Creativity Quote by Cecilia Bartoli

Bartoli’s line lands like a compliment, then quietly exposes the problem it’s trying to solve. “It’s nice” is disarmingly mild, the kind of phrase people use when they know they’re entering a loaded conversation and don’t want to set off alarms. But the real tell is “a great female composer” and the phrase “add her color.” In classical music programming, women composers are too often treated as special selections rather than default repertoire. Bartoli is celebrating inclusion while also revealing how rare it still is that a woman’s work is framed as simply “a great composer” in the first place.

The intent is practical: justify a programming choice to audiences, presenters, and institutions that can be skittish about anything outside the canon. Bartoli, a star vocalist with real clout, is effectively saying: this isn’t charity; it’s enrichment. “Color” is doing double duty. It’s a musical word - orchestration, timbre, contrast - and a cultural one, implying variety and freshness in a menu that’s historically been beige. That framing makes the inclusion feel additive, not corrective, which is strategically smart in a conservative ecosystem.

The subtext, though, is that representation is still being sold as seasoning. A woman composer is positioned as a hue to be introduced into an existing palette, not as a primary architect of the palette itself. Bartoli’s diplomacy reflects the moment: institutions want the optics of broader inclusion, but audiences have been trained to hear the canon as neutral, and everything else as “extra.”