Cecilia Bartoli

Cecilia Bartoli's first teacher was her mother. Both of her parents were professional singers in the chorus of the Rome Opera, and Silvana Bazzoni trained her daughter's voice from childhood. As a teenager Cecilia was more interested in flamenco dancing, but at nineteen she appeared on an Italian television talent show singing Rossini, and conductors began to notice. Within a few years she was working with Herbert von Karajan and Daniel Barenboim.

She was born on June 4, 1966, in Rome, at 8:15 in the morning, the time on her birth record. Her Sun is in Gemini, with Mars also in Gemini, both in the eleventh house. Gemini is the sign of agility, speed and quick movement, and it suits a mezzo-soprano famous for coloratura, the dazzling, rapid runs of notes that Rossini and the baroque composers wrote for virtuoso singers. Bartoli's runs are delivered with a percussive speed that few singers can match.

Venus in Taurus sits in her tenth house of career and reputation. Venus is the planet of beauty and art, and Taurus is the sign traditionally associated with the throat and the voice. A Taurus Venus in the tenth is about as clear an astrological signature for a celebrated singing career as one could ask for.

Cancer is her rising sign, and Jupiter in Cancer lies in her twelfth house. Cancer brings warmth, emotion and a strong attachment to tradition and the past, and Bartoli has spent much of her career unearthing forgotten music. Her 1999 recording of rarely performed Vivaldi arias became a best-seller, an unusual achievement for a classical album, and she went on to champion neglected music by Salieri, Gluck and others, as well as the legacy of the nineteenth-century diva Maria Malibran.

Her Moon is in Sagittarius in the sixth house, a placement associated with enthusiasm for daily work. Sagittarius is exuberant and adventurous, and on stage Bartoli is known for her joyful, physical engagement with music, her face and body animated by every phrase.

Saturn in Pisces also falls in her tenth house, giving her public career a quality of discipline and long effort. She has won several Grammy Awards and has been one of the best-selling classical artists of her generation.

Uranus and Pluto, both in Virgo, sit in her third house, which concerns study and research. Virgo is meticulous, and Bartoli has worked like a scholar, digging through archives for scores and researching performance practice before recording.

In 2012 she became artistic director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, and in 2023 she took over as director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, the first woman to lead the company. She is married to the Swiss baritone Oliver Widmer. The Gemini Sun gave her the speed; the Taurus Venus at the summit of her chart gave her the voice.