Mozart - Mitridate, re di Ponto (Madrid, 2025)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Mitridate, re di Ponto

Teatro Real, Madrid, 2025

Ivor Bolton, Claus Guth, Juan Francisco Gatell, Sara Blanch, Elsa Dreisig, Franco Fagioli, Marina Monzó, Juan Sancho, Franko Klisovic

OperaVision - 4th April 2025

There are limits to expression in 18th century opera seria, even for Mozart, who was only 14 years old when he wrote Mitridate, re di Ponto in 1770. Even with the long flowing arias where each of the figures pour out their hearts, it's within the context of generic feelings and expectations, the arias capable of being lifted and inserted seamlessly into other works; which was often the case, and borrowing is still common practice when rediscovering and recreating lost works of early opera. The main action tends to play out off-stage, only referred to in-between in the recitative, and in the case of Mitridate, re di Ponto - based on an Italian language adaptation of Racine's play Mitridate - the context is the war between Pompey's Roman army and King Mitridate of Pontus around 63BC.

Not that you'd get any real sense of that from Mozart's opera or the libretto written by Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi. The events of the war remain in the background, the focus instead on the impact - or opportunity - that the war presents to the main characters of the opera. With King Mitridate believed to have been killed by Pompey, his sons Farnace and Sifare, both from different mothers, seek to consolidate their own position. Farnace, the elder, plans to seek an alliance with Rome, his only use of force being applied to his father's fiancée Aspasia to be his Queen. Sifare is in love with Aspasia, and the feelings are mutual. Mitridate however is not dead, the news of his death a ruse to find out the truth about his sons, and indeed his wife to be.

The plot then is somewhat contrived, but the purpose is indeed to contrive a situation where truth can be brought out into the open, where human feelings can be freely expressed, the war less important really than the rather even if it is merely in the context of domestic rivalry, jealousy and assertion of dominance. Essentially though, the opera is primarily an excuse or opportunity to give singers the opportunity to shine and show their range and talent, and there is a challenge - particularly in a modern production - to try to keep those emotional expressions within the realm of true human feelings. That's not easy considering the setting, the plot and the larger than life characters, but of course much depends on the inventiveness of the musical setting and that's perhaps easier to find in Mozart's music.

Mozart's early works of opera seria have languished along with many of his youthful works for this reason. Limited by the conventions of the style, there is little apart from the prodigious talent of the age of the composer to set them apart from other works of the period. Mozart would find ways to place his own stamp on the opera seria format as a mature composer in Idomeneo (1780) and advance it in La Clemenza di Tito (1791), but even the earlier works have echoes of the brilliance of those later works and that can be brought out by a sympathetic production.

Mitridate is not one of those great Mozart operas. Brilliant certainly, incredible as the work of a 14 year old composer, but to really appreciate its qualities, you need more than a static opera seria production, and you really need to pull it out of the historical period, which is little more than a pretext really for the human drama. You won't get a static production from Claus Guth, and you won't get robes and togas or ruined temples. The crux of the drama, needless to say, would be more familiar to a modern audience who has seen Succession. I haven't but I expect most people have, and as such they would immediately recognise the setting and the subsequent battle for wealth and power in Mitridate in the absence of love and respect.

The whole of the opera (or at least half of it) takes place in a modern 'palace', a luxurious mansion. I'm not even sure how much the average person could relate to this Succession-like situation as a common family drama - Guth includes a silent servant who looks on the whole affair disapprovingly - but, as has often been established through the history of opera, everyone is capable of experiencing and indeed denying human feelings. If the incestuous situation played out here between an ancient ruler of a kingdom and his sons and a conspiracy with one of them to side with Romans is not everyone’s experience, the sentiments of love, lust, jealousy, trust, betrayal, repentance and forgiveness are more familiar, and they can indeed lead to tragic outcomes.

That would be very much within the enlightened view of Mozart, certainly more so in his greater works, but Mitridate, re di Ponto gives the young composer an early opportunity to explore those sentiments. At this stage it's very much a male power-play, although the assignment of roles of the sons to alto castrato (Farnace) and soprano castrato (Sifare) makes that a little more ambiguous, certainly when cast now as countertenor and soprano trouser role. Aspasia, the Queen, certainly has little to show in the way of personality in the early stage of the opera other than resisting the aggressive advances of Farnace, seeking help of his brother Sifare, unaware that he has deep feelings for her. Wait until their father gets home. Believed dead after battle with Pompey hence his sons’ rather inappropriate advances on their prospective mother, Mitridate is actually alive and on his way, having faked his death so that he could observe the ambitions of his sons revealed.

While it seems a little shallow of purpose and characterisation, all these roles can be given greater depth with good singers and adequate direction. If you have that, it makes it much easier to see how much Mozart's music contributes to their definition and expression. You can't argue with the likes of countertenor Franco Fagioli as Farnace, and soprano Elsa Dreisig as Sifare. Both singers put a stamp on the personalities of the two sons even within the generic characterisation, and Mozart's musical description can be seen as contributing to that; blustering defiance and lust on the part of Farnace, guilty desire and wary lack of confidence on the part of Sifare. Even the music for Aspasia, as sung superbly here by Sara Blanch, shows the conflict that rages within her over the actions of the sons and the doubts about her feelings for Mitridate. The opera is blessed with such wonderful vocal writing for all the roles, with no bass, baritone or even mezzo-soprano roles. Juan Francisco Gatell fills the typical sweet high Mozartian tenor as Mitridate, Marina Monzó an impressive Ismene, and even the roles of Marzio (Juan Sancho) and Arbate (Franko Klisovic) have something to contribute in terms of range of voice and character. 

While the setting of the opera doesn't call out for any dramatic scene changes, director Claus Guth typically tries to delve a little more deeply the sentiments of the characters and relate them to the psychological impact that the situation has on them. The 'shadow side' of the opera takes place behind the living room in a colander-like environment and it's here that the characters mostly take their interior monologue arias where grapple with their feelings and fears. Mitridate, back from the 'dead', is shown dealing with his own mortality in his first scene with a double and black masked figures, and he struggles in a shadow play struggle with a double of his unfaithful son Farnace lusting after Aspasia. Sifare grapples with his feelings for multiple aspects of Aspasia being stolen by dark figures and Aspasia expresses her conflict between duty and love. Farnace, it appears, doesn't have a conscience; his demons haunt him in the 'real world'.

These elements don't really need such separation or elaboration, but it does at least make the opera a little more interesting visually and shows that the real drama takes place on a purely psychological level. Considering the solipsistic nature of the arias, with there being little direct confrontations or expression in this opera through duets or ensemble pieces - even 'conversations' feel one-sided - there is a good rationale for this. Guth however recognises that there is a gradual overlap between the interior and exterior worlds as the opera comes to a resolution as the characters gradually come to an accommodation with their inner lives and, remembering that this is supposed to be about a war-time situation, recognise the true enemy is Rome for the defiant ensemble finale. 

I haven't heard Ivor Bolton conducting for a while (the last time indeed was Idomeneo in 2019), and here as musical director at the Teatro Real, it's always a treat to hear him conduct works from the Classical and early Classical period with sensitivity and drive. You can easily get a little tired of the opera seria conventions and repetitions, but here Bolton never lets you forget that you are listening to the music of Mozart. If it's not always original, Mozart's music in Mitridate, re di Ponto feels well suited to every situation and does have those flashes of brilliance, rhythmic drive and dramatic intensity, but with a lightness of touch that offers hope for these unfortunate figures to escape from the darkness of their personal torments. Musical direction and stage direction successfully working then working hand-in-hand then with fine singing from the entire cast, this is surely all you want from an early Mozart opera.

External links: Teatro Real, OperaVision

Einem - Der Prozess (Vienna, 2024)

Gottfried von Einem - Der Prozess

Theater an der Wien, Kammeroper Wien, 2024

Walter Kobéra, Stefan Herheim, Robert Murray, Anne-Fleur Werner, Alexander Grassauer, Timothy Connor, Leo Mignonneau, Valentino Blasina, Lukas Karzel, Philipp Schöllhorn, Fabian Tobias Huster

OperaVision - 12th December 2024

Kafka’s The Trial has remained not just a prescient work that looks like a nightmare that is increasingly becoming a reality, but it's also a book that has always been extraordinarily observant of human behaviour and its relationship to laws, regulations and conformity. Looked at dispassionately, the everyday rules and modes of behaviour that we accept as normal are anything but, and are in fact often contrary to human nature, controlling and restrictive. It's hard to look at that dispassionately however and at least as far as Kafka’s worldview of the arrest of Josef K. is concerned in The Trial, it can be seen rather as either completely absurd or quietly but deeply threatening. Or, since Kafka cannot be reduced to such simple analysis, it can be all of the above and quite a bit more besides.

Particularly when it comes to how a director like Stefan Herheim chooses to represent Kafka when faced with Gottfried von Einem’s 1953 opera version of Der Prozess. One thing Kafka's work is, for all the truth of its observations, is non-naturalistic. It, or indeed its lead figure Josef K., embraces the absurdity of the situation and takes it to extremes. Whether it's Josef K. who is guilty for whatever it is he has or hasn't done, whether it's the 'system' that is absurdly complicated by obscure, unnecessarily complex and sometimes contradictory rules, it's all part of the equation or unspoken contract that the citizen enters into in a kind of dance down a path that leaves no room for rational thought or individual discretion.

Herheim, in his usual metatheatrical way, take in the opera itself as means of showing the characters entering into a tightly choreographed predetermined progress through the drama. Set in Salzburg, presumably as the composer was Austrian, Josef K. - looking remarkably like the older white bearded and shock haired Gottfried von Einem - awakes to read in a book (presumably The Trial) and wonders why his normal routine has been disturbed, expecting - so the book says - that he expects to have his breakfast brought to him. This comes to the amusement of those, looking like younger replicas of himself, who have come to arrest him.

The indication - if you didn't know to expect this of director Stefan Herheim - is that we are in the mind of Gottfried von Einem as he considers how to put Der Prozess to music, and as he plays the role of the reluctant arrested man he even holds out a sheet of music as his identification papers. The main official who has advised him of his rights (or lack of them) is a bewigged conductor of the orchestra who are all outside his room, ready to lead him on merry dance through the proceedings.

It seems like absurdity is the direction that Herheim has chosen to present the situation of Josef K.'s trial, but there is a close attention to detail here, every bit of it striving to get to the heart of this curious situation - and curious opera evidently - and find out what it really says about the contract the individual believes they have entered into with society's expectations, laws and conventions. Josef K. is certain that he has committed no wrong, and since he lives in a civilised nation at peace where the rule of law holds sway, he will surely be believed and trusted by the state. They will surely see that there has been a mistake and he will be afforded treatment in accord with his human rights. And yet, he begins to doubt himself. If the state thinks he has done something wrong, well, surely it can't be for no reason?

It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to recognise this as the dilemma of many who have fallen foul of the state, of the authorities, of petty rule-enforcers. And, as is becoming increasingly evident, it's not just something that happens in nations under an impressive authoritarian rule (as we once perhaps naively thought, placing our trust in the rule of law), but that it seems to be the nature of the state (political leaders, parties) to seek to undermine, remove and destroy individual thought and dissent that might lead to their removal from power. It's a universal condition and one perhaps that needs to be recognised with the growing presence of generative AI that will eventually make many decisions for us in the future (sorry, I know it seems obligatory to shoehorn mention of AI into every review now).

Add to that some psychosexual impulses and religious guilt that pervade Josef K. or Kafka, a critique of bureaucracy as an end in itself, some self-hatred, insecurities and even a literal scene of self- flagellation and there is a lot to unpack here, without even getting into Herheim's metafictional and psychoanalytical treatment of it all. That element is even there in the original, in Josef K.'s dissatisfaction with how poorly the proceedings are being carried out and his belief that he could make a better job of his arrest and trial himself. That results here in the Einem figure turning into the lawyer half-way through. Well, he has been almost everyone else here, and since it operates with a kind of dream logic bordering on nightmare there are challenges in trying to tie The Trial down to any one simple rational reading, so better just embrace the absurdity of it all.

Of course that's just the kind of thing Stefan Herheim thrives on, bringing the creator and the creation into the mix as well as probing the undercurrents in the work and the creation. He has done so notably with Tchaikovsky (Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades for the Dutch National Opera) and with Wagner (Parsifal, Der Ring des Nibelungen), and successfully so, somehow grasping all the complexity and layers and yet making it readable and accessible (except to those expecting a conventional playing out of the original plot). He has plenty to work with in Einem's Der Prozess. It's a heck of a challenge, but typically Herheim manages to be faithful to the intent of the original, capturing the absurdity, the comedy, the psychological underpinning of fears and self-doubt, while turning the work inside out and offering his own unique visual style and interpretation with a reflection on the artistic act of musical creativity.

Composed in 1953, very much in the free all-embracing style of the contemporary music of the period, Eimens' music is wonderfully expressive and dynamic, performed here by the small but loud Klangforum Wien orchestra at the back of the An der Wien Kammeroper stage. The music jumps between short sections that capture the fast moving changes of the action and tone of the drama, with rhythmic pulses, marching arrangements, pumping brass and melodic woodwind playing and even hints of jazz. There is even a parody or reference to Puccini's Tosca for some unfathomable reason at one point (there is much in this work, in the music and the direction that is unfathomable). It reminds me of Prokofiev's playful approach to the developing absurdity of The Love of Three Oranges, and it works wonderfully for this work. Even those bits of Kafka that drag and frustrate the longer it goes on are mirrored here. 

It's debatable whether Herheim has anything to add to The Trial, but he certainly brings out certain elements well and gives much to think about. It's Einem however who pulls out all the stops in a musically rich and fascinating response to the work. Which means the orchestra compete to hold the attention with than the drama, and the superb musical direction of Walter Kobéra and the performance of the Klangforum Wien PPCM Academy of an arrangement of the score for chamber orchestra never ceases to impress. Combined with the busy activity on the small stage with a relatively large cast and Herheim adding additional figures, nothing is easy about this work, but the production design is marvellous at keeping it all together.

Although the production involves professional and students, everything about it is first-rate. In fact, it's the youthful element of the student singers that bring such an energy to the proceedings, working alongside and pushed by more experienced singers and musicians. Josef K. however would be a challenge for any singer, particularly faced with the layers and complexity that Herheim adds to the role, hence it has an experienced performer like Robert Murray taking the part. Anne-Fleur Werner has similar challenges having to play all the female singing roles (or single female in multiple Kafkaesque incarnations), many of them sexual situations, and she is excellent. But the rest of the cast similarly all have multiple roles and performance challenges and all are exceptionally good here. Ironically, for a work of literature that has the reputation of being intense and intimidating, Herheim and the cast - choosing not to execute Josef K. in this production - show that there is actually something liberating in the way Kafka's work opens up a new way of breaking the unspoken agreements and formal conventions between the individual and the state, and there is a similar sense of liberation in Einem's musical approach that is captured beautifully in the nature of this production.

External links: Theater an der Wien, OperaVision