Iúnó Connolly; Andrew Henley; Philip Sheffield, Guy Beynon, Aaron Kendall; Ellen Mawhinney; Sarah Chae. Thomas Blunt, Conductor; Jeremy Gray, Stage Director
How best to describe this experience? It was like being invited to have dinner with an uncle of one of your oldest and best friends. You accept willingly and at first you are astonished at how similar to your friend his uncle is – very similar features, expressions, ways of holding himself and voice…..And you’re initially very engaged in chatting with him. But then gradually the feeling comes over you – this man is really a bit of a bore; superficially he’s like your friend but he lacks the anecdotal punch and sparkle of your friend, his way of telling a story and the range of things to talk about, the reliable attractiveness of your friend’s conversation.
And that’s how it is with Mozart and Salieri. The story about the latter poisoning the former of course is almost certainly nonsense ( Salieri claimed he’d done so in later years when suffering from dementia but in his lucid moments always denied it). Mozart apparently got on well with the slightly older man (born 1750) and certainly was not above borrowing from him – the masked ball scene in this work might well have been the inspiration for the not dissimilar idea in Don Giovanni. Salieri was more popular than Mozart, biographers say, but maybe slightly envied the latter’s prodigious talents.
Given my grumbles below, it’s worth saying that this opera was written when Salieri was only 21. It was hugely popular at first, receiving something like 30 productions in Salieri’s lifetime, but by the 1790s was being viewed as old fashioned – Leopold Mozart was commenting on it unfavourably even in the early 1780s. If you were to listen to it casually, dipping in for a few minutes you’d think it was Mozart – very similar orchestration, turns of phrase, musical mannerisms. What you begin to miss soon though is the lack of complex harmonies, the ebbing and swelling of different emotions, the characterisation of different scenes, the absence of memorable melodic material. In truth it’s pretty boring. It bounces along amiably – one pleasant aria follows another. But there’s no wit, no dynamism. The denouement in Act 3 is appallingly below the standards of Mozart’s finales……..Nor was the librettist (brother of the composer Boccherini) up to the standard of Da Ponte or even Schikaneder – the opera’s protagonists are cardboard cutouts, the plot plain silly (though of course Cosi Fan Tutte is bound to some to seem as ridiculous) – nobleman comes to Venice with his aristocratic fiancée but at the same time wants to have a fling with a local Venetian girl, who’s scheming and wily. She pops up from time to time to embarrass him when the nobleman is with his fiancée, and when the latter gets to realise that she’s got a rival she uses the opportunity to dress like her at the masked ball and humiliate the nobleman. Eventually all are reconciled with the aid of large wodges of cash and the engaged couple are married.
Bampton Opera I’ve not come across before – one of the smaller country house opera companies, it specialises in putting on long forgotten 18th century operas with young singers. It was using St Johns Smith Square for this performance. The church like most churches was not an ideal musical performance space- quite echoey, so that the English translation got swallowed up in the acoustic depths and little could be understood of what was being sung (the men in recitatives being an exception). The staging was fairly minimal – the scenery being a series of advertising boards for Venice, and various props further reducing the space for singers to move in. There was some good lighting, making effective use of the church’s massive pillars, and a rather clever silent fireworks display projected onto the church roof during the final wedding scene.
The singers did their best to make the characters interesting. Ellen Mawhinney has the most demanding acting role as Falsirena and she did very well in conveying her tricksy wayward personality. All the singers might be ‘young artists’ but the main three all have an impressive track record of UK and international performance. I was, of the three, most impressed by Sarah Chae as Marchioness Colloandra whose voice seemed to gain in agility and power during the evening. But Ellen Mawhinney and Andrew Henley as Duke Ostrogoto were very good too. I was also impressed by Iúnó Connolly. Phillip Sheffield gets full marks for the audibility of his words. Occasionally, in some of the smaller roles, there were signs of straining, as though young voices were having difficulty in projecting their voice into such a large space.
The orchestra raised on platforms behind the singers was a small period instrument band who performed very effectively, though the lighting for their scores seemed to shine over the singers into the eyes of the audience, reducing the visibility of what was happening on stage.
All in all this was, despite everyone’s best efforts, a rather dull but undoubtedly fascinating evening that threw interesting light on what makes Mozart special. I’m glad overall I went. This run of performances by Bampton were the UK premiere of the work. I can’t see it cropping up again in my lifetime……
John's musical journey 