It's been a while, but self thought it was time to revive the occasional mash-up of SNLC with Demi Moaned's occasional opera diary series, because there was a Metropolitan Opera HD-moviecast today. With that in mind, the standard lead-off question now is:
Anyone see the Metropolitan Opera's HD-movie cast of La clemenza di Tito today?
My guess is that for most here, the answer is "no", as the poll will most likely indicate. Just so that we're all at least on the same page in terms of the plot, you can read the synopsis from the Met's site here. This was Mozart's penultimate opera, and composed for a rather lofty occasion....
The occasion for which Mozart received this commission was the coronation of Leopold II, the Hapsburg Emperor as of 1790, following the death of Joseph II (the Emperor shown in the film of Amadeus with his usual catch-phrase "Well, there it is."), as King of Bohemia. Leopold II had already been crowned as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in September 1790 and King of Hungary in November 1790. His investiture as King of Bohemia was set for September 1791. If we go, for convenience, with the narrative as given in the wikipedia article on the opera, then the contract for the opera was signed in July 1791. With Mozart engaged as the composer, this didn't leave a lot of time, even with a libretto already set up for him to set to music.
It turns out that the story of La clemenza di Tito had been set many times before, which is why a libretto already existed more or less made to order. The story was also in the format known as opera seria, which operagoers generally perceive as being an outdated form at the time Mozart was writing this work. This attitude is reflected in this excerpt from an interview with the Latvian mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča, who sings the "pants" (i.e. a female singing a male part) role of Sesto, whom the story's villain Vitella wants to assassinate the Emperor Titus (the Tito of the title):
"Q: "The formal structure of opera seria that Tito is based on had already gone out of fashion in Mozart's time. Does that make it harder to bring these characters to life?"
EG: "It's a challenge. Many operas translate easily to modern days. Whether you play La Bohème on the streets of today or 100 years ago doesn’t really make that much of a difference. But the morals of Clemenza, between the emperor and his charges, the people below him — that's hard to interpret and to make understandable for the audience."
Interestingly, however, if you go to
this Google Books link to John A. Rice's
Cambridge Opera Handbooks monograph, or at least selections thereof, on
La clemenza di Tito, a contraian view of
opera seria and its status at the time goes as follows:
"In fact, as much recent musical scholarship has shown, opera seria was hardly dead in 1791. It continued to thrive in Italy. And it continued to thrive in some of Northern Europe's operatic centers, including London and Berlin. Far from approaching extinction, opera seria was gradually evolving - developing into the type of serious opera we are familiar with from examples by Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini."
Citation: John A. Mack, Cambridge Opera Handbooks. W.A. Mozart: La clemenza di Tito. Cambridge University Press, p. 8 (1991).
The kicker in the context of Vienna comes in the next sentence, which explains at least one person who thought
opera seria to be "out of fashion":
"However popular it was in many parts of Europe, opera seria was not in official favor in Vienna during the 1780s. Its absence from the stage of the Burgtheater was in part a matter of the tastes of Emperor Joseph II, who claimed that he found the genre boring (he may also have found it too expensive)."
Citation: Ibid.
So the Met Opera interviewer's question needs to be qualified a bit in terms of the whole genre being "out of fashion". In fact,
opera seria translates hyperliterally as "serious work", so in one sense, "serious opera" never really went out of fashion. What did change with time was the setting of stories of ancient antiquity into stories with more recent, even "contemporary" settings.
What is a good point in Garanča's comment is the ideology behind Tito and the governmental structure that lurks behind the story. My ignorance of ancient Roman history will obviously show here, but it's pretty clear that Tito, as Emperor or Caesar, is an absolute ruler, or in modern parlance, "the decider". However, unlike the last moron who claimed that title for himself between 2001-2009, Tito was at least reasonably smart and qualified to rule. The idea of an absolute ruler who demands, and pretty much gets, unquestioned obedience is anathema to us Americans, and understandably so.
Interestingly, one passage in the libretto of Tito might ring rather close to the current occupant of the White House, with regard to his naivete about the Republican(t) opposition in his first term. The commander of the Praetorian Guard, Publius, has this passage in Act II, directed to Tito:
"Tardi s'avvde
D'un tradimento
Chi mai di fede
Mancar non sa.
Un cor verace
Pieno d'onore
Non è portent
Se ogn'altro core
Crede incapace
D'infedeltà."
(He is late
to notice betrayal
who has never known
what it is to be disloyal.
It is no wonder
if a true heart,
full of honor,
believes all other
hearts incapable
of disloyalty.)
In
Tito, once all is finally revealed to him about the true instigator of the plot against him, Tito shows near-unbelievable generosity in forgiving all parties involved. In turn, his subjects are overwhelmed by his magnanimous behavior, in the final paen of praise to him that closes the opera. Our world is a very different one from the opera, of course, and one wonders if PBO realizes, from the obstructionist behavior of the Republican(t) Party, that this kind of generosity, or concessionary behavior, of his first term would serve no purpose now.
About this particular performance, it was pretty good, on the whole. The weak link for me was Barbara Frittoli as Vitella, the "bad girl" of the story, because I thought that elements of her performance verged on camp, especially with how she twists Sesto around her finger, since Sesto has the hots for Vitella. Vitella, however, wants power and the throne. Frittoli's singing was fine, no worries on that part, but it's the acting that I had reservations about here.
No such reservations about Elīna Garanča as Sesto, the one character who undergoes the most difficult tests and trials in terms of the plot. Garanča is a tremendously intense opera actress, and if you want an example of it also from past Met HD-casts, I would very, very strongly recommend that you rent the HD-cast of Carmen with Garanča in the title role. If I ever see a live Carmen again, I sincerely doubt that any mezzo-soprano from here on out will match Garanča's performance in the Met HD-cast. She's that good.
Garanča isn't the only mezzo in the cast, of course. The other mezzo is Kate Lindsey, as Sesto's friend (and potential brother-in-law) Annio. KL has sung several roles in the past at Opera Theater of Saint Louis and also Santa Fe Opera, and has clearly moved on from OTSL to bigger and better things. Like Garanča, Lindsey brings considerable acting skills to the opera stage, besides having the vocal chops to sing at the Met.
(Sidebar: if you stop and think about it a moment, it does sound odd for two women playing cross-gender parts where they could wind up as brothers-in-law, doesn't it?)
Rounding out the cast are British soprano Lucy Crowe as Servilia, Sesto's brother who is in love with Annio (and vice versa), Oren Gradus as Publius, and last but not least, Giuseppe Filianoti as Tito. All of them were fine, but since their characters don't develop all that much compared to Sesto (or even Vitella, who does a complete 180 between beginning and end), there's rather less for them to do in terms of possible scenery-chewing. Tito does admittedly wrestle with his conscience, the whole friendship vs. loyalty vs. civic duty issue, in Act II when he's basically arguing with himself as to whether to sign the execution warrant for Sesto, but given the title, you know how that turns out.
The conductor is Harry Bicket, music director of the English Concert, a period instrument ensemble in the UK. HB once guest-conducted the St. Louis Symphony, and even though I'm the worst reader of people I know, even I could tell from my balcony seat that they didn't care much for each other. He hasn't been back since, to the relief of both sides, I suspect. At the Met, his style on the podium comes off as rather imperious, which I suppose fits the opera, but it worked. He obviously knew what he was doing and got results.
The production by the late Jean-Pierre Ponnelle is very old school, in the use of big sets and old costumes (although the costumes were anachronistic to me, looking more medieval for a story nominally set in ancient Rome). In other words, just what the artistically conservative Met audiences like, AFAICT.
One nice HD-moment, which was all the nicer for being spontaneous, came from the harpsichord player, after the conclusion of Vitella's last aria "Non più di fiori", when the audience burst into applause. Normally, in opera seria, when a singer has a big aria, the music stops and the audience gets to applaud. However, this moment was an one exception, where the music went straight from Vitella's aria into the final scene without a break. This didn't stop the audience from applauding, of course. What was the nice touch was a shot of the orchestra as they kept playing, and in the lower right corner of the screen, the harpsichord player "applauded" with his right hand against the harpsichord, in appreciation. It looks so much nicer to see than to describe it in words. But that was a sweet and classy bit of icing on the operatic cake.
Yup, this is a long one, which I suspect the non-opera inclined among you would have just skipped over :) . If you want to chit-chat about the opera below the tip jar, feel free. But since I suspect that almost no one will discuss the opera, you can otherwise observe the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories of the week. The two options are perfectly practicable in the same comment, of course ;) .
PS: If you've got a lot of spare time and want to watch the whole thing off a certain website:
Part I:
Part II: