Here we have a production that uses material from two unfinished Mozart operas. L'oca del Cairo--of which there are about forty-five minutes of material--whereas there are only twenty-ish of Lo sposo deluso. Together at last!
I was really looking forward to this as soon as I saw it coming up on Operavision, but having seen it, I still have questions. My biggest question--and I wish there were some background information available on this production: how did they do this? Obviously, there has to be a certain amount of revision in order to make the two things fit together, since they don't have the same characters or anything. You look at this summaries of the two, and you see that the opera really doesn't use the plots from either. But to the extent that it's based on either one, it's L'oca, and I really have no idea how the Sposo stuff figures into it at all. So yeah, it's not very clear. And the other big question: if Mozart only wrote sixty-five minutes of music total, then how come this is an hour forty-five? Where does the rest come from? I know that opera length is at least somewhat variable, but that seems like a lot. So...I don't know.
Well, questions notwithstanding, what do we have here? So the plot: Celidora wants to marry Biondello, but her guardian, Don Pippo, wants her to marry A Rich Guy, as is typically the case. Meanwhile, Pippo himself is also getting married, only it turns out--for very unclear reasons--that his fiancée is actually the erstwhile paramour of his secretary, Calandrino. There's also another couple, the chambermaid Auretta and stableboy Chichibio. So Don Pippo tries to stop love from winning out, but then--spoiler!--it does. To the credit of the producers here, the plot does more or less hold together, in spite of seeming very incoherent at first and, naturally, being somewhat sketchy and fragmentary all-told.
Predictably, you will be disappointed if you're looking for something on the Figaro-level, but once I got into this and learned to accept it for what it was, I found it perfectly pleasant. There are a few moments where you can really see how Mozart could have made something truly great out of this if he hadn't given up on it. I will say, though, that I don't think the production really serves the material as well as it might. It's pretty goofy in a sometimes-amusing but oft-distracting way. The main...thing here is a giant portrait of Mozart made up of large, removable, square tiles and characters are messing with them and taking them out and putting them back in throughout. And for unknown reasons, there's an ocean in the background behind it. This is okay, I guess, but I feel that the opera really would have benefitted from having more of a sense of place and character: the thing itself is unavoidably thin and unfinished-feeling, so I think that the production would ideally do a lot more to pick up the slack. On another note, I feel that the singers aren't more than adequate: I'd love to see this done with a star cast.
Still, let's be realistic: this wasn't likely to ever be much more than it is, so let's just enjoy it on that level. As a Mozart-delivery system, it certainly delivers some Mozart, and you'll never catch me complaining about that.
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