Art & Creativity Quote by Cecilia Bartoli

Bartoli’s line lands with the disarming plainness of someone who’s spent a lifetime in rooms where the air itself feels expensive. “I like to make music, and I like to share music” is almost stubbornly unglamorous: no mythology of suffering, no genius posturing, just appetite and generosity. That simplicity is the point. In a culture that rewards artists for branding their pain and inflating their persona, she insists on craft as pleasure and performance as exchange.

The phrase “This is also a gift” does quiet double duty. On the surface, it’s gratitude: she recognizes her voice, training, and career as something received as much as earned. Underneath, it’s a corrective to the transactional logic of the modern music economy. Streaming metrics, ticket tiers, and “content” churn train us to treat music as product; Bartoli reframes it as offering. The “also” matters: making and sharing are already gifts, but she’s widening the frame to include the capacity itself - the ability to feel compelled toward music, to stay curious, to communicate.

Coming from a musician whose reputation rests on virtuosity and deep archival intelligence, the modesty reads less like self-effacement than like ethics. It suggests a responsibility: if music is a gift, you don’t hoard it, you steward it. In Bartoli’s world, artistry isn’t just what happens onstage; it’s the decision to keep the channel open between private devotion and public joy.