La Clemenza di Tito from Salzburg

Vitellia and Tito

 👍🏻
Teodor Currentzis | Conductor 
Peter Sellars | Stage director

Russell Thomas | Tito Vespasiano (b) USA
Golda Schultz | Vitellia (b) South Africa
Christina Gansch | Servilia (w) Austria
Marianne Crebassa | Sesto (w) France
Jeanine De Bique | Annio (b) Trinidad
Willard White | Publio (b) Jamaica

This is Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito from the Salzburg Festival in a staging by the American Peter Sellars.  I put letters next to the cast to show that most of the cast is black.  They are from everywhere.  I know what this would mean to Americans but am not sure how a European audience would react.  It would be difficult to persuade me that the timing of this was a coincidence.  All appear to be fine singers.  This is on medici.tv until November, and I see no titles.

When the opera opens the crowd of mostly white people are herded into a corner by army.  Some of the women wear head scarves.  Tito picks Sesto and Servilia out of the crowd.  This is such wonderful music.  How have I not known this?

There are Roman arches across the stage as the only reminder of the Roman Empire, but the costumes are all modern.  I read elsewhere that Tito is compared to Nelson Mandella.  This is rather more profound than I normally expect from Peter Sellars.  This is clearly a concept production, much more so than the Claus Guth from Glyndebourne.  Mandella, the great reconciler is evoked.  Clearly Sellars has changed it into a story of racial conflict and broadened the impact by placing it in modern South Africa and using black singers.

Sesto and Annio

Sesto shoots Tito who does not die.  This is intensely serious.  A miracle could happen -- I could become a fan.  This is so brilliant I am truly amazed.  The timing couldn't be more right.  It goes to the top of my list of great Regietheater.

Annio sings a Kyrie for those who have died in the raid on the Campidoglio.  Jeanine De Bique's Annio was for me the best singing.  I liked Golda Schultz but thought she struggled with the low parts of her arias.  The use of chorus is spectacular and may truly be his area of expertise.  Russell Thomas raises Tito to new heights and then dies in the hospital.  Tutto perdono.  Are we ourselves so large?

This version has a sad ending which is achieved in part through the presence in this performance of music not originally in the score for this opera, music undoubtedly added by Peter Sellars.  One may feel free to complain.  The first clue came with the Kyrie sung by Annio.  He liked the singer and wanted her to have more to sing.  In part the tragic ending is created through the addition of serious music from Mozart's Great Mass in C minor.

I felt the brilliance of this interpretation long before the ending and therefore did not require this musical interpolation.

La Clemenza di Tito Glyndebourne

 👍🏻
Conductor:  Robin Ticciati
Director:  Claus Guth

Tito:  Richard Croft
Vitellia:  Alice Coote
Sesto:  Anna Stéphany
Servilia:  Joélle Harvey

Claus Guth is one of the masters of Regietheater.  Looking at the above picture from his production of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito we are reminded of a production of Lohengrin from La Scala a few years ago where the action takes place on a river bank with similar looking grass.  Yes.  That too was Claus Guth.  More recent experiences are the PTSD Fidelio and Salome in a men's wear store. So an opera about an emperor of Rome takes place in a grassy field.  I may see some water behind.  It seems to be a cabin in the woods.  The original tenor quit over "artistic differences."

I like all these singers.  Alice Coote is outstanding, in spite of the fact that she lights cigarettes all the time.  They're talking about places in Rome, burning down the Campidoglio, but we see only grass.  They explain in the interval that this is to remove all hints of cultural context.  A swamp could be anywhere any time.

This particular swamp is where these same people played together as children.  Films play in the background showing children playing.  This production focuses entirely on the emotional relationships between the characters.

I hadn't until recently realized that this is such a wonderful opera.  Beautiful arias, beautiful sentiments.  And best of all it's Mozart.  In such an opera it is possible to sing with complete sincerity.  The soul is open.  My own experience of this opera is informed by Cecilia Bartoli's performances on her early Mozart recording of the arias:  "Non più di fiori," "Deh per questo istante solo" and "Parto, ma tu ben mio."

No flowers for me.  Non piu di fiori.  She repents and thinks she will not marry.  It is opera seria so they all live happily ever after.  Glorious.  Sesto is the star.  Anna Stéphany was a replacement for a pregnant Kate Lindsey.  She looked and sang beautifully and received the most applause.

The Clemency of Titus

Conductor:  Harry Bicket
Production:  Jean-Pierre Ponnelle

Tito:  Giuseppe Filianoti
Vitellia:  Barbara Frittoli
Sesto:  Elina Garanca
Servilia:  Lucy Crowe
Annio:  Kate Lindsey

Today was the simulcast of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito from the Metropolitan Opera.Why isn't this opera more popular?  It has some of Mozart's most beautiful music.  The libretto is by Metastasio with additional material by the court poet Caterino Mazzolà.

The production is by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle who died in 1988 and places the opera squarely in the 18th century.  No authentic Roman while residing in his capitol city would be seen in anything but his toga.  They loved the toga simply because if you were not Roman there was no hope of you keeping it on.  The people in our opera are dressed in wigs and trousers somewhat like people in the 18th century would have worn.

The single set looks a little like Rome, but the buildings are rough and falling down like they are now rather than relatively new looking as they would have been when Titus was Emperor.  During his reign the coliseum was completed, Vesuvius erupted, burying Pompei, and Rome burned.  This opera refers to the fire and his romance with Berenice, a Jewish queen.

Giuseppe Filianoti is an Italian lyric tenor, and I liked him enormously today.  He made a point of mentioning that he studies with Alfredo Kraus.  He is in good hands.

Barbara Frittoli sang Vitalia beautifully and portrayed her at her most nuts.  One can't help wondering if any of them deserve the clemency they are receiving.  She was excellent singing the almost baritonal "Non piu di fiori."

Kate Lindsey sang a fine Annio.  Susan Graham listed off Kate's pants roles at the Met, like Siebel in Faust, Tebaldo in Don Carlo, Stéphano in Roméo et Juliette, Cherubino in Figaro and most notably Nicklausse in Tales of Hoffmann.  She makes a very handsome young man, but I was surprised to see that she is not as tall as Elina.  Lucy Crowe made her Met debut as Servilia.

Elīna Garanča as Sesto received star billing and star bows.  It was she who led out the conductor Harry Bicket at the end, though she did not stand near the center of the stage.  She received a well deserved ovation for everything about her work in this role. Though written for a castrato, the role fell beautifully into her voice, and her dramatic phrasing was inspiring.  Susan Graham who also sings this role in this production was impressed by how Elina walked down the steps without looking down.  You probably had to be Susan Graham to be impressed by this.

I loved this.  This is some of Mozart's best music, but is generally dismissed as uninspiring.   My handout doesn't name a replacement director for the long dead Ponnelle, but someone must have led them to this intensity of acting.  All the performers bring great emotional depth to their roles.

This interview with Filianoti has a lot of interesting things.



Most interesting to me is his remarks on how hard it is to sing the recitatives by Franz Xaver Süssmayr compared to the arias by Mozart.  Maybe that's why they dropped them in Zurich.

Paris Clemenza di Tito

I decided I should give the Paris Opera Susan Graham DVD of La Clemenza di Tito another try. The production is very formal and palely classical. The costumes are periodless--vaguely nineteenth century. There is real fire on the stage for the riot. The cast includes Christophe Pregardien, Catherine Naglestad, Hannah Esther Minutillo, Lorenzo Regazzo, and Sylvain Cambreling.

Susan Graham is very intense for the music, perhaps, but sang the part far better than Kasarova, reviewed elsewhere. Vitelia is noticeably too low for Catherine Naglestad. Christophe Pregardien as Tito is pretty mediocre. Basically you would want this for Susan Graham who is showered with flowers at the end.

But what the hell was that baked potato with the woman sitting in the butter for? It went across the stage for no apparent reason during the first act. I hate that.

I am so pleased to have found this picture of it.

#ad

Clemenza di Tito

This DVD of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito from the Zurich Opera has a number of unusual features.

The secco recitatives are known not to have been composed by Mozart, so they have tossed them. We are left with a work of no particular genre--a serious opera with spoken dialog, even rather severely truncated spoken Italian dialog, instead of the intended opera seria. As even the most superficial student of opera knows, Italian is never spoken from the opera stage. "Piu tardi" I think Violetta says after she reads the letter. That's it. No one in the cast sounds convincing speaking Italian.

When we get to have singing, it is rather good. There is a gorgeous duet between Malin Hartelius as Servilia and Liliana Nikiteanu as Annio.

The production is twentieth century Italian fascism with Tito, sung by Jonas Kaufmann (you knew there was a reason I bought this) as Mussolini. Vitelia and Servilia dress formally in evening wear. The male characters wear either fascist uniforms or suits, usually double-breasted. Liliana wears a cute double-breasted pin stripe. The chorus are attired in street wear, the women in short dresses and hats, the men in suits and fedoras. The evocation of the era by the costumer, Isabella Bywater, is astounding.

I bought this for Kaufmann, and he does not disappoint. The ensemble players of the Zurich Opera are very fine. The audience preferred Vesselina Kasarova as Sesto, but I was disappointed with her "Parto parto." She has pockets of intensity in her voice which she does not try to even out. She is particularly manly.

Vitelia, sung by Eva Mei, and Sesto are treacherous, but Tito eventually lets everyone off, an act that seems particularly foolish. It is difficult to know what to make of the juxtaposition of the generous and forgiving Tito with Mussolini. Perhaps we are just to feel the militarism of dictatorship rather than the specifics of World War II. Or are they trying to tell us something?
#ad