Despite being hailed as one of the best sopranos in the world, Cecilia Bartoli is ever obliging to her fans. Chen Jie catches up with the singer on what makes her tick and her future plans.

Early Tuesday evening, Wangfujing Street was as crowded as usual. In front of Sun Dong An Plaza, a group of young students was surrounding a petite dark brown-haired middle-aged lady and singing Happy Birthday. Casually dressed, she looked just like any other Western tourist, but her voice betrayed her.

She is Cecilia Bartoli, one of the best sopranos in the world today - some call her the Madonna of the opera world.

Those young people were conservatory students who attended her recital at the National Center for the Performing Arts on Monday night. They were celebrating one of their friend's birthday when they spotted her in the street. They asked whether she could join them to sing a birthday song.

Opera diva Cecilia Bartoli is touring the Chinese mainland for the first time. She says her Beijing concert was a "unique" experience and promises to return to collaborate with Chinese musicians. Photos provided to China Daily

Italian soprano Cecilia Bartoli loves baroque and pre-romantic music because she began her career with Rossini, Mozart and Handel.

That's a bit crazy. A diva sings with a group of strange students on the street corner! But Bartoli said, "Why not?"

"Because I love their spontaneity, their warmness. When you walk in the street and think it's a big city and people might be stressful ... they work from 6 in the morning till midnight, but still have this positive attitude. That is a miracle. I want to learn from them."

It was not the first time the Italian soprano has said "why not?" to her Chinese fans.

Monday night after her recital, she spent an hour signing autographs for her fans until 11:20 pm. The staff from NCPA said very few artists would allocate such a long time to signing autographs after a three-hour concert.

She did not only bury herself in the signing but also took time to say hello to everybody and even talked about the albums with them. She did not only sign her name but added two little "hearts".

One woman, who was leaving with her signed album happily, was called back by Bartoli because she drew one "heart" instead of two.

After the albums were sold out, dozens of fans only had tickets or brochures in their hands, and she signed them all.

That is not all.

A young man went to her and said he would be going for an audition the next day and hoped Bartoli could hear him sing. His request took her by surprise and she asked, "Do you mean you want to sing here and now?" Her agent tried to say no. But looking at the young man's earnest eyes, the diva said, "Why not?"

She was on such a high after the concert that she told China Daily, "The energy I got from the concert will kill me forever."

"It's unique, unique," she said of the concerts two days later at the Peninsular Hotel Beijing. She was still so excited that she could not find the words to describe her feelings.

Bartoli got a bad cold and fever before she traveled to Beijing.

"But I just so have wanted to perform here for a long time. I did not want to cancel the concert. "For me it is important to discover the country, to meet the young audience here."

Even though she had high expectations for the concert, she did not expect the concert to turn out like a "rock concert".

The audience started to scream when she walked onto the stage. They brought down the house after every song. She sang three encores but still could not calm the audience's thunderous applause and had to sing Rossini's Canzonetta spagnuola again. She played the tambourine, danced and snapped, just like a flamingo queen. Rossini's Spanish tune came alive in her performance.

Casually dressed, very easy-going and talkative like a friend in real life, the diva looks every bit a star onstage.

"You have to be noble and serious onstage, that is the art you do. This is the responsibility for an artist to share emotion, to be able to convey emotion. This is what music is about," she says.

When she sang Bizet's La Coccinelle, her voice imitated the sound of beetles.

"That's one reason I love baroque music. You need a flexible voice, like instruments. The voice has to play with the instruments. In baroque music, sometimes you have to make duet with trumpet, or with flute, with oboe or with violin so you play your voice like an instrument. Sometimes, you have to imitate nature. It's fascinating."

Bartoli loves baroque and pre-romantic music, because she started her career with Rossini, Mozart and Handel and then she wanted to know who influenced Mozart, Rossini and wanted to learn the root.

Bartoli has done quite a few operas but never Carmen.

"A good Carmen is very rare to see. Carmen is a very dark piece. In some recent productions, I saw Carmen with flowers here (gestures a flower in mouth), dancing flamingo and smoking cigarette. I think Carmen is more than that. I would love to do Carmen one day with a director who understands the dark side of Carmen," she says.

Obviously, Bartoli is not a simple diva with golden voice and gorgeous performance onstage, but full of interesting ideas. That's why the Salzburg Whitsun Festival chose her to be the artistic director in 2012, on a five-year contract. She is the first woman to hold the position.

"For me it's wonderful to create projects for other musicians. And more important is we must have a theme. The festival is over a long weekend. We have different performances but all follow a red line. It's a huge success. We doubled the sales of tickets this year."

She reveals that next year's festival will be dedicated to Rossini. There will be comic opera Cenerentola and tragic opera Otello and some sacred music. There will also be a gala in the theme "from yesterday to tomorrow", with great tenors including Bergonzi and Carreras and young singers singing together.

She also plans a big dinner concert with great food, "because maestro Rossini was a gourmet. Music and food were two big things for him".

She says Rossini was a very funny man. He only cried twice. Once was when he heard Paganini playing the violin and the other was when he had a picnic with friends, a beautiful turkey accidentally fell into the river nearby.

This is the first time the diva visited the Chinese mainland. She admits that as a Roman, she considers other countries and cities young.

But after spending a few days in Beijing, she found it is really an old civilization and there is so much ancient culture.

She is looking forward to a concert tour with Chinese conductor Tang Muhai in France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Iceland in November.

She will perform in Guangzhou on Sunday and Shanghai on Oct 19.

The diva took the high-speed train from Beijing to Guangzhou. It took her nine hours but she said she loves trains.

"If not in a rush, I prefer riding on a train to see more of the country and to experience more."

Trains are also another idea in her mind. She wants to create a "train of harmony", from Russia, running through Siberia to China, inviting musicians to perform on the train and in towns along the rail across Europe and Asia, to see different reactions of audiences from different regions. And televise the whole long journey.

"I should come back to China early with this project," the diva promises.

Contact the writer at chenjie@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily USA 10/11/2013 page7)