On the beat: Bartoli thrives on disc -- but not at the Met; Millo finds plenty in common with Adriana Lecouvreur.

Most of US prefer not to look, as the classical recording industry continues its horrifying downward spiral. Most of the artists who have managed to hang on to their big contracts are the ones deemed to have crossover potential, and there's shockingly little going on in the way of complete opera production. When labels do spend the money, what you often get is something as misguided as NIKOLAUS HARNON-COURT's thin-blooded Aida. Yet somehow, at Decca, CECILIA BARTOLI continues to do interesting work. Even more amazing, her early-music recordings enjoy robust sales; Bartoli's latest disc, Dreams & Fables: Gluck Italian Arias, already has sold 300,000 copies. She conceived of it as a follow-up to her highly successful Vivaldi AIbum." I wanted to focus on Gluck," says Bartoli," because he is the composer at the end of the Baroque era who really started Classicism. We can say he was the grandfather of Mozart. It's in this transition period, which is very exciting -- we leave behind the structure of Baroque and start a new structure. And he worked with [librettist Pietro] Metastasio, so that the music and the text have more or less the same level of quality. Sometimes you have a great composer and not especially wonderful text. I have declined to sing some music because the poetry isn't good enough."

Few artists are as effective as Bartoli in knowing how to build an aria dramatically. On Dreams & Fables, she achieves startlingly spontaneous effects in selections from Gluck's La Clemenza di Tito, Ezio and Antigono. Nothing is ever faked, nothing is ever unmusical. Part of her secret is that she grasps the importance of recitativo accompagnato. "Gluck starts this era, in a way," she says. "He creates the atmosphere of the piece with the recitativo. It's the key to the mood of the aria and serves the music that is coming. If you miss that, you miss a big part of the situation." Working with manuscripts of music that has never been published is an immense amount of work, but Bartoli claims not to be daunted by it." Another project I would like to do is music of Piccinni and Monteverdi," she says." And I would like to do a recording of music made famous by the great castrati of the eighteenth century. On the Gluck recording, the arias of Clemenza were sung [in the eighteenth century] by the great castrato Caffarelli. I would like to do a recording of these works, by many different composers."

Bartoli's schedule is occupied chiefly with concerts and recitals. Opera-lovers are going to have a harder time finding her, although she is scheduled to sing II Turco in Italia at Zurich Opera in April and May. Regrettably, Bartoli has no future commitments at the Met. Since she withdrew from a planned production of La Sonnambula (about which little has been heard lately), she and the company have yet to agree on other repertory. Her New York fans are the losers: what with opera houses planning so far in advance, it easily could be five years from now before there's another opportunity to hear Bartoli at the Met.

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