Possibly Mozart's last opera, depending on how you count: he completed Die Zauberflötelast, but this is the last one he started. What happened was, in the summer of 1791 he was busy with Zauberflöte when he was commissioned to write an opera seria to celebrate the coronation of Leopold II of Bohemia. The money was good, and he couldn't refuse, so he dashed this out in two and a half weeks. Let that sink in. By this time, opera seria--the dominant form of the eighteenth century--was more or less dead, and starting to seem very old-fashioned, but that's apparently what ol' Leo liked, so that's what he got. It's not a form that's had a lot of staying power, apart from the odd Handel and Vivaldi, but Mozart is of course Mozart. He has another earlier example of the form, Idomeneo, which I haven't yet seen.
Anyway, the plot to this seems complicated at first glance, but it's not, really. So Tito is the emperor of Rome. His friend Sesto is in love with a woman, Vitellia, who is in turn in love with him, Tito. But pissed off at having been scorned, she uses his, Sesto's, love for her (which she also sort of returns) to get him reluctantly to participate in a plot to murder Tito. He ends up in chains after the plot fails, full of remorse, and the drama is what Tito'll do with him, but the title may provide a hint. There's also another couple, Annio and Servilia, but they don't do much plotwise. And that's it.
I actually found it really moving. Obviously, given the circumstances of its commission, it's meant to flatter the audience by showing a ruler who's a super-swell guy, but it works really well in any context. You can be cynical about such things, but I'd like to quote this piece regarding our politics:
...there are blunders, crimes, abuses, and atrocities enough to find in the record of every American president. But all those presidents put forward a public rhetorical face that was better than their worst acts. This inevitably drives political opponents crazy: they despise the hypocrisy and the halo that good speeches put on undeserving heads. I’ve had that reaction to, well, every previous president in my living memory, at one time or another. But there’s something important and valuable in the fact that they felt the need to talk about loftier ideal than they actually governed by. They kept the public aspirations of American political culture pointed toward Reagan’s “shining city on a hill.” In words, even if not in deeds, they championed a free and fair liberal democratic order, the protection of civil liberties, openness toward the world, rejection of racism at home, and defiance against tyranny abroad.
This, obviously, in stark contrast to our current despot, who doesn't feel the need to even make a pretense at basic decency. You may not believe in absolute monarchy (though damned if I'm not kinda feeling it now, as long as we can have a ruler like Tito), but the decency and charity is aspirational. I like it.
It's a very traditional production. Well, I say "traditional" in the sense that it looks like the eighteenth century, not that it resembles ancient Rome in any way. I don't know if I have that much to say about the cast, but it's all strong, as you'd anticipate. I don't think I'd ever before seen Giuseppe Filianoti, who sings Tito, but he's very good. Elīna Garanča, whom I think I last saw in Rosenkavalier, is a powerful Sesto, though there's a part of me that kinda would've liked to see a countertenor in what was originally a castrato role--there's already a woman en travesti in the person of Annio (Kate Lindsey, whom I just recently saw in Hoffmann). OH WELL. Barbara Frittoli is also good as Vitellia, the villain-only-not-really. I don't know. There's something, in this day and age, about a show that's about good people making mistakes, sure, but basically being good. More along these lines, please.
No comments:
Post a Comment