4th quarter: Bears 26, Lions 24

The Chicago Bears did their part Sunday, beating the Detroit Lions 26-24. Now they need help from the Green Bay Packers, who must beat the Minnesota Vikings to send the Bears into the playoffs.

The victory didn't come easily. The Lions cut the Bears' lead to 26-24 on a 9-yard Matthew Stafford pass to Brian Robiskie with 6:55 to play in the game. The nine-play, 80-yard drive was kept alive by an unnecessary roughness penalty on linebacker Lance Briggs for a hit on a sliding Stafford.

Olindo Mare's fourth field goal -- this one from 20 yards out -- boosted the Bears' lead to 26-17 with 10:47 left. It capped an 11-play, 59-yard drive that took 4:25 off the clock.

Mare's 28-yard field goal increased the Bears' lead to 23-17 with 1:50 left in the third quarter. The score was set up when safety Major Wright came up with the Lions' fourth turnover of the day, recovering a Mikel Leshoure fumble at the Detroit 13.

Detroit fought back and trimmed the Bears' once-commanding lead to 20-17 with a 10-yard TD pass from Matthew Stafford to Will Heller at the 6:35 mark of the third quarter.

The Lions cut the Bears' lead to 20-10 just before halftime, as Stafford hit Kris Durham on a 25-yard TD pass with 12 seconds to play before intermission.

Mare's 40-yard field goal extended the Bears' lead to 20-3 with 1:49 to play.

Tim Jennings made his league-high ninth interception with 2:38 left in the half to put the Bears' offense back in business inside Lions territory.

Matt Forte's 1-yard touchdown run -- after a pass-interference call against Detroit drawn by Brandon Marshall -- gave the Bears a 17-3 lead with 3:26 to go in the first half.

The Bears' defense delivered again to set up the score. Israel Idonije knocked the ball from quarterback Matthew Stafford's hand and Julius Peppers recovered on the Lions' 10-yard line.

Mare's 33-yard field goal gave the Bears a 10-3 lead with 2:59 left in the first quarter. Joe Anderson forced a fumble on the kickoff after the Bears' first score and Eric Weems recovered, setting up Mare's kick.

Mare blew a chance to extend the lead, missing a 43-yard attempt wide right with just under five minutes remaining in the half.

The Bears grabbed a 7-3 lead when Earl Bennett caught a screen pass from Jay Cutler and took it 60 yards for a touchdown with 4:33 left in the first quarter.

The Lions struck first, with Jason Hanson connecting on a 44-yard field goal for a 3-0 Detroit lead with 5:54 to go in the quarter. The kick came after replay overturned a fumble that had been ruled on Stafford and recovered by the Bears.

The Bears' offense started well, with Cutler hitting receiver Alshon Jeffery for a 55-yard gain on their first play. But the drive sputtered and the Bears were forced to punt.

The Bears have been to the playoffs three times under coach Lovie Smith, with the last playoff appearance coming in 2010.

General manager Phil Emery had praise for Smith while speaking before the game on WBBM-AM (780).

"Great team-first person," Emery said of Smith. "He's done an outstanding job coaching the Bears."

As to whether Smith must reach the playoffs to retain his job, Emery said, "When you're evaluating players, you're always looking for body of work. No different when you're evaluating coaches.

"It's is the full season, and the whole body of work. ... It's about steady progress toward our goals, which is to win championships.''

As for needing help from Green Bay to reach the playoffs, Emery said, "We're rooting against Minnesota. ... We're not rooting for Green Bay."
 
fmitchell@tribune.com

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‘The Hobbit’ stays atop box office for third week

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” continues to rule them all at the box office, staying on top for a third-straight week with nearly $ 33 million.

The Warner Bros. fantasy epic from director Peter Jackson, based on the J.R.R. Tolkien novel, has made $ 222.7 million domestically alone.

Two big holiday movies — and potential awards contenders — also had strong openings. Quentin Tarantino‘s spaghetti Western-blaxploitation mash-up “Django Unchained” came in second place for the weekend with $ 30.7 million. The Weinstein Co. revenge epic, starring Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz, has earned $ 64 million since its Christmas Day opening.

And in third place with $ 28 million was the sweeping, all-singing “Les Miserables.” The Universal Pictures musical starring Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway has made $ 67.5 million since debuting on Christmas.

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Well: Exercise and the Ever-Smarter Human Brain

Anyone whose resolve to exercise in 2013 is a bit shaky might want to consider an emerging scientific view of human evolution. It suggests that we are clever today in part because a million years ago, we could outrun and outwalk most other mammals over long distances. Our brains were shaped and sharpened by movement, the idea goes, and we continue to require regular physical activity in order for our brains to function optimally.

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

The role of physical endurance in shaping humankind has intrigued anthropologists and gripped the popular imagination for some time. In 2004, the evolutionary biologists Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard and Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah published a seminal article in the journal Nature titled “Endurance Running and the Evolution of Homo,” in which they posited that our bipedal ancestors survived by becoming endurance athletes, able to bring down swifter prey through sheer doggedness, jogging and plodding along behind them until the animals dropped.

Endurance produced meals, which provided energy for mating, which meant that adept early joggers passed along their genes. In this way, natural selection drove early humans to become even more athletic, Dr. Lieberman and other scientists have written, their bodies developing longer legs, shorter toes, less hair and complicated inner-ear mechanisms to maintain balance and stability during upright ambulation. Movement shaped the human body.

But simultaneously, in a development that until recently many scientists viewed as unrelated, humans were becoming smarter. Their brains were increasing rapidly in size.

Today, humans have a brain that is about three times larger than would be expected, anthropologists say, given our species’ body size in comparison with that of other mammals.

To explain those outsized brains, evolutionary scientists have pointed to such occurrences as meat eating and, perhaps most determinatively, our early ancestors’ need for social interaction. Early humans had to plan and execute hunts as a group, which required complicated thinking patterns and, it’s been thought, rewarded the social and brainy with evolutionary success. According to that hypothesis, the evolution of the brain was driven by the need to think.

But now some scientists are suggesting that physical activity also played a critical role in making our brains larger.

To reach that conclusion, anthropologists began by looking at existing data about brain size and endurance capacity in a variety of mammals, including dogs, guinea pigs, foxes, mice, wolves, rats, civet cats, antelope, mongooses, goats, sheep and elands. They found a notable pattern. Species like dogs and rats that had a high innate endurance capacity, which presumably had evolved over millenniums, also had large brain volumes relative to their body size.

The researchers also looked at recent experiments in which mice and rats were systematically bred to be marathon runners. Lab animals that willingly put in the most miles on running wheels were interbred, resulting in the creation of a line of lab animals that excelled at running.

Interestingly, after multiple generations, these animals began to develop innately high levels of substances that promote tissue growth and health, including a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. These substances are important for endurance performance. They also are known to drive brain growth.

What all of this means, says David A. Raichlen, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona and an author of a new article about the evolution of human brains appearing in the January issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society Biology, is that physical activity may have helped to make early humans smarter.

“We think that what happened” in our early hunter-gatherer ancestors, he says, is that the more athletic and active survived and, as with the lab mice, passed along physiological characteristics that improved their endurance, including elevated levels of BDNF. Eventually, these early athletes had enough BDNF coursing through their bodies that some could migrate from the muscles to the brain, where it nudged the growth of brain tissue.

Those particular early humans then applied their growing ability to think and reason toward better tracking prey, becoming the best-fed and most successful from an evolutionary standpoint. Being in motion made them smarter, and being smarter now allowed them to move more efficiently.

And out of all of this came, eventually, an ability to understand higher math and invent iPads. But that was some time later.

The broad point of this new notion is that if physical activity helped to mold the structure of our brains, then it most likely remains essential to brain health today, says John D. Polk, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and co-author, with Dr. Raichlen, of the new article.

And there is scientific support for that idea. Recent studies have shown, he says, that “regular exercise, even walking,” leads to more robust mental abilities, “beginning in childhood and continuing into old age.”

Of course, the hypothesis that jogging after prey helped to drive human brain evolution is just a hypothesis, Dr. Raichlen says, and almost unprovable.

But it is compelling, says Harvard’s Dr. Lieberman, who has worked with the authors of the new article. “I fundamentally agree that there is a deep evolutionary basis for the relationship between a healthy body and a healthy mind,” he says, a relationship that makes the term “jogging your memory” more literal than most of us might have expected and provides a powerful incentive to be active in 2013.

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Chicago police backtrack after confirming 500th homicide

Chicago police investigate the scene of a fatal shooting in the 1000 block of North Lavergne on Chicago's West Side. (Chris Sweda/ Chicago Tribune)

Hours after Chicago police listed the shooting death of a West Side man as the city’s 500th homicide of the year, the department backtracked and said the city has yet to reach the grim milestone.

Superintendent Garry McCarthy had told the Tribune Thursday afternoon that the homicide count stood at 499. Hours later, Nathaniel T. Jackson, 40, was gunned down outside a store in the Austin neighborhood and the department confirmed Friday morning that his death was the 500th homicide. Mayor Rahm Emanuel released a statement noting that "Chicago has reached an unfortunate and tragic milestone."

But then the department issued its own statement calling reports of the tally inaccurate, saying the number remained at 499.  Asked for clarification, a spokeswoman for the superintendent said one of the homicide cases from earlier this week has been reclassified as a death investigation.

The case in question is last Saturday’s death of 57-year-old Edward Phelps. He died following a domestic-related altercation in the 0-99 block of North Long Avenue in Austin, police said.

Although he appeared to have suffered a blunt force injury, his autopsy on Sunday at the Cook County medical examiner’s office was ruled inconclusive, pending toxicological studies.

Still, police classified Phelps’ death as a homicide in the days following the autopsy, according to internal reports. It wasn’t until this afternoon that McCarthy’s spokeswoman, Melissa Stratton, citing the autopsy results, said the department reclassified the case as a death investigation.

McCarthy has been under fire because of the climbing number of homicides this year. As of Thursday night, homicides were up 17 percent over last year in Chicago and shootings had increased by 11 percent, according to police statistics.

Largely contributing to the spike was the unusual number of homicides that occurred during the early part of the year, when the  city experienced unseasonable warmth. In the first three months of the year, homicides ran about 60 percent ahead of the 2011 rate.

The city's latest homicide occurred around 9 p.m. Thursday when someone walked up and shot Jackson in the  head outside Noah Foods at Augusta Boulevard and Lavergne Avenue, police said.

Police tapped on apartment windows and knocked on doors looking for witnesses. A few bullet casings, which police believed were from a .45-caliber handgun, were found near the blood-stained sidewalk in front of the store. Police had no motive and no one was in custody.

Jackson's family sat for three hours in a waiting room at Stroger Hospital when staff members finally walked in and told them Jackson had died. Relatives stood up and exchanged tight embraces.

Jackson grew up on the West Side, a few miles from where he was gunned down, and had been released from prison this past summer after serving a sentence for robbery. He had been shot several years ago, after an earlier stint in jail, and a cousin said she constantly warned him to be careful on the street.

"The last time he was out, someone had shot him several times, in the back,"  Gave Bates said as she stood outside Stroger Hospital, where Jackson was pronounced dead shortly after midnight. "He was a fighter, he was a survivor."

Bates smiled through tears as she swiped her hand across her phone, flipping through pictures of her cousin playing around and striking goofy poses.

"He was a lot of fun, very good at imitating people," Bates said. "He just had so much fun all the time. And we all grew up together in the same house."

gorner@tribune.com

pnickeas@tribune.com

Twitter: @peternickeas

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Katie Holmes’ Broadway play ‘Dead Accounts’ closes

NEW YORK (AP) — Katie Holmes‘ return to Broadway will be much shorter than she would have liked.

The former Mrs. Cruise‘s play “Dead Accounts” will close within a week of the new year. Producers said Thursday that Theresa Rebeck‘s drama will close on Jan. 6 after 27 previews and 44 performances.

The show, which opened to poor reviews on Nov. 29, stars Norbert Leo Butz as Holmes’ onstage brother who returns to his Midwest home with a secret. Rebeck created the first season of NBC’s “Smash” and several well-received plays including “Seminar” and “Mauritius.”

Holmes, who became a star in the teen soap opera “Dawson’s Creek,” made her Broadway debut in the 2008 production of “All My Sons.” She was married to Tom Cruise from 2006 until this year.

___

Online: http://www.deadaccountsonbroadway.com

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Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Senator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center.

NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients.

While the medical center had been treating many outpatients, it had farmed out surgery to other hospitals, which created scheduling problems that forced many patients to have their operations on nights and weekends, when staffing is traditionally low. Some patients and doctors had to postpone not just elective but also necessary operations for lack of space at other hospitals.

The medical center’s Tisch Hospital, its major hospital for inpatient services, between 30th and 34th Streets on First Avenue, had been closed since the hurricane knocked out power and forced the evacuation of more than 300 patients, some on sleds brought down darkened flights of stairs.

“I think it’s a little bit of a miracle on 34th Street that this happened so quickly,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said Thursday.

Mr. Schumer credited the medical center’s leadership and esprit de corps, and also a tour of the damaged hospital on Nov. 9 by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, whom he and others escorted through watery basement hallways.

“Every time I talk to Fugate there are a lot of questions, but one is, ‘How are you doing at NYU?’ ” the senator said.

The reopening of Tisch to surgery patients and associated services, like intensive care, some types of radiology and recovery room anesthesia, was part of a phased restoration that will continue. Besides providing an essential service, surgery is among the more lucrative of hospital services.

The hospital’s emergency department is expected to delay its reopening for about 11 months, in part to accommodate an expansion in capacity to 65,000 patient visits a year, from 43,000, said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, its senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.

In the meantime, NYU Langone is setting up an urgent care center with 31 bays and an observation unit, which will be able to treat some emergency patients. It will initially not accept ambulances, but might be able to later, Dr. Brotman said. Nearby Bellevue Hospital Center, which was also evacuated, opened its emergency department to noncritical injuries on Monday.

Labor and delivery, the cancer floor, epilepsy treatment and pediatrics and neurology beyond surgery are expected to open in mid-January, Langone officials said. While some radiology equipment, which was in the basement, has been restored, other equipment — including a Gamma Knife, a device using radiation to treat brain tumors — is not back.

The flooded basement is still being worked on, and electrical gear has temporarily been moved upstairs. Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said that a $60 billion bill to pay for hurricane losses and recovery in New York and New Jersey was nearing a vote, and that he was optimistic it would pass in the Senate with bipartisan support. But the measure’s fate in the Republican-controlled House is far less certain.

The bill includes $1.2 billion for damage and lost revenue at NYU Langone, including some money from the National Institutes of Health to restore research projects. It would also cover Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County, Bellevue, Coney Island Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan.

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Wall Street extends losses, Dow slides 1 percent

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks extended their losses on Friday, with the Dow falling 1 percent as President Barack Obama and top lawmakers met in a last-ditch attempt at a budget deal to prevent the United States from going over the "fiscal cliff."

The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 125.33 points, or 0.96 percent, to 12,970.98. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 11.66 points, or 0.82 percent, to 1,406.44. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost 16.81 points, or 0.56 percent, to 2,969.09.

(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Snow buries parts of Northeast, flights canceled

A powerful winter storm is hitting the Northeast, one day after it hammered the Midwest and plains. Snowfall could top a foot in some areas.

BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) - A powerful winter storm responsible for wind, snow, tornadoes and a flurry of traffic accidents battered the U.S. Northeast on Thursday, canceling hundreds of airline flights but also reviving what had been a snowless ski season.

The storm dumped a foot of snow on parts of the United States with the heaviest snow falling across northern New York and into New England, the National Weather Service reported.

"It feels lovely to have wonderful snow for the kids to play in, and I think it's the kind of snow that's good for making forts and snowmen," said Katryna Nields, a musician in Conway, Massachusetts, who was outside her home shoveling snow.

"It's just the kind of snow you want for between Christmas and New Year's," she added.

The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings for parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England and coastal flood advisories from New York's Long Island to southern Maine.

Airlines canceled nearly 700 flights on Thursday after 1,500 U.S. flights were canceled on Wednesday, according to FlightAware.com, a website that tracks flights.

Some flights into and out of the three major New York City area airports - Newark Liberty International, John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia - were delayed due to the weather, the Federal Aviation Administration reported.

The weather service forecast 12 to 18 inches of snow for northern New England, accompanied by freezing rain and sleet, creating hazards on the highways and at airports.

The snow also brought renewed hope for winter recreation across upstate and western New York.

About 8 to 12 inches of snow fell on Buffalo overnight. Light snow and freezing drizzle persisted throughout the morning hours, with as much as another inch or two possible in some areas.

Before Wednesday evening's snow, Buffalo was 23 inches below average for this time of year, the weather service said.

"It's just a reminder, winter is here," said Tom Paone of the National Weather Service in Buffalo.

Daniel Ivancic, of the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda, said he bought a snowmobile last winter that has sat largely idle with snow totals well below average.

"I waited and waited and, no snow. This winter it seemed like the same thing was going to happen until the storm hit," Ivancic said. "I'm just going to take advantage of every minute of it."

Retailers, still in the holiday shopping season, expected sales would continue with consumers looking for winter items.

"People are out spending anyway. Weather can trigger what you purchase - not if you purchase, but what you purchase," said Evan Gold, senior vice president of client services at Planalytics, which tracks weather for businesses including retailers.

Police patrolling the New York State Thruway from Buffalo to Albany reported as many as 50 accidents, mostly involving cars that slipped off snowy roads overnight.

The massive storm system dumped record snow in north Texas and Arkansas before it swept through the U.S. South on Christmas Day and then veered north.

The system triggered tornadoes and left almost 200,000 people in Arkansas and Alabama without power on Wednesday.

Authorities said an 81-year-old man died in Georgiana, Alabama after a tree fell on his home.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley on Thursday toured hard-hit sections of Mobile, where a high school and dozens of homes were damaged and historic oak trees were uprooted.

Residents were carting wheelbarrows filled with debris and tree limbs and, in the city's business district, workers removed pieces of the smashed top floor of Cantrell's photography studio, where a young Jimmy Buffett recorded in the late 1960s.

Virginia authorities responded to nearly 700 car crashes on Wednesday, most of which were due to snow and ice around the Interstate 81 corridor.

A Southwest Airlines jet skidded off the runway on Thursday at Long Island MacArthur Airport, about 50 miles east of New York City, as it taxied for takeoff, Suffolk County police said.

None of the 134 people aboard Tampa-bound flight No. 4695 was injured, police said.

"It's been undetermined at this time if weather was a factor," a police spokeswoman said.

(Additional reporting by Zach Howard in Conway, Massachusetts; Kaija Wilkinson in Mobile, Alabama; Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Dan Burns in New York and Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Claudia Parsons)

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Apple CEO’s pay takes big hit vs. record 2011 package

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook’s 2012 compensation package of just over $ 4 million is a huge cut on paper for the top executive of the most valuable U.S. corporation, after a 2011 package fattened by more than $ 376 million in long-term stock awards.

Cook received the largest single pay package awarded to a company CEO in about a decade when he replaced Apple‘s legendary co-founder, Steve Jobs, shortly before Jobs’ death in October 2011.

The maker of the iPhone and iPad made the 2012 compensation disclosures in a regulatory filing on Thursday. Cook, who is in his early 50s, joined Apple in 1998 and became CEO in August 2011.

Virtually all of Cook’s $ 376 million bonus in 2011 was in stock awards that will vest in two chunks – one in 2016 and the other in 2021. This structure was intended to keep Jobs’ longtime lieutenant at the helm for many years.

In terms of base salary, Cook actually received a 50 percent increase to $ 1.4 million for 2012, and the same 200 percent bonus that other top Apple executives like CFO Peter Oppenheimer earned, Apple said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.

The 2012 compensation package for Cook also pales in comparison with his 2010 pay, which was 14 times higher, when he served as chief operating officer.

But Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Group – which counts Apple stock as the biggest holding among the approximately $ 2 billion it manages – said Cook’s package was “normal CEO compensation.”

For example, Yahoo Inc’s CEO, Marissa Mayer, a former Google Inc high-flyer hired this year to try to turn around the struggling Internet icon, won a pay package worth more than $ 70 million. Despite her lack of a CEO track record, her basic pay is comparable to Cook’s, with about $ 1 million in annual salary and up to $ 2 million in an annual bonus.

Oracle Corp’s Larry Ellison, one of the most highly paid chief executives in the United States – and also the world’s sixth-richest man, according to Forbes – received total compensation for the year ended May 31, 2012, of $ 96.2 million – almost all of it in stock options.

That compared with $ 77.6 million for Ellison in the prior year.

Cook’s longtime boss, Jobs, famously received $ 1 a year in salary in the three years before he stepped down, though in 2000 he too received a stock option that analysts say was valued at almost $ 600 million at the time.

Cook will not receive any stock awards for 2012, Apple said in Thursday’s filing.

The 2012 package includes a salary of $ 1.4 million and a nonequity bonus of $ 2.8 million. Cook’s base salary actually increased in 2012 from the $ 900,000 he earned in 2011.

While Apple’s shares are roughly 35 percent higher than when Cook became CEO, they have fallen more than 27 percent since October, when they hit a $ 700.10 high. The stock has declined amid investor worries about intensifying competition in the mobile phone market and growth prospects in important markets including China.

Apple shares were down 1.3 percent at $ 506.35 on the Nasdaq on Thursday afternoon.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew and Liana Baker in New York, Jim Finkle and Tim McLaughlin in Boston and Edwin Chan in San Francisco,; editing by Kenneth Barry and Matthew Lewis)

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Soprano Bartoli: My voice has more colors, shadow

LONDON (Reuters) – Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli has released a year-end blockbuster that is part mystery story, part research project and shows off a voice which only seems to improve with age.

Bartoli’s latest deluxe-packaged album “Mission” (Decca) is devoted to the music of the late 17th-century Italian composer, diplomat and perhaps spy, Agostino Steffani.

Steffani may have been a bit overlooked as a result of his appearance at the end of the Renaissance and at the beginning of the Baroque periods – until Bartoli’s interest alighted on him.

“The variety is amazing in the music of Steffani, the slow arias have very beautiful melodic lines, they are unbelievable, it’s quite hypnotic music,” Bartoli said in a telephone interview from Paris.

Since she burst upon the world in the 1990s, specializing mostly in Mozart and Rossini, Bartoli has gone from strength to strength, not only in digging up unusual repertoires, including another deluxe compilation in 2009 devoted to music sung by castrati, but also vocally.

Here’s what else Bartoli had to say about Steffani and his possible career as a spy, why she goes for the anti-diva look on her recent album covers, and what she calls a Fellini-esque experience at La Scala with conductor Daniel Barenboim:

Q: Is it true, then, that the voice improves with time?

A: “I think this is a very good time because of the maturity of the technique. When you are young, of course, you have to have a beautiful voice. This is a gift you receive, but you don’t have enough technique or experience. So this is a very good time because I can really paint with my voice with so many colors, like a painter. I love painting with the voice and I’m of an age when I do this definitely better than 20 years ago.”

Q: So this bit about Steffani being a spy, surely that was dreamt up by the Decca marketing department?

A: “He had an incredible life as a priest, a missionary and a diplomatic mission to arranging weddings between the royal princes of that period. And also he was a kind of spy, in fact he was a Catholic priest in the north of Germany, in the Protestant area, and he spent lots of years in that area – it was very unusual, very strange. Maybe he also had the mission to convert (people) to Catholicism, who knows? We have lots of speculation about him, all the mysterious things about this man. There’s still mystery.”

Q: There’s no mystery though that the cover for this album, showing you bald-headed and wielding a crucifix, is “non-diva” – like the cover on the “Sacrificium” album of castrati music, with your head superimposed on the torso of a male statue.

A: “The idea was to have a cover related to the project and it was a bit against the cliche of a diva who has to look beautiful all the time. In a project like ‘Sacrificium’, when at the beginning of the 18th century 3,000-4,000 boys were castrated every year in Italy…how can I make a CD project about this and make a cover with a beautiful, glamorous Vanity Fair picture? This would be more embarrassing…People realize there is a real story here to tell, it’s not a compilation of arias which you do for Christmas. And ‘Sacrificium’ was a huge success.”

Q: Your concert recital earlier this month singing Handel, Rossini and Mozart with Daniel Barenboim conducting at La Scala in Milan, with a chorus of boos and whistles in the second half, was perhaps less of a success?

A: “This story is repeating what happened to Carlos Kleiber, one of the greatest conductors of our lives, also to (Maria) Callas, (Luciano) Pavarotti. The concert was magnificent – Handel, Mozart, Rossini – and then I believe at the very end there was a very Fellinian situation. You think these things don’t happen anymore, that they only happen in the movies of (Federico) Fellini but actually, no, this is happening. And it seemed like a parody but the next morning I opened the newspaper and (Silvio) Berlusconi is back (in Italian politics). And so I said, ‘Yes, of course.’

I think living in Italy is difficult but living without Italy is impossible.”

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

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