Cecilia Bartoli & Lang Lang

The mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli is one of the world’s leading classical artists with an outstanding and ongoing stage career that, so far, spans more than 30 years. Her work is inspired by her passion for re-discovering little-known music, and her profound interest in historically-informed performance practice. Her large-scale projects, which embrace various art forms, have brought her international recognition and led to prestigious managerial positions in Salzburg and Monte Carlo. A role model for future generations, Cecilia Bartoli can truly be said to have made musical history. Cecilia Bartoli always brings key aspects of her personality to her performances and projects: her musicianship, intellectual imagination and keen sense of theatre, together with her charisma, depth of feeling and great personal warmth. Born in Rome and educated by her mother, the singing teacher Silvana Bazzoni, Cecilia Bartoli was first discovered by Daniel Barenboim, Herbert von Karajan and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Each of the three helped to shape her fast-developing international career in a different way. Soon she began to perform with other leading conductors and prestigious orchestras in all the great opera houses and concert halls of North America, Europe, the Far East and Australia, and at many famous festivals. Her innovative investigations of neglected music have become a hallmark of her career, and have led to extensive concert tours, best-selling records, spectacular staged productions, original film projects and multimedia events. Since 2012 Cecilia Bartoli has been artistic director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. At the start of 2023 she also took up the post of director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo: the first woman to hold this position in the company’s history. In 2016 her orchestra Les Musiciens du Prince – Monaco was founded in Monte Carlo under the patronage of HSH Prince Albert II and HRH Princess Caroline of Hanover. Cecilia performs regularly with this period-instrument orchestra both at their homebase in Monte Carlo and on large-scale tours throughout Europe. Cecilia Bartoli’s repertoire focuses on the music of Rossini, Mozart, Handel and their contemporaries. Her extensive research into the vocal characteristics and roles of such legendary singers as Farinelli, Maria Malibran and Giuditta Pasta has also encouraged her to explore areas previously considered atypical for mezzo-sopranos. Milestones of her career include the first ever production of Rossini’s Cenerentola at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1997, the legendary Vivaldi Album which has sold millions of copies since its release in 1999, the Paris concert marathon on Maria Malibran’s 200th birthday in 2008, her radical new approach to Bellini’s Norma in 2013 – which led to a scholarly reconstruction of the original score – and, in 2022, a rapturously received week dedicated to Rossini at the Vienna State Opera. The Cecilia Bartoli – Music Foundation was created as part of Cecilia’s philanthropic work. It aims to establish collaborations with talented young musicians, and to bring classical music to a wider audience. Among other projects, the Foundation has set up a new record label in collaboration with Decca, mentored by Bartoli. Thanks to this initiative, wonderful artists such as Javier Camarena and Varduhi Abrahamyan have been able to record their first studio albums. Honorary doctorates, five Grammy Awards, more than a dozen ECHO Klassik and BRIT awards, the Polar Music Prize, the Léonie Sonning Music Prize, the Herbert von Karajan Music Prize and many other awards highlight Cecilia Bartoli’s importance in the world of culture and music. In this context, Europa Nostra – the European Voice of Civil Society Committed to Cultural Heritage – appointed Cecilia as their president. She took up this position for an initial term of five years in 2022.

Lang Lang is a leading figure in classical music today – as a pianist, educator and philanthropist he has become one of the world’s most influential and committed ambassadors for the arts in the 21st century. Equally happy playing for billions of viewers at the 2008 Olympic Opening Ceremony in Beijing or just for a few hundred children in the public schools, he is a master of communicating through music. Heralded by the New York Times as “the hottest artist on the classical music planet”, Lang Lang plays sold-out concerts all over the world. He has formed ongoing collaborations with conductors including Sir Simon Rattle, Gustavo Dudamel, Daniel Barenboim and Christoph Eschenbach and performs with all the world’s top orchestras. Lang Lang is known for thinking outside the box and frequently steps into different musical worlds. His performances at the GRAMMY Awards with Metallica, Pharrell Williams or jazz legend Herbie Hancock were watched by millions of viewers. For about a decade Lang Lang has contributed to musical education worldwide. In 2008 he founded the Lang Lang International Music Foundation aimed at cultivating tomorrow’s top pianists, championing music education at the forefront of technology, and building a young audience through live music experiences. In 2013 Lang Lang was designated by the Secretary General of the United Nations as a Messenger of Peace focusing on global education.     Lang Lang started playing the piano aged three, and gave his first public recital before the age of five. He entered Beijing’s Central Music Conservatory aged nine, and won First Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians at 13. He subsequently went to Philadelphia to study with legendary pianist Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music. He was seventeen when his big break came, substituting for André Watts at the Gala of the Century, playing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Christoph Eschenbach: he became an overnight sensation and the invitations started to pour in. Lang Lang’s boundless drive to attract new audiences to classical music has brought him tremendous recognition: he was presented with the 2010 Crystal Award in Davos and was picked as one of the 250 Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum. He is also the recipient of honorary doctorates from the Royal College of Music, the Manhattan School of Music and New York University. In December 2011 he was honoured with the highest prize awarded by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China and received the highest civilian honours in Germany (Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany) and France (Medal of the Order of Arts and Letters). In 2016 Lang Lang was invited to the Vatican to perform for Pope Francis. He has also performed for numerous other international dignitaries, including four US presidents and monarchs from many nations.