Search - Mozart - The Salzburg Festspiele Opera Boxset on DVD

Interesting inventions, but not for the serious Mozart colle

Roo.Bookaroo | 02/22/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"First of all it is fair to applaud the efforts of this special 2006 Salzburg festival to present all the 22 operas of Mozart together. This has never been undertaken before by any opera house or festival, and a long time is going to pass before it is attempted again. It is an incredible achievement.

For that alone, the festival management should be lauded and these amazing productions recommended, especially to neophytes who only have a casual interest in the arcane pastime of opera, and who are curious about what this Mozart wonder was really about.



I have bought a few individual boxes to sample the 2006 Salzburg productions, and I have seen a couple more at friends' places. I had very high expectations. On the whole I have been, perhaps unfairly, terribly disappointed.

Which is a subjective reaction, dictated by my own extensive knowlege of Mozart and his operas, not an objective analysis that would reflect the feelings of the public at large. I have to agree with most of the commentators who tend to express their own disappointment.

Although those M-22 performances are worthwhile as entertainment for a festival public, where the good summer mood makes the audience overlook all sins, I should insist on one critical point: Especially for a Mozart collector, this set is not such an advisable acquisition.



Mozart collectors are Mozart fanatics, not just ordinary fans (in spite of the relation between both words, there's a nuance, and we collectors do nuances) and are intransigent on extreme quality, exactly like Mozart was, fastidious to an extreme: in his dress, in his actions, in his music, in his operas.



The M-22 opera versions of Mozart presented in 2006 are obviously strongly influenced by the trends of movie direction. In these "modernized" stagings I have seen, there's a lot of sexual shenanigans, which is what spices up the show to modern audiences, and especially to young people, who get very excited with nudity.

Like, in one memorable performance, one of the females appeared on stage bare-chested and wearing only short panties, with no indication in Mozart's music that such a Venus had appeared on the stage. She was beautiful, of course, but what had this to do with a Mozart who agonized when his wife showed off her calves? The "in-your-face" approach was never his. Mozart loved ambiguity and guessing games, not brutal exhibitionism.

Modern directors want to make an impact and create a buzz about their names, and tend to ignore completely the authenticity of the original stagings. I strongly believe this is an ill we have to live with, but for us, Mozart collectors, this is a misguided trend that we are rejecting.



We now live in an age of exacerbated historical sense and integrity. We want to respect the "come scritto" to the letter. We resort to period instruments. We refuse to transpose the parts of sopranos castratos into tenor parts. We are furious with cuts, of recitatives -- boring or not -- and even more furious about cuts in arias. And we want the original language respected. We want the whole opera as it was meant to be -- the real McCoy.

We care about Mozart, but only the real Mozart, not the dressed-up and transmogrified Mozart of adaptations jiggered by "innovative" directors in our modern times.



In the same spirit of historical authenticity, we should respect the staging indications of the original libretti. Mozart belongs to the 18th century, and getting rid of the 18th century character of his stagings is a travesty. Usually done for reasons of cost, as a modern staging can be simplified and reduced to incongruity. How about T-shirts and shorts for costumes? Or even underwear? Or La Finta Giardiniera in a department store?

Our reaction is best expressed by Martin in Leonard Bernstein's Candide, when towards the end in his famous Laughing Song " Words, Words, Words", he defines the exact word to use, one we don't always dare to say publicly in polite society: "Two tiny syllables but spiny syllables;/One single word -- absurd./Ha! Absurd."



I think Mozart collectors, like all true art collectors, are the ones most interested in authenticity and historical value, and tend to shy away from these pretentious "modernized" stagings that were prevalent in the Salzburg festival.

This trend in free-for-all inventiveness, wild imagination, and shock value, as displayed in the M-22 offerings, is good for producers, directors and opera managers, who are keener to make their names than promote Mozart's music, and acceptable to the large public which doesn't care one way or the other, but only wants one evening's entertainment.

Cognoscenti would for instance much prefer, for instance, a Met production of a Mozart opera on DVD, because the Met has the most financial power and technical assets to produce a complex and costly "original" staging, with outstanding singers. Other well-financed opera houses are also willing and capable of assuming the costs of a "historical" production: Covent Garden, La Scala, Vienna, Munich, Berlin, Stockholm, etc...



I would gladly get rid of my few M-22 operas, but I would feel bad palming them off to other naive opera-fanciers. I do not even care to give them away, as I would consider this gift a disservice to the cause of presenting Mozart.

I'd probably keep the double-disc box which includes together "Apollo et Hyacinthus" and "Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebots", only because there's no hope to get another DVD version for eons to come. But it takes a huge effort of imagination to visualize what Mozart had in mind. And I'd hesitate to part with "Il Re Pastore" where the singers sit or stand brandishing big playing cards for a depiction of the sweet pastoral life Mozart was dreaming of. Only because these DVDs are absolute curiosities and have no competition whatsoever. Still, to be brutally honest, how often am I going to slide them again in my DVD viewer, when the time spent would be much better devoted to listening world-class singers in audio CDs?



Mozart's operas are, above all, about captivating voices that make you fall in love, extraordinary singing, and enchanting music, and not opportunities for "creative" and contrived stage showmanship which become sheer distractions.

In the 18th century the tension was the rivalry between "poetry" (the words of the librettist) and "music", and Mozart fought word for word with his librettists. Nowadays the tension has moved to the difficult partnership of "music" and "modern staging" gone wild, and he indubitably would now passionately disagree with the stage directors, threatening to throw his score in the fire if he didn't have his way.

We can only regret that Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, who had started directing Mozart's operas in such an exciting way, died accidentally so young. We would have loved to get a whole series of M-22 directed by him instead.



A music lover may have been introduced to Mozart's music the usual way: a few symphonies, some of the great piano concertos, one sinfonia concertante, Die Kleine Nachtmusik, the Requiem, and of course the bizarre movie "Amadeus" with the strident and idiotic laugh unfairly ascribed to Mozart, and perhaps one of the classic late operas. And he/she may become interested in plunging into Mozart's operas.

We feel that in that case, it'd be much preferable to first get to know the Mozart operas, not on DVDs, but with good audio CD versions -- which at least deliver the great music, and the chance to develop an acquaintance with the story and the original libretto -- and only then to start looking for the "right" DVD production which combines top singers with authentic staging.



For instance, it is easy to develop a basic familiarity with top audio performances of these operas in Philips's "COMPLETE EDITION OF MOZART" of 1991 (where the operas were sold individually with great booklets inside), or its condensed version, "COMPLETE COMPACT EDITION OF MOZART" of 2000 (where the operas are offered in boxes of about 4 or 5, and the booklets do not include any longer the original libretti). More recently, in the summer of 2009, all the operas in the two Philips editions have been compiled by Decca in one single set, the recent magnificent "MOZART: THE COMPLETE OPERAS", which has the merit of being budget-priced around $100. The deal of a lifetime, if not the century.



This base once secured, it is great fun to look around for good DVD productions, or, better to go and see the operas in a first-class house, such as the Met in New York, Covent Garden in London, or La Scala in Milan. Not everybody can do that, so then the DVDs become a great adjunct to one's deepening knowledge of the operas.

Of course, it would have been wonderful if the 2006 Salzburg festival performances had risen to the level of top quality produced in the great opera houses, but this has proved to be far from the case. Getting excellence in a complete series of the 22 operas seems to be an impossible task anyway.



In this case, a much better introduction to the staged operas can be found in the following superb DVD versions of the best-known works. Notice that most of them are published by Deutsche Grammophon, which is the publisher as well of the Salzburg Festival M-22 set.



"Mitridate, re di Ponto" - Harnoncourt, directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, with the great Gösta Winbergh in the title role, dazzingly filmed in 1986 in Vicenza's Teatro Olimpico, on DG;



"Ascanio in Alba" - Dantone, with Norberg-Schutz, Rancatore, Pizzolato, on the 2008 stage of the Teatro di Bologna, on Bongiovanni;



"La Finta Giardiniera" - Arnold Ostman, with Richard Croft, Ann-Christine Biel, on the cute 18th-century stage of the famous Drottningholm Opera house in Stockholm in 1988, on Arthaus Musik;



"Idomeneo" - Levine, directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, with an unforgettable Pavarotti, on the 1982 stage of the Met, on DG;



"Die Entführung aus dem Serail" - Karl Böhm, with Gruberova, Talvela,etc.., on the 1980 stage of the Munich opera house, on DG



"Le Nozze di Figaro" - John Pritchard, with Cotrubas, Te Kanawa, Von Stade, at the Glyndebourne Festival 1973, on Arthaus Musik; or

- Karl Böhm, directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle in 1976, with Caron, Te Kanawa, Fischer-Dieskau, on DG



"Don Giovanni" - Furtwängler, with Siepi, Grümmer, Lisa della Casa, at the Salzburg Festival 1954, on DG (one of the great classics of opera)



"Cosi Fan Tutte" - Harnoncourt, directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, with Gruberova, Stratas, of 1988, on DG



"Die Zauberflöte" - Sawallisch, with Lucia Popp, Gruberova, Moll, at the Munich Opera house in 1983, on DG



"La Clemenza di Tito" - Levine, directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, filmed in 1980 among the ruins of Rome, on DG, which revived in Mozart's last opera seria.



At least, with these classic high-quality DVD versions, a Mozart music lover would gain an exposure to the authentic operas without the risk of being confused by the wild inventions of modernistic and cheap productions. And, important when building a mental library, he/she would be spared the memories of these far-out stagings, and not be turned off for good by distorted images of Mozart's operas.



For each of the other early operas of Mozart, that is, " Apollo et Hyacinthus," "Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebots," "Bastien und Bastienne," "La Finta Semplice," "Il Sogno di Scipione," "La Betulia Liberata," "Lucio Silla," and "Il re Pastore" -- each one infused with the unique charm of youth and longing yearning of adolescence, in an irresistibly enchanting and dreamy atmosphere that is not to be found again in the late operas -- a great iconic DVD version, that could become a classic or a reference performance, has yet to appear on the market.



We can't disregard the historical contribution made by this set in the case of a few of the early operas, for which, incredibly, they are the only ones available on DVD. These offerings have a certain value as amusing or shocking curiosities. It still remains that the abstract and simplified stagings obscure the original magnificence of the music designed to portray actions and feelings in visually picturesque "scenas".

Make no mistake, they are in no way the flesh-and-blood works as composed and envisioned by Mozart.



Mozart fanatics want to collect first-class performances or none. Simply because we may view the curiosities once, but never revisit them.



ROO.BOOKAROO

Feb. 22, 2010"