It's a Mozart Week at the Met - on the 29th week of their free live streamings.
Note: with daylight saving in Melbourne, times for Met opera live streamings have changed: the opera will now be available on the date noted here from 10.30 am and stays available till 9.30 am the next day.
Many of the week's offerings have been screened earlier this year, but they're all worth revisiting - and the week starts with one we've not yet been offered.
Tuesday, September 29 – Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro 2014
Starring Amanda Majeski, Marlis Petersen, Isabel Leonard, Peter Mattei, and Ildar Abdrazakov, conducted by James Levine. From October 18, 2014. Trailer here.
An amazing cast for the new production - oddly the earlier Met Marriage comes later in our week. This one is set in Seville in the nineteen-thirties and directed by British director Richard Eyre. He talks about the production, his interpretation of the opera, the sets and costumes in a brief video here. The splendid bass Ildar Abdrazakov is Figaro (a bass not a baritone?) Peter Mattei is the very well dressed Count Almaviva. And then, the women...
These three may well be the perfect arrivals in this opera - all excellent, according to the reviews. Amanda Majeski is the Countess, and the spunky Susannah is Marlis Petersen. Here's the brilliant Isobel Leonard in her classic trouser role - she had played Cherubino around the world before this performance. Listen to her 'Non so più'.
On Wednesday, you can see her just few months earlier (April 2014) in very feminine mode in the irrevocabably misogynistic Cosi Fan Tutte.
Wednesday, September 30 – Mozart’s Così fan tutte
The three women of Cosi are brilliantly cast in this production - it was screened in July. Susanna Phillips and Isabel Leonard as the caricatured fickle sisters and Danielle de Niese is the scheming maid. The dubious blokes are Matthew Polenzani, Rodion Pogossov, and Maurizio Muraro, conducted by James Levine. Sets are gorgeous, reviews raved.
How to deal with the plot? Just listen to the music?
Here's a feminist literary interpretation. Or is the music Mozart's answer to the accusation that this opera expresses serious misogyny? - Opera de Paris choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker argues here that the music expresses the historical and moral ambiguities of Così. A simpler rejection of the accusation comes from the director of a recent Covent Garden production. One recent production attempted balance - men too are all the same.
Thursday, October 1 – Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito 2012.
This was Mozart's last opera, and has been largely ignored, but reviews of that 2012 performance identified it as a long neglected Mozart gem. It's another Mozart opera about the voices of women. With Barbara Frittoli as the scheming Vitellia, (she's on again in Giovanni on Saturday) Elīna Garanča as Sesto, and Kate Lindsey as 'his' embattled friend, it had the singers. Giuseppe Filianoti is the implausibly forgiving emperor.
OK, it's a Mozart opera that most of us have never seen (or even heard of!) At least until this production was screened in June (see our blog then).
Admitting my ignorance of this opera, I realised then that I do know the exquisite music he gave Sesto - how Mozart loved the mezzo voice! It's one of Joyce diDonato's prize roles - so for your daily fix of Mozart mezzo, listen in... And here's Elina Garanča in the role. Here's an interesting piece from NYTimes. And more here about the comeback of the opera.... And about Garanca. She talks about the role here.
Friday, October 2 – Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte
Starring Golda Schultz, Kathryn Lewek, Charles Castronovo, Markus Werba, Christian Van Horn, and René Pape, conducted by James Levine. From 2017.
This production screened on June 29 - here's another chance to see it. For details see our blog post - for all about those Magic Flutes. Trailer here.
Saturday, October 3 – Mozart’s Don Giovanni
Starring Marina Rebeka, Barbara Frittoli, Mojca Erdmann, Ramón Vargas, Mariusz Kwiecień, Luca Pisaroni, and Štefan Kocán, conducted by Fabio Luisi. From October 29, 2011. This production was by Michael Grandage - read his interpretation here.
There's a thoughtful review of the rise of Mariusz Kwiecień here, including his reflections on playing the Don. 'He finds the role a perfect vocal fit, he said, and loves it because he can show everything he really is and feels: youth, passion, the volatility of a “real Scorpio.” Yet as Giovanni, “I am also lost,” he added. “I am looking to find something that is disappearing before my eyes. I have tried everything: good food, good sex. I tried to kill, to be rich, to be a pig.” Nothing works.'
News from Poland of a different sort of exit for brilliant baritone Mariusz Kwiecień, who has announced his retirement from opera - a back injury (during the 2011 production you're watching) and subsequent surgery have taken him out of live performance. Our loss is Poland's gain, as he takes up a position as Artistic Director of the Wrocław Opera. Click HERE to read the report.
Sunday, October 4 – Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro 1998
This, in my view, is the gem of the week. If you missed it when it screened at the start of May, don't let it go past you now. If you saw it then, you'll love it again.
It's 1998 and the Met assembled a dream cast to bring the well worn classic opera alive, and they did it with such light touch and brilliant singing. Starring Renée Fleming, Cecilia Bartoli and Bryn Terfel as Figaro - what else could you want?! , conducted by James Levine. From the Washington Post: 'Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" ("The Marriage of Figaro") stands apart from all other operas not only because of its seraphic score but also because of its radiant, truly civilized acceptance and affirmation of humanity. From the opening scene, we have the feeling that we know these characters (in their 20th-century incarnations) and that -- despite their abundant flaws -- we love them all. None of them needs touching up, and if the heroes are not especially heroic, the villains are not so terribly villainous, either. This is the human race in all of its frivolity, lust, silliness -- and sweet glory.' More rave reviews on our May blog post on this production is here.
Monday, October 5 – Mozart’s Idomeneo
We finish the week of Mozart with his first opera seria. And he's only 25. It's also possibly his strangest opera and regarded as his best choral work. Summary here.
This extraordinary production screened in May.
Starring Elza van den Heever, Nadine Sierra, Alice Coote, Matthew Polenzani, four great voices for the great quartets. Listen to the quartet in the last act.
Elza van den Heever is Elettra - we'll see and hear her equally formidable Queen Elizabeth in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda on Oct 17th)
Conducted by James Levine. From March 25, 2017. Very interesting review here, praising the production for its music and acting.
So should you watch it? This review says so, and is worth quoting at length. "The librettist Giovanny Battista Varesco was no Lorenzo Da Ponte, and Idomeneo is not great music drama. Premiering in 1781, it points the way forward to the later masterpieces. It doesn’t have the meticulous large-scale structure of a Figaro, but it is full of extraordinary music that equals, if not exceeds, Mozart’s more famous works.
In a way, the mediocre libretto is a benefit. Without deep characterization and much in the way of actual drama and resolution, Mozart just had voices, and so he wrote more than a dozen extended, gorgeous arias, interspersed with lyrical orchestral recitatives. The music overflows with marvelous melodies and powerfully affecting harmonies. Add some of his greatest and most dramatically important choruses—sung with an exciting, raw vitality by the Met Opera Chorus—and you have a masterpiece of music, if not an operatic masterwork."
Lyn, 26 Sept 2020