Speaking to journalist Ljubisa Tosic recently, she said "I definitely wasn't prepared to wait until the doors of the Vatican opened to me. The CD would probably still not have appeared." So she completed her Steffani investigations without a visit to the Holy See.

A planned concert for Pope Benedict, called off when La Ceci rightly refused to answer an overly-personal question, may not have helped her cause.

However her Vatican dreams are not yet over: "I believe there are still scores by Monteverdi undiscovered in the Vatican but it is not easy to get access to the documents. You need the right connections and as yet I don't have them".

Could opera-loving Pope Frank turn out to be Cecilia's inside man?

Comments

[Shoegirl]

As a former Monteverdi scholar, she's quite possibly right, Monteverdi scholars have been saying this for years. It's tantalising. It would be a nice move in a spirit of openness. I've always admired Bartoli's scholarliness.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

The Steffani album is called Mission as your advert below shows. Sacrifice was the album devoted to sacredmusic for castrati of more or less the same period. It would certainly be wonderful if she and scholars found lost Monteverdi in the Vatican. Maybe the rest of Arianna is there. Now that would be something, Cecilia in the modern premiere of Arianna.
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Intermezzo replies - Thank you for the correction - can you tell I don't buy CDs?

By the way, where can you see an advert? I certainly didn't put one in!

[ctussaud]

Vatican Library begins to open to digital users

http://www.infotoday.eu/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=87500

[SJT]

But why would Monteverdi's lost operas - at least twelve of them - be in Rome at all? They were all writen for Mantua, and the original manuscripts and copiest's parts perished there when the invading Austrians set fire to the court library. I would have thought that the better hope would rest with the equally shrouded and secretive Venetian state archives, where there at least might be a chance Monteverdi took some copies of his works with him and which perhaps have been quietly gathering dust, uncatalogued, for nigh-on four centuries.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Oh sorry - it was the record cover illustration to your Cecilia's Exorcise Class link, below the current thread.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Um, the Vatican has a bit of a reputation for acquisitiveness. Yes, they were written for Mantua and Venice, but we know that some of them travelled. One of sources for Il ritorno d'Ulisse is a performing score linked to a Naples production, which, I think, is one of the reasons why authorship of the opera was disputed for a long time.

[Stephen]

There is nothing 'secretive' about the Venetian state archives nor are they 'shrouded'. They stand clearly marked as such on the outside by the Frari church in Venice and you may consult the printed catalogues and order anything you wish so long as the soprintendente approves your request to use the archive (usually on the basis of a letter from an academic). The only restrictions are on numbers of items requested per day (only two or three these days) and on items on high shelves (Saturdays only, for health and safety reasons I'm told). In fact, I found it harder to gain access to the British Library.

[SJT]

Entirely the reverse of my experience. I was a student in Venice for well over three years, spread over two different degrees, and am very familiar indeed with the Archivo dello Stato round the Frari's arse-end. It was three years of solid grief and obfuscation from one end to the other, to the point that I took to having stuff copied and transferred to the Cini or Quirini Stampaglia rather than go in there. Any amount of their holdings are not properly catalogued at all, which is why bits of Vivaldi keep popping up from time to time. Monte may yet emerge..

Whereas the BL - in which I researched both my dissertation and a biography - were unfailingly helpful and efficient, not adjectives I would ever use about the Venetians.

[SJT]

You're referring to L'incoronazione di Poppea. And any amount of it, including the the most famous bit, is indeed not by Monteverdi at all.