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Mr. Baltimore, you have the tendancy to catalogue the voices. If you look at the score of Nozze di Figaro, you'll see that all the women's roles are for soprano. Cherubino is not a mezzo but many mezzo sing this role. The difference is supplied by vocal color. The Mozart repertoire is not categorized as in verisimo, for exemple, as in Verdi. A Verdian mezzo soprano is a very different voice from the Mozartian mezzo soprano.
Even if this role was writen for a soprano and not for a mezzo soprano, Cecilia Bartoli possesses the art to manage, to alter the voice in almost every case to suit the part undertaking. This is a matter of how much voice she uses, how she colors it, how she varies the timbre to catch the particular personality of the role whose feelings she enacts. Cecilia Bartoli is able to cross the invisible boundaries between mezzo and soprano.
You are thinking that only Jessye Norman could call herself a soprano, mezzo soprano or a contralto. Could you explain where Cecilia Bartoli should be envious about Jessye Norman??? I have read the critic Peter G. Davis who wrote about the Jessye Norman Extravaganza in 1994. In his article, he wrote: "What one heard insteed was a deteriorating voice in dissarry, a singer still able to produce a loud noise where necessary but othewise forced to settle for a slew of awkwork technical compromises that made legitimate expressive choices virtually impossible. The nadir arrived with the final scene from Capriccio, a festival of sour intonation, scooped phrases, and fake stralagems that turned the composer's gorgeous farewell to opera into sheer grotesquerie. Many great singers have been able to function with reduced ressources and still give thrilling performances, but Norman's response to every selection was hobbled not only by vocal distress but by her mannered, pretentious, and dishonest attitudinizing...". Cecilia Bartoli doesn't call herself a soprano, a mezzo soprano or a contralto but she sings in tune and she is a heartbreaker on stage!!!
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Cecilia Bartoli is able to cross the invisible boundaries betwee mezzo and soprano 
Ms. Bartoli's Met Debut or De Butt
(ron baltimore)
