Mozart - La Finta Giardiniera

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - La Finta Giardiniera

Buxton Festival, 2013

Nicholas Kraemer, Harry Fehr, Christopher Lemmings, Ellie Laughame, Stephanie Corley, Andrew Kennedy, Catherine Carby, Anna Patalong, Matthew Hargreaves

Buxton Opera House - 6 July 2013

Now this is how you do Mozart!  La Finta Giardiniera may be a relatively minor work in the Mozart canon, the youthful product of an 18 year-old composer, but even this early opera contains seeds of the greatness that would follow. If you set the right tone between all the old-style 'woe is me' arias and Mozart's playful interpretation of them, La Finta Giardiniera can be a surprisingly entertaining and revealing piece.  Buxton clearly recognise the potential within the work and they get it marvellously right in this delightful production at the 2013 Buxton Festival.

La Finta Giardiniera can potentially be a little dull and static in places due to its structure and the necessity of the singers to deliver plot exposition through recitative and arias, but even that is dealt with in a clever way here in Harry Fehr's production that keeps everything visually interesting and mobile.  The tricky backplot of Count Belfiore's attempted murder of the Marquesa Violante is covered during the overture ("Previously on La Finta Giardiniera...") with a couple of flash-frame scenes and newspaper headlines that set the tone perfectly for what follows, injecting a little humour but also working to make the plot comprehensible and meaningful.

The main setting for the production is classically contemporary, retaining the setting of Don Anchise's mansion and garden, but updating it to a marquee that has been set up on the estate for the forthcoming wedding of the Count Belfiore to Arminda.  In disguise as Sandrina, Violante with her minder Roberto - going under the name of Nardo - are not so much servants in the employ of the Podestà as employees of the catering firm contracted for the wedding.  Not so much a gardener either, Sandrina is more of a florist preparing the bouquets and garlands for the tables.  Every other updating is along similar lines and works wonderfully, not just in keeping with the tone of the work but truly invigorating it.

It helps that there is good choreography of the action and that's there is careful and realistic attention paid to the characters and the interaction between them.  In the early scenes then, not only does everyone have to sing complicated arias that express their situation, but they have to do so while setting and arranging tables.  It could be distracting but it's not and there's actually a sense of things being constructed and pieced together, of preparations being made for a wedding that's not on a terribly stable foundation, each of the characters finding themselves sat at a table on their own by the time we get to Mozart's delightful ensemble at the end of the first Act.

All of this helps to give substance to what can be a rather confusing and open plot.  Mozart's later works are indeed much more complex than this, but they have more nuanced characterisation and music that makes them easier to follow.  La Finta Giardiniera needs a little more help and it had that at every stage here.  The handling of Sandrina's abduction by Arminda, where she is locked in a dark cellar and searched for in the dark by all the characters, isn't quite as brilliant as a similar situation in Le Nozze di Figaro for example, but the way the farcical misunderstandings are staged here is just hilarious.  Even the bizarre mad scene of Sandrina and Belfiore works well here, but it helps that the personalities of the characters have been so well and consistently established in the earlier scenes.

That's as much to do with the first-rate cast assembled here as it is to do with Harry Fehr's brilliant stage direction and Yannis Thavoris' clever set designs.  The singers were able to just throw themselves fully into their characters and the situations and, without exception, sang marvellously. Matthew Hargreaves was an engaging Nardo and Anna Patalong as a deliciously spiteful Serpetta.  Stephanie Corley however provided the most entertainment as a particularly feisty Arminda and was a clear audience favourite.  Even if things didn't quite go her way, she clearly relish every moment of the whole affair, and still somehow managed to seem to come out on top.  The slightly more sensible characters (it's all relative) - Christopher Lemmings' Don Anchise, Catherine Carby's Ramiro, Andrew Kennedy's Belfiore and Ellie Laughame's Violante/Sandrina provided excellent counterbalance to all this frivolity with great singing, but were also allowed to let themselves go as the occasion demanded.

Nicholas Kraemer conducted the Buxton Festival orchestra with attention to this kind of detail, finding that there is more than adequate verve and brilliance in this early Mozart score to allow such expression.  La Finta Giardiniera will never be regarded as one of Mozart's great works, but Buxton's production demonstrated that there is considerable merit in the work nonetheless.  In the process - alongside their charming Double Bill of Saint Saëns' La Princesse Jaune and Gounod's La Colombe - it wholly justifies why their approach to the revival of such lesser known opera works is invariably successful.

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 - La Finta Giardiniera

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - La Finta Giardiniera

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, 2012

Andreas Spering, Vincent Boussard, Colin Balzer, Layla Claire, Julian Pregardien, Ana Maria Labin, Julie Robard-Gendre, Sabine Devieilhe, John Chest

ARTE Live Web

Internet streaming, Aix-en-Provence - 10 July 2012

Written in 1774 for performance in Munich when Mozart was just 18 years of age, La Finta Giardiniera (’The Fake Gardener‘) is never likely to be regarded as anything more than the work of an inexperienced composer who wouldn’t really find his own distinctive voice until the composition of Idomeneo (1781). Mozart had however already written seven operas by this time, and if La Finta Giardiniera doesn’t sparkle with the brilliance of those later mature masterpieces, there are nonetheless interesting parallels and prototypical characters here that would be depicted with greater detail and finesse in The Marriage of Figaro. In its own right however, La Finta Giardiniera is still an enjoyable little opera buffa of modest ambition that seems well suited to the surroundings of a summer evening in the gardens of the Théâtre du Grand Saint-Jean in Aix (even if you are viewing it via internet streaming).

As performed by the orchestra of Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, conducted by Andreas Spering, the music of La Finta Giardiniera is as sprightly, pleasant and beautifully arranged as a Haydn opera, with delicate arias and recitative to play out the comic situation, and even if the work is mostly fairly conventional, it does have some delightful Mozartian touches. Dramatically, the situation doesn’t add up to much more than the typical opera seria plot given a bit of a buffa treatment, but even then, consisting of the old standard of mismatched couples finally finding their proper arrangement, it never really takes off dramatically or extends much beyond that. The most dramatic incident has already taken place before the opera even begins, with the Marquise Violante having survived an attack on her person by her fiancé the Count Belfiore in a fit of jealous rage. He believes that he has killed the woman that he loves, but in reality, Violante, along with her servant Roberto, calling themselves Sandrina and Nardo, are working in disguise as gardeners on the estate of the Podestà.

The opera itself operates within the romantic complications that arise out of this situation where there are characters in disguise and believed dead. The Podestà is in love with Sandrina, which infuriates his maid Serpetta. The rejected Serpetta is therefore in no mood for the attentions of Nardo who is persistently pursuing her. The Podestà moreover hopes to make a marriage of his niece Arminda to a rich noble, who turns out to be none other than the Count Belfiore. Don Ramiro, who is in love with Arminda, is evidently displeased by this. When the Count arrives for the wedding, Sandrine faints and the Count recognises her. Could it really be Violante? His love reawakened and his sense of guilt, Belfiore declares that he cannot marry Arminda. Everyone evidently is deeply unhappy and they spend their time moping and decrying their woes in arias. “Oh, how terrible things are, I don’t know what to do”, kind of sums up the content of these arias that describe their feelings of indignation, betrayal, unjust treatment and their confusion.

Oh yes, there’s lots of confusion, but evidently the idea is to somehow sort out all these mismatched couples and bring everything to a happy conclusion. In contrast however to the rather more accomplished and richly characterised Marriage of Figaro, for example, there is something rather pleasantly slapdash about the approach to resolution in La Finta Giardiniera, which is brought about by not much more than endless pleading after which the Podestà finally declares “Oh just marry whoever you want” to them all. The fact that there is an odd number of characters - seven - also means that at least one going to be left out of the rearrangements. Dramatically then, it’s far from satisfactory, since there is very little that happens to sustain interest in this situation for nearly three hours.

Musically however, the work is far from slapdash, though it is conventional and shows little in the way of inspiration or imagination. There are however one or two lovely little touches. In Act I, the Podestà describes his feelings for Sandrina as a symphony in the aria “Dentro il mio petto“, evoking instruments and sounds that the orchestra play to accompany his florid declarations. Breaking away from the strict solo aria, duet, recitative and ensemble arrangements, Mozart also manages to have the characters interact in these ensembles rather than all sing together or at cross purposes. It’s far from the complex Figaro arrangements however, as is the rather less well-developed dark garden setting for the confusion of identities and declarations of true feelings that ensue at the end of La Finta Giardiniera’s second Act, where Belfiore and Violante bewilderingly believe themselves to be Greek gods.

There are then modest pleasures to be found in La Finta Giardiniera, and they are brought out well in this production at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Filmed on an outdoor stage, the sun setting during Act 1, the exterior location suits the garden setting beautifully. Accordingly, there is little need for stage props, the reflective floors, white chairs and the long-stemmed white roses that double as lamps providing the additional illumination and effects required for the limited drama. The sound recording is wonderful for an outdoor shoot, with no sign of intrusive microphones attached to the performers, the tone lovely and warm, with natural reverb coming from I don’t know where. The singers appear to be all new young artists, all very well cast for their respective roles with sweet voices well-suited to this early Mozart. There’s nothing too strenuous expected in the acting or the singing, and all sound and play this light buffo drama marvellously. If it’s slightly dull in places, lacking in any real verve or personality, that’s unfortunately down to the nature of the work itself.

La Finta Giardiniera is currently available to view via internet streaming on the ARTE Live Web site. Some region restrictions may apply.