Free The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera by Rupert Christiansen

conviction.
    Plot
    Rome, first century AD .The ambitious Vitellia is jealous that the Emperor Tito (Titus) plans to marry the foreign princess Berenice and plots to assassinate him.Tito’s friend Sesto (Sextus), infatuated with Vitellia, agrees to help her, against his better judgment.
    Meanwhile, out of a sense of duty to Rome, Tito has sent Berenice away.Instead, he asks to marry Servilia, but when he learns that she loves Annio, he honourably surrenders his suit and reverts to the plan of marrying Vitellia.A message sent to summon her to the palace arrives too late – Vitellia has already dispatched Sesto on his murderous mission.
    Sesto sets fire to the Capitol, but in the ensuing confusion, Tito escapes unharmed.Sesto is arrested and condemned to death.Tito cannot believe that his friend would betray him.Under interrogation, Sesto stands firm and refuses to reveal the identity of the other conspirators.Then Vitellia has a change of heart.She admits her guilt to Tito, pleading with him on Sesto’s behalf.The merciful Tito relents, and all parties are reconciled, praising his virtuous rule.
    What to listen for
    Despite its traditional frame, Clemenza only contains four big set-piece arias (two for Sesto, one each for Vitellia and Tito).Between them, Mozart sneaks in all sorts of smaller-scale delights – Servilia’s ‘S’altro che lagrime’, and her duet with Annio, ‘Deh prendi un dolce amplesso’, for example.Perhaps the highlight of the score, however, is the superb first-act finale, which inexorably gathers pace and intensity as the voices of soloists and chorus accumulate, only to avoid the expected fortissimo climax and die away in a sigh of grief at the conspirators’ treachery.Here, at least, Mozart’s genius is working at white heat.
    Vitellia is almost as difficult a role as Constanze in Entführung. It ranges between a contralto’s low G and a top D (a note occurring in the trio in Act I and considered soperilous that many singers leave it out altogether).The castrato role of Sesto is now given to a mezzo-soprano; the rather lifeless and unrewarding role of Tito goes to a tenor.Servilia and Annio have some of the most glowingly charming music in the opera and, for relatively little effort, often walk away with the warmest applause.
    Mozart did not write the recitatives: he assigned them to his pupil Süssmayr, who later completed the Requiem which Mozart left unfinished at his death.They are dull and even clumsy at times, and attempts have been made to rewrite them.
    In performance
    Many productions have opted for a baroque setting, inspired by the paintings of Tiepolo.More imagination was shown at Glyndebourne, where Nicholas Hytner, with the help of brilliant design by David Fielding, found a stylized way of suggesting the setting of Imperial Rome without resorting to either archaeological pedantry or Hollywood kitsch.Other directors have seemed bored with the surface of the piece and use it as a vehicle for extreme deconstructive interpretation – for example, the Salzburg production by Karl-Ernst and Ursel Herrmann in which all sorts of obscure (if not downright pretentious) symbolism involving water-melon and Cinderella’s stray slipper was introduced in order to suggest neuroses and contradictions behind the libretto’s confidently black-and-white moral façade.
    Recordings
    CD: Janet Baker (Vitellia); Colin Davis (cond.).Philips 422 5442
    Julia Varady (Vitellia); John Eliot Gardiner (cond.). Archiv 431 806 2AH2.Period instruments
    Video: Philip Langridge (Tito); Andrew Davis (cond.).Glyndebourne production.Warner 0792013

    Die Zauberflöte ( Th Magic Flute )
    Two acts. First performed Vienna, 1791.
    Libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder
    Composed not for an opera house but for Schikaneder’s popular suburban vaudeville theatre, this is one of Mozart’s very last works, written at a time when he was desperate for money.Its libretto, drawn from a bewildering variety of sources, mixes elements of