Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, La finta giardiniera (1775)

An opera by eighteen-year-old Mozart?  How can you go wrong?  I ask you!

Well, the story is that a year ago Count Belfiore stabbed his lover Violante in a jealous rage and left her for dead.  But she didn't die, and now she's in disguise as a gardener for unclear reasons.  I mean, she wants to get back with Belfiore, but that doesn't really seem to explain the gardener thing.  He's engaged to a woman named Arminda, son of a local official, Don Anchise, who is himself in love with Violante.  Arminda also has a previously-spurned suitor, Ramiro.  And there's the servant couple, Serpetta and Violante's disguised servant Roberto.

Look, you don't need me to tell you that the music here is going to be great.  But in spite of your lack of need, I'll do it anyway: the music is great, chock full o' gorgeous melody.  The thing you should look up is "Dentro il mio petto," where Don Anchise declares his love to Violante, comparing it to an orchestra, and the different instruments kick in as he mentions them.  Really brilliant.  Perhaps the recitative-to-aria ratio is slightly higher than I'd like, especially in the second act, but it's not a big problem.  I do like Mozart.

The libretto, on the other hand, is just a train wreck.  The above description might sound like a fairly standard opera buffa, but it's really much worse.  You might think, huh, that business about Belfiore having tried to murder his lover and her still being in love with her seems a bit questionable.  And that's true, but honestly, the text doesn't even rise to the level where it's a thing you can think about.  We never learn why the attack happened beyond the generic "jealous rage."  He never expresses remorse or begs forgiveness and she doesn't seem to expect it.  It's the inciting incident, but we are absolutely not meant to think about its implications beyond that.  And, to be fair, it's hard to think of implications when the whole thing is such a mess.  The characters just dash around in very incoherent fashion, nothing really gets accomplished, and then it's over.  The thing with Don Anchise being in love with Violante is basically dropped after the one (great!) aria, and bizarrely, the opera doesn't even bother to finish the stories of the two secondary couples, just leaving them in limbo (the wikipedia page claims otherwise, and you could make them get together through the production, but it's not in the text).  Crikey, man: I know the composer isn't exactly responsible for the libretto, but couldn't you have done a little quality control?

I saw a 2018 production from La Scala, which I believe is exclusively on Medici right now.  It's fine as far as it goes, but I feel that it is only possible to go so far with this piece.  People wonder why Mozart's early operas aren't more performed, but I think this one actually might be part of the standard repertoire if not for the disastrous text.  Bah to that, I say!