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Opera News July 2005 |
HORST KOEGLER |
Mozart: La clemenza di Tito, Zürich, April 2005
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ZURICH – La Clemenza di Tito, Zurich Opera, 4/24/05
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With
Jonathan Miller’s production of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito (seen April
24), Zurich Opera completed its seasonal trilogy of operatic Roman
emperors. In contrast to the first two installments — Monteverdi’s
L’Incoronazione di Poppea and Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto — the
current Clemenza, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, was free of any
period-instrument ambitions (for which the house has its own brand of
musicians, recruited from its normal orchestra, who perform under the name
of “La Scintilla”). A surprising novelty was the decision to abandon
Clemenza’s rather uninspired secco recitatives for spoken texts, concocted
by a certain Iso Camartin; the operation misfired badly, due to somewhat
stilted declamation from the singers. But then the whole production,
designed by Isabella Bywater and set on a revolving rotunda pavilion with
a spiral staircase, peopled by Romans in vaguely 1930s dresses and
uniforms, lacked any dramatic urgency and fire — thus, sadly, confirming
the ill-deserved reputation of Mozart’s last opera as the product of the
composer’s waning creative energies.
This has been disproved, of course, by the numerous stagings of Tito that
have appeared since Jean-Pierre Ponnelle mounted his groundbreaking
productions at Cologne, Munich and Salzburg. Just two years ago,
Salzburg’s sensational staging by Martin Kusej, conducted by Nikolaus
Harnoncourt, revealed the ominous aspects of what Kusej called, “Mozart’s
night piece, his dark and sinister pendant to Zauberflöte … a
twenty-four-hour journey into the night of future catastrophes,
terror-attacks and firebrands of the capitol.” The political dimensions of
this opera about Tito Vespasian — an emperor who did not hesitate to
conquer and destroy Jerusalem — were entirely missing in Miller’s Zurich
production, which stressed the man’s clemenza at the cost of the music’s
vendetta thunder rollings. As in his Zurich production of Zauberflöte,
Miller opted for “natural,” Age of Enlightenment behavior onstage; what
materialized was a succession of tastefully arranged, immobile stage
pictures, beautiful to look at but drained of all dramatic fervor. Even
the firestorm of the Capitol generated only a feeble flickering of flames.
It was hard to muster much enthusiasm for Welser-Möst’s soft-grained,
untheatrical approach to Mozart’s score and his careful avoidance of
appoggiaturas, though it has to be admitted that the clarinet and
basset-horn obbligatos — their players not credited in the program —
sounded ravishing. Welser-Möst’s beat could certainly have been fueled by
some extra zest, his syncopations by stronger incisiveness. Little was
made of the explosive clashes of contrasting keys, Welser-Möst’s opera
gentile dallyings replacing Mozart’s needed opera seria gravitas.
Tenor Jonas Kaufmann, earlier this season the highly sensuous Nero of
Zurich’s L’Incoronazione, added another potentate to his fast-growing list
of imperial vacillators. His Tito was half dandy, half macho-man, but
wholly self-enamored, the music delivered with caressing sweetness of
tone, wonderful tonal gleam and keen, shapely phrasing. The other male
among the principals, Günther Groissböck, articulated his warmly sung
“Tardi s’avvede” so well that one wished Mozart had provided Publio with
another occasion to parade his well-oiled bass. But the darling of Zurich
audiences on this occasion was certainly Vesselina Kasarova as Sesto, who
created a youth of noble integrity, the purity of his mind perfectly
reflected in the grand aria “Parto, ma tu ben mio,” topped by a poignant
and profoundly moving A-major adagio–rondo, “Deh per questo istante solo.”
Nonetheless, I found Liliana Nikiteanu’s Annio even more beguiling of tone
— and certainly more boyish in appearance. As Vitellia, soprano Eva Mei
fumed with appropriate venom, the even scale of her electric roulades most
impressive, her attack on her high D fearless, her dives into low notes
bold and sure. Mei’s serene “Non più di fiori” revealed unsuspected depths
of compassion. The cast gained spring-like freshness and sunshine from
Malin Hartelius’s Servilia. |
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