No prima donna since Callas and Sutherland has excited such extreme reactions in audiences and critics as Cecilia Bartoli. This pair of DVDs will delight her admirers and perhaps confound some of the detractors. Bartoli’s evident, and infectious, enthusiasm and delight in studying the career of Maria Malibran is sketched in Michael Sturminger’s documentary, in which we follow her to many of the theatres and streets associated with the diva beloved of the Romantic imagination. In libraries and museums we are able to view some of the scores used by Malibran in her brief and stormy progress through the capitals of Europe. From the opening shots of a gondola in Venice passing through the Rio Malibran, to the final glimpse of her tomb in Brussels, one gets some idea of the impact she made on audiences in the 1820s and ’30s.

Bartoli’s concert, in the spectacular surroundings of Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana, includes many of the same arias that were on her CD “Maria” (12/07). With the encouragement of a wildly enthusiastic audience, she surpasses those performances, and in two Rossini items, the Willow Song from Otello and the final Rondo from La Cenerentola (neither on the CD), one feels that she is indeed invoking the shade of Manuel García’s daughter. “Nacqui’ all’affano” benefits from Bartoli’s study of Malibran’s own variations for Cenerentola. As for the final encore, “Yo que soy contrabandista” from García’s opera El poeta calculista, in which Bartoli is accompanied by guitar, castanets, and “clappers”, it has to be heard and seen to be appreciated: serious fun.