Mozart - La Finta Giardiniera

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - La Finta Giardiniera

Opernhaus Zürich, 2006

Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Tobias Moretti, Rudolf Schasching, Eva Mei, Christoph Strehl, Isabel Rey, Liliana Nikiteanu, Julia Kleiter, Gabriel Bermùdez

Arthaus Musik - Blu-ray

Written when Mozart was just 18 years old, La Finta Giardiniera is undoubtedly one of the composer's lesser works.  It's very conventional in its arrangements, the development of the story and the tone owing much to the Neopolitan opera buffa style popularised by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi.  The plot is one of unhappy lovers unable to be with the one they love, some with hidden identities that are just waiting to be revealed and, for the most part, the expression of this situation requires little more than a series of arias - one person on the stage at a time - relating the woes of their misfortunes in love, with developments confined to the spoken dialogue sections and revelations in the ensemble Act finales.

For the most part.  With Mozart, as with Pergolesi, however, there's a great deal of interest in the common people and a conflict exists between the serving classes and their masters where the roles are often somewhat reversed.  Appearances are often deceptive, as the hidden identities suggest, as do the gender confusion over the cross-dressing and the filling of male roles by female singers and castrati that are typical of these kind of comedies.  Who really rules the roost and who wears the trousers?  "Let's assume a dignified manner", Arminda advises on the necessity of keeping up appearances here at one point in La Finta Giardiniera, but in reality each of the characters' emotional lives and questions of their identity are in turmoil.

What further distinguishes and exaults Mozart's (and indeed Pergolesi's) treatment of this fairly standard Metastasian situation more than just the realisation of the comic potential within the work,  is the playfulness and the originality of the manner in which he brings order to all the confusion.  It's far from Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, or indeed Così Fan Tutte (but then it doesn't have a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte either), but even in this early work by the composer, the arrangements in La Finta Giardiniera are light and clever, sparkling with wit and invention in a way that belies what could otherwise be a heavy-handed melodrama filed with unlikely contrivances.

Most famously, there's the Podestà Don Anchise's Act I aria 'Dentro il mio petto io sento', where he marshals the sounds of the orchestra to describe his feelings for his gardener Sandrina (the Marchioness Violante in disguise and hiding from her lover Count Belfiore, who stabbed her in a fit of rage and believes her dead).  Nardo (in reality, Violante's servant Roberto), also attempts to woo the Podestà's servant Serpetta by adopting the Italian, French and English manner, which is playful and charming but also related to these questions of identity, and happiness cannot be found while one's true self is kept hidden.  There's a lightness and vibrancy to the work then, a consistency and appropriateness of tone, and that's brought out wonderfully by the La Scintilla orchestra of the Zurich Opera House under Nicholas Harnoncourt.

The singing too is good all around, the cast well-suited to the roles in physical appearance as well as in the tone of voices.  None of them are particularly exceptional, singing either with too little feeling for the characters or too much.  Eva Mei sings Sandrina beautifully, but seems elsewhere and not really engaged with the others around her, while at the other end of the scale, Rudolf Schasching's Podestà's personality is a little over-emphasised to the detriment of the singing.  Christoph Strehl and Isabel Rey have rather a better handle on their characters and are delightful, as is the comic contribution and interaction between Julia Kleiter's Serpetta and Gabriel Bermùdez's Nardo.

Unfortunately, it's rather let down by the staging.  Tobias Moretti's direction never really manages to bring any real life to the admittedly limited opportunities for drama to be found within the arrangements.  With a few pot-plants and twigs scattered around, the clean white designs of the stage scarcely resemble a garden since the all-purpose structure has to make do for the interiors of the Podestà's home as well.  There are a few off-stage amusements and some back and forth interaction between the stage and the orchestra pit that help keep it interesting, and one of two clips of security camera footage that extend the scope to show outside events, but nothing ever comes together thematically or with a consistency of tone.

Still, this is an enjoyable account of a neglected early Mozart work.  It only existed in revised German Singspiel form until the original Italian version was rediscovered in the 1970s and recorded for the first time by Harnoncourt, so there are not too many staged versions available.  (An open-air production at Aix-en-Provence in 2012 takes advantage of its outdoor location and fares rather better with a cast of fresh young singers in the roles).  The Blu-ray release from Arthaus Musik is a reissue of the previous TDK release, retaining the original menus and specifications, only with new packaging.  There's some minor flicker in the encoding of the image, but the sound is fine on the PCM and DTS HD-Master Audio 7.1 mixes.  The BD is all-region, with subtitles in English, German, French and Spanish.

Mozart - Die Entführung aus dem Serail

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Die Entführung aus dem Serail

Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona 2010

Ivor Bolton, Christof Loy, Christoph Quest, Diana Damrau, Olga Peretyatko, Christoph Strehl, Norbert Ernst, Franz-Josef Selig

C-Major

There’s an in-built difficulty in Mozart’s earliest 'mature' comic opera that every modern opera stage director must consider a challenge – the long passages of spoken dialogue and recitative that are scattered throughout. Yes, the actual drama of Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail is a bit silly too and the libretto isn’t the most sophisticated, but even if you manage to make the plot work dramatically (having good singers can help gloss over the inconsistencies which is certainly the case here), you’re still left with those lulls between Mozart’s beautiful musical passages that can potentially kill the opera dead in its tracks. This production by Christof Loy at the Liceu in Barcelona, aided and abetted by an outstanding cast and an exhilarating performance of the score from the Liceu orchestra under Ivor Bolton, crucially takes account of those weaknesses, and if the result is still not entirely convincing, it’s nonetheless still one of the best versions of this Mozart opera that you’re ever likely to come across.

Traditionally, the way of handling the recitative in Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail is to heavily trim the dialogue and just get it out of the way as quickly as possible so as to move on to the music, but such an approach fails to adequately take into account the fact that the main dramatic drive of the opera actually lies in between the musical numbers and arias. In some respects, it could be argued that the spoken parts are equally as important as the arias, if not even more so in this particular case since Mozart’s music for Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail is not the most lyrically attuned to the emotional content. At this stage, even if there are occasional flashes of genius in the work, Mozart’s compositions are conventional and still very much mired in the Baroque tradition. How does Belmonte express his desire to be reunited with Konstanze in his Act I aria? “I tremble and falter, I waver and hesitate. My heart leaps in my breast.” - “O wie ängstlich, o wie feurig…” “How ardently and fearfully my loving heart beats”. Like the majority of the arias in the opera, it’s lovely but dull, and hardly advances the plot or even describes any complex emotional state.

Christof Loy attempts to address the vacuity of the arias and the dead-space of the spoken dialogue by getting the singers to act properly. In terms of opera performance, that can often be as simple as just toning down on the theatrical delivery, but Loy clearly believes that there are deeper sentiments and qualities to this opera, particularly in the spoken passages, which he retains in full and gives them rather more attention than they would normally receive. The treatment of the dialogue and how it works alongside the musical pieces is immediately apparent at the arrival of Pasha Selim. Arriving on-stage to that ringing chorus of the people, he seems weary of the acclaim, his position as ruler made only more weighty by his inability to win the heart of the woman he loves. This is not an uncommon position for a ruler to be in, particularly in Baroque opera, but it’s rarely treated with this kind of realism, and Loy takes advantage of the fact that – uncommonly for a major character in an opera – the Pasha is a non-singing role, and he accordingly makes the fine Christoph Quest the central acting focus for the others to work off.

What pervades the opera and characterises the approach to the spoken passages in this production, even before the appearance of the Pasha, is an air of melancholy. There’s nothing particularly new about viewing Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail in that regard, but such a sentiment is usually drawn from the arias and it’s rarely extended in any kind of realistic way to the recitative. There is no declamation of the lines here as they would more commonly be expressed, but rather Loy directs the performers to deliver dialogue naturalistically and makes use of their silences in the same way that he makes use of space on the stage to define the relationship between them. That use of space is as effective here as elsewhere in Loy’s work, even if the set for the Liceu’s production is not as sparse as the director usually decorates them. Yes, there are a usual few chairs scattered around, and little more than a painted backdrop of the sky for the most part (which is blithely lifted whenever Pedrillo makes an entrance), but other more decorated and naturalistic sets are shown, although they often remain viewed as if through a window in the background while the main action takes place in the foreground stage. Inevitably, the costumes don’t reflect any specific period, but there is a nod towards a middle-eastern flavour in some of the attire.

Loy’s direction isn’t really geared towards appeasing traditionalists then, but it should at least be evident that it is a respectful production that is aimed towards making the best out of what is imperfect opera, one that the director clearly thinks deserves to be considered more than just a lightweight entertainment. He doesn’t always succeed, but it’s an impressive attempt that does manage to make a strong case for the work and bring it closer to the latter Mozart operas, the relationships and structure here more evidently a prototype for characters better developed in The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute. It helps that Ivor Bolton also brings out a terrific, lively account of the score that works well in conjunction with the staging, revealing its qualities and making those connections to later works evident. If you’ve been less than convinced by this particular Mozart opera, this performance reveals just how dazzlingly clever and brilliant it can be.

You shouldn’t need to be convinced that there are great and quite demanding arias in the opera, but it is terrific to see them delivered so well in such a sympathetic production. The performance of Diana Damrau deserves to be singled out as it’s not only one of the best Konstanze’s you’ll ever hear, but when placed in the context of this fine treatment of the opera, it’s an incredible tour de force performance that highlights the extraordinary abilities of one of the best sopranos in the world today. Most pleasingly for the sake of the opera, rather than being merely a showcase for the soprano, the singing is of an exceptionally high standard right across the board. Really, it’s just thrilling to hear Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail sung and acted so well – everything working together in perfect harmony. Franz-Josef Selig’s rich bass and cool deliberation makes his Osmin more than just a second-rate Monostatos, while the performance of Olga Peretyatko and Norbert Ernst makes the Blonde and Pedrillo partnership more than just a subsidiary relationship to the more complicated main ones. Christoph Strehl is perhaps the weakest element, but he works well in the context of the casting, where the tones of all the singers are perfectly complementary, always bringing out the best of Mozart’s ensemble writing.

An exceptional production – one of the best I’ve ever seen – the Blu-ray is just as impressive. There are no extra features, but the HD image quality and the sound reproduction are amazing. Region-free, BD50, 1080i, subtitles are in German, English, French, Spanish, Catalan, Chinese and Korean.