Creativity Quote by Cecilia Bartoli

"I am a person of the 18th century" is a sly act of self-branding that also reads like a manifesto. Coming from Cecilia Bartoli, it’s not nostalgia cosplay; it’s a way of placing herself in a lineage where virtuosity, risk, and theatricality were the job description. The 18th century is the age of Handel divas, castrati superstardom, and opera as public sport. Claiming it signals allegiance to a performance culture that prized rhetorical bite and emotional extremity over tasteful restraint.

The intent is practical as much as poetic. Bartoli built a career on reviving forgotten arias, re-centering composers and singers who got edited out by later canon-making, and treating “authenticity” less as a museum rulebook than as a toolkit for immediacy. Her phrase quietly rejects the smooth, standardized vocal “international style” that dominated much of the 20th century. She’s telling you her priorities: ornamentation as argument, text as drama, timbre as character.

The subtext also contains a strategic provocation. In a classical world that often rewards deference, “I am of the 18th century” is permission to be extravagant: to take liberties, to seduce, to show off, to treat the score as a living script rather than a sacred object. It’s a way of making early music feel less like homework and more like a high-stakes night out.