Love Quote by Cecilia Bartoli

Bartoli’s “mountains or… sea” reads less like a lifestyle flex than a quiet manifesto against the myth of the disembodied diva. Opera culture loves to pretend the voice floats above the person, pure artistry unbothered by lungs, muscles, sleep, weather, gravity. She punctures that fantasy with almost stubborn plainness: walking, biking, being outside. No mystique, no incense. Just a body doing what bodies do.

The intent is practical, but the subtext is pointed: technique isn’t only drilled in a studio; it’s maintained, protected, and energized by a whole physical life. When she says “The body is extremely important,” she’s not offering wellness platitudes. She’s asserting a professional truth singers are sometimes trained to hide: breath support is physiology, stamina is cardiovascular, and “energy in your singing” is literally energy. Nature here functions as both training and reset, a way to regulate the nervous system and reclaim agency from the punishing schedule of travel, rehearsal, performance, critique.

Context matters. Bartoli’s career has been built on precision, athletic agility, and fearless repertory choices; those feats don’t come from inspiration alone. Her phrasing also carries a gentle rebuke to an industry that has long policed performers’ bodies aesthetically while ignoring their health. She reframes the body not as an object to be judged, but as an instrument to be cared for. The result is a modern artist’s ethic: sustainability over martyrdom, embodiment over myth.