SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD UK OPERA REVIEW


Mozart, Mitridate, re di Ponto:(Concert Performance) Soloists, Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, Sir Charles Mackerras, conductor, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 2.6.2009 (GPu)

Conductor: Sir Charles Mackerras
Music Staff: Anthony Negus, Russell Morton
Language Coach: Jolanda Pupillo
Aspasia: Aleksandra Kurzak

Sifare: Emma Bell
Farnace: Marianna Pizzolato
Mitridate: Nicholas Sales
Ismene: Laura Mitchell
Arbate: Joanne Boag
Marzio: Robin Tritschler


In the weeks immediately before he wrote Mitridate in 1770, Mozart’s voice broke. For the composer this was an irritation and an inconvenience. Leopold’s report was that his son “has neither a deep voice nor a high one, not even five pure notes; he is very cross about this as he can no longer sing his own compositions, which he would sometimes like to do”. For us, it is a reminder of just how young, how immature – in some regards at least – the composer of Mitridate was, his fifteenth birthday being some way off. Opera seria trades in simplified versions of human nature, its characters always possessed of fairly unambiguous moral significances. At the opera’s first performance (in Milan’s Teatro Regio Ducal on 26 December 1770) there were three ballets, composed by Francesco Caselli; between Acts One and Two the judgement of Paris; between Acts Two and Three ‘The Triumph of Love over Virtue’ and at the close a ballet celebrating the marriages with which the opera ends. As the presence of ‘The Triumph of Love over Virtue’ suggests we are not too far away, here, from moral allegory. The conventions of the genre didn’t require the young Mozart to tackle emotional ironies and ambiguities that would, surely, have been beyond the reach and human understanding even of so prodigiously gifted a teenager. This is a world where Farnace declares – in his aria of moral conversion and repentance

Tempo è omai, che al primo impero

la ragione in me ritorni;

già ricalco il ben sentiero

della Gloria e dell’onor.

The abstract nouns come thick and fast – reason, glory, honour. For the enlightenment sensibility which shapes the nature of the genre, these were the truths of human nature – and as a writer in the Gazzetta di Milano said of the new opera, “the young maestro di cappella, who is not yet fifteen years of age, studied the beauties of nature, and represents them adorned with the rarest musical graces”. The not always pleasant contradictions of human nature were to find wonderful musical and dramatic expression in Mozart’s later operas; for now the more limited psychology and morality of opera seria were more suited to the moral, psychological and musical scope of even the most gifted fourteen year old.

To hear Mitridate as well performed as it was in this concert performance, under the direction of a great Mozartean like Sir Charles Mackerras, was to realise what a fine and remarkable piece of work it actually is. It may – not surprisingly – fall short of, say, Idomeneo, let alone Figaro or Don Giovanni, but it stands relatively high amongst the massed ranks of Italian representatives of opera seria.

We have Leopold’s account of the orchestral forces used in Milan and those deployed on this occasion were approximately the same in number. Sir Charles Mackerras’ consummate ease in the idiom was apparent from the very opening of the overture, the initial allegro beautifully judged in tempo and rhythm, the central andante grazioso allowed to breathe enough – but not too much – for its charming melody to make an impression and the closing presto full of appropriate urgency. Later the splendidly supportive conducting of Mackerras, with its assured judgement of dynamics and its careful attention to the requirements of individual voices, brought out something like the best in a generally impressive group of soloists.

Psychological plausibility is not, as suggested above, something we should necessarily expect to find in the characters of opera seria. But as the embodiments of sibling rivalry Emma Bell and Marianna Pizzolato took us far beyond the kind of caricatures that one often encounters in such figures. The voices – and physical presences – of the two were delightfully contrasted. Emma Bell’s Sifare really did convince one of the genuineness of his/her virtue, without the slightest hint of priggishness (one of the besetting sins of opera seria). Bell’s relatively austere dignity (with a degree of what one might call English understatement, at least early on) stood in vivid contrast to Pizzolato’s very Italianate expressiveness and self-dramatisation, both of them very effective pieces of characterisation. Bell’s authority and weight of voice were already evident in her first aria, ‘Soffre il mio cor’, with its high horns and some keenly incisive writing for the oboes, her unexpected octave leap well handled and the florid passages full of rhythmic subtlety. Later on Bell encouraged more and more respect for Sifare, as in ‘Parto: nel gran cimento’, while displaying her agility in some complex divisions. Her reading of the adagio ‘Lungi da te’ in Act II, with its wonderful horn obbligato, was a thing of considerable beauty and genuinely moving. All in all this was a fine performance – and all the better for being complemented by Pizzolato’s far more fiery Farnace. More than once, as in her first aria, ‘Al destin che la minaccia’, Pizzolato found a greater emotional range in the music than one might have expected; in that first aria she was by turns heroic, threatening (and threatened), solemn and pathetic - and there was no understatement here, in voice and gesture alike this was full-blooded stuff. One of the most impressive things about Pizzolato’s performance was her ability to pace an aria, to build to climaxes. This was especially evident in Farnace’s aria ‘Va l’error mio palesa’ at the beginning of Act II, full of controlled vehemence and menace, of which one was made to believe (far more than is normally the case in opera seria) that there were genuine inner causes – a belief that stemmed more from Pizzolato’s abilities and Mozart’s music than from the words of Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi’s libretto. Pizzolato’s performance of ‘Già degli occhi’ in Act III, Farnace’s repentance aria, was particularly ravishing, full of vocal colours, the lower register of her voice marvellously affecting.

As an object of desire to virtually all the men in the narrative, Aleksandra Kurzak’s Aspasia achieved a different kind of plausibility. She never fully persuaded one that Aspasia had much of an inner life, but that says more about the work than about Kurzak. In the Act II aria ‘Nel grave tormento’ the text speaks of a war between love and duty but Mozart relies on a rather clichéd alteration between allegro and adagio that accepts too easily (for modern tastes) the mutually exclusive absolutes of moral allegory – these are issues of which Mozart would become a far subtler master, but not just yet. It was perhaps only in ‘Pallid’ ombre’ in Act III that, with the lovely interjections on oboe assisting her efforts, she had the opportunity to really move the audience –an opportunity she grasped well. Elsewhere, without much psychological depth to explore, her character seeming to strike predictable pose after predictable pose, Kurzak at least had some wonderfully florid writing to get her teeth into and this she did very attractively, throwing off complex runs with conviction and ease and often producing some dazzlingly beautiful effects. This was especially the case in the duet with Sifare, ‘Se viver non degg’io’, which closes Act II – where the echoic runs of both Bell and Kurzak were stunningly delivered (the musical beauty of a kind strangely at odds with the verbal substance of what was being sung).

Colin Lee was originally announced in the title role; at some point he was replaced by Bruce Ford. But then illness prevented Ford’s appearing, and the role was taken over, at short notice, by Nicholas Sales. He began – perhaps understandably – seeming to be rather nervous and a little wild of voice. His triumphal entry is prepared for, rather delightfully, by a March for trumpets, oboes, horns, drums and strings which borrowed (and re-scored) from the Cassation K62 he had written in Salzburg the previous year. One’s first reaction was that this Mitridate couldn’t quite live up to the entrance provided for him. But as he settled into the performance, Sales’s voice became altogether more secure and the initial wildness turned into singing with a controlled sense of attack, an apt form of vocal characterisation in this context. His fierce C major aria, ‘Già di pieta mi spoglio’, near the end of Act II had the necessary impetus – helped by some fine orchestral playing – and this was a persuasive example of the furibondo aria, the anger on the very edge of tipping over into that entire loss of reason which was the fascination and abhorrence of the Enlightenment mind.

For me one of the particular pleasures of the evening was the performance of Laura Mitchell as Ismene. She brought an elegance and refinement of voice to all that she did. This was true even of her relatively unrewarding first aria, ‘In faccia all’oggetto’, in which she found unsuspected pathos and fear in the rather trite sentiments and relatively uninspired music. In Act II she brought a winning suppleness and fluency, a persuasive eloquence, to ‘So quanto a te’ (an aria accompanied by strings alone); the modesty of manner and the elegance of voice were tools of characterisation and she impressed by the intelligence of her attention to the details of the text. In Mitchell’s reading of the character and her music it wasn’t hard to believe in Ismene’s capacity for stoic patience, especially in ‘Tu sai per che m’accese’ at the beginning of Act III, where her command of this idiom, her ability to make it seem like a natural expression of a coherent character, was impressive. Mitchell is still a young singer; she will be a name to look out for in the coming years.

In Arbate, Governor of Nymphea, Joanne Boag was faced with a largely characterless character, a function of the plot rather than a human being (even in the terms in which human beings are defined in opera seria) and far more often heard in recitative than otherwise. As such she did all that was required of her perfectly competently, the higher ranges of her voice particularly attractive. In her G major Act I aria ‘’L’odio nel cor’, relatively undemanding by the standards of the writing elsewhere in the opera, she sang pleasantly and with assurance. As Marzio, Roman tribune and friend of Farnace, Robin Tritschler gets but a single aria, ‘Se di regnar’ in Act III, a military-flavoured piece (again accompanied only by strings) which he sang with spirit and in which he negotiated well the rather high tessitura, even if there was a slightly mechanical quality to some of his ornamentation. Another promising singer.

Throughout the orchestra responded well to Mackerras’ direction and produced some attractive orchestral colours. At times one wondered if quite enough attention had been paid to some of the recitatives, where there were moments of rather inappropriate rushing and, when the generally accomplished work of harpsichordist Russell Moreton and cellist Alexandra Robinson might not profitably have been a little more richly coloured. But these are no more than quibbles; chances to hear Mitridate are not frequent and it would have been a serious disappointment if this had not been as accomplished as it was. Perhaps we could be treated to Lucio Silla on a future occasion?

Glyn Pursglove