Customer Reviews

Mozart - La clemenza di Tito / Rolfe Johnson, Varady, von Otter, McNair, Robbin, Hauptmann, English Baroque Soloists, Gardiner

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mozart's last opera seria has never had the recognition it deserves. Sure the plot looks dated after Figaro or Cosi, but still it's Mozart, and no one ever composed finer music. I think all recordings of La Clemenza di Tito are excellent, especially the old Kertesz and Bohm recordings with the incomparable Teresa Berganza, but this new Gardiner offering has period instruments to its advantage and the English Baroque Soloists are admirable indeed. Anthony Rolfe-Johnson gives one of his finest performances on disc after his vocal crisis of the 1980's. It's good to hear his ever suave tone in such nice condition. As expected Anne Sofie von Otter is outstanding in every respect, she certainly joins Berganza, Troyanos and Bartoli as one of the best Sestos ever. But the real star of the show is Julia Varady. I tell you: THIS WOMAN HAS TO BE HEARD TO BE BELIEVED! The fiendishly difficult role of Vitellia ia a vocal nightmare, the tessitura is all over the place, and Varady sings it with such ease and abandon that for one minute or two she could be mistaken for Maria Callas. No greater praise than that. Whatever you do, get this recording!

Gardiner's powerful conducting reveals the intense dramatic current in Mozart's oft-overlooked opera seria. Without prissy "period" restraint, Gardiner and his vibrant cast have unlocked the passion of Mozart's triumverate of heroes with spectacular singing and dramatic complexity. The recitatives are even exciting! Varady's Vitellia is an absolute triumph! She is the only Vitellia recorded whose ferocious musical beauty properly conveys the seething power and edgy instability of this sexy & dangerous character. Likewise, Anne Sofie Von Otter's gorgeous Sesto is sublime: a beautifully sung, lovingly-sculpted, sumptuous interpretation, not to be missed. Anthony Rolf Johnson sings Tito with strength and sweetness. He delivers all the dignity and pure beauty befitting the role. Also notable is Sylvia McNair's lovely Servilia. A knockout cast led by a conductor who really GETS what Mozart was driving at - and reveals why Constanze Mozart considered TITO her husband's finest opera. Hear this recording to understand how right she was!

This, the next to last of Mozart's operas, is lovely in every way. It is filled with lovely melodies, duets and trios, Glorious choral passages, and one of the most moving Finales there is. And this recording does them true justice. Rolfe-Johnson lends his lovely lyric voice to the role of Tito, displaying wonderful control in his arias. Von Otter sings an incomparable Sesto. I don't know how to explain it really, but her voice just has an..."Aristocratic" sound to it. Take that for what it's worth. McNair has one of the purest, sweetest voices on God's earth, and even though she doesn't get much chance to shine here, she does give a most moving rendition of "S'altro che lagrime", and she is quite lovely in the ensembles. Varady's role is perhaps the hardest in the opera, with a range from High D to Low G. But it doesn't pose a threat to her! Her high D and repeated High B's shine brilliantly. I can't brag too much on Hauptmann, though. To me he has kind of a weak, nasally sound. Robbin handles the small role of Annio well. All in all, this is a delectable "Tito", and would be worth your money.

SOURCE: Live recording of a concert performance presented at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, The South Bank Centre, London in June 1990.

SOUND: Perfectly acceptable early 1990s, live, digital stereo. It should be noted that this is a performance utilizing period instruments that dates from early in the period instrument revolution. Those who have an inclination to get huffy in such matters may find reason to criticize instruments, players and techniques as not entirely conforming to the most up-to-date research and/or fads in such matters.

CAST: Tito Vespasiano (Titus, son of Vespasian), Emperor of Rome - Anthony Rolfe Johnson (tenor); Vitellia, daughter of a former Emperor, Vitellius and habitual conspirator - Julia Varady (soprano); Sesto, friend of Titus and would-be lover of Vitellia - Anne Sofie von Otter (mezzo-soprano); Servillia, sister of Sesto, in love with Annio - Sylvia McNair (soprano); Annio, friend of Sesto and would-be husband of Servillia - Catherine Robbin (mezzo-soprano/contralto); Publio, Prefect of the Praetorian Guards and friend of Titus - Cornelius Hauptmann (bass-baritone).

CONDUCTOR: John Elliot Gardiner with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists.

DOCUMENTATION: Libretto in Italian and English. A short but (for once) excellent and informative essay on the opera and its background by Hans Günther Klein. Summary of the plot by act and scene. Track list that identifies singers and provides timings.

TEXT: Mozart, as usual, found himself in a time bind while composing this opera. He delegated the secco recitatives to his assistant and general dogsbody, Franz Xaver Sussmayer, the very same man who posthumously completed (or botched) Mozart's Requiem. In preparation for this recording, Conductor Gardiner obviously regarded Sussmayer as an uninspired drudge--with considerable justification--and ruthlessly shortened or pruned away his contributions.

COMMENTARY: In 1790, W. A. Mozart, a consummate commercial hack, wangled a commission of 200 ducats to set an old piece of tripe by Metastasio to music as part of the festivities surrounding new Holy Roman Emperor's coronation as King of Bohemia. In 1790, W. A. Mozart, a consummate musical genius, reworked a moldy, old-fashioned libretto into a minor masterpiece, creating the only thing of real significance attached to the name of Emperor Leopold II (who died early in 1792, a year-and-a-half before his sister, Marie Antoinette, sometime Queen of France.)

Metastasio's libretto for "La clemenza di Tito" was already half a century old and had been set many times, once even by Gluck. As an improbable fantasy about a ruler who fit all the 18th Century standards for nobility and virtue, it was a sure-fire hit whenever wealthy rulers wanted to congratulate themselves during a celebration.

Unfortunately, the old libretto was also a stately and formal opera seria, just the sort of thing that the creator of "Figaro" and "Don Giovanni" had relegated to the dust heap. A hack of the literary sort, Caterino Mazzolà, was called in. In place of Metastasio's three acts, a succession of arias succeeded by secco recitative succeeded by arias, etc., Mozart demanded two zippy acts in which only seven of the original twenty-five arias would be retained. In their place would be duets, trios and big finales for each of the two acts. Mazzolà, though hardly another Lorenzo da Ponte, was a satisfactorily reliable hack. He gave Mozart what he wanted, although neither of them could overcome the intrinsic lifelessness of Metastasio's book without junking everything and starting over from scratch.

The opera opened to the mild approval of the bigwigs on September 6, 1791. It experienced considerably more success when, a few days later, it was opened for the people of Prague. On September 30th of that year, Mozart was back in Vienna to conduct the premiere of "Die Zauberflöte."

This particular performance of "La Clemenza" was well regarded when it was first published in 1991 and remains so to the present day, although some purists may cavil at Gardiner's high-handed way with the text. The cast is strong, except for the fuzzy and unfocused gargling of Cornelius Hauptmann in what is fortunately a lesser role. Von Otter and Varady are unusually good. I am not a fan of McNair, but she certainly has many of them and they would, I am sure, place her equally with von Otter and Varady--at the very least. Johnson sings Tito's very difficult music with style and assurance although, purely as a matter of personal taste, I find him lacking in star quality.

This is a good, solid performance of the fifth of Mozart's six mature operas. It was composed jointly with his sixth, "The Magic Flute," and it often sounds like it. "La clemenza di Tito's" opera seria roots, like those of his earlier "Idomeneo," sad to say, undermine it and hold it back from achieving the true greatness of his big four operas. "La clemenza's" strait-laced, paper-thin, opera seria characters gave Mozart no opportunity to provide the life that so fills and inhabits the earlier Cherubino, Leporello, Despina and the Papageno who would follow so soon.

Five slightly fusty stars.

Julia Varady, Anne Sophie Von Otter and Sylvia McNair sing the besters Vitelia, Sestus and Servilia of the world.
Anthony Rolfe-Jonhson sing a normal Titus.
Gardiner do a personal reading of the best Mozart`s opera
The sound it`s very very good
This is one of the best versions of the moment.

This recording of Mozart's Clemenza is really great, is features people like Anne Sofie von Otter, Julia Varady, Sylvia Msnair, and Anthony Rolfe Johnson! The orchestra playing is relly well performed, the tempi are very good, and the whole opera is relly well interpreted by Gardiner. the two rondos in Act Two, are very beautiful especially the rondo before the finale. The cast is very good, and the Chorus is very good as well. I have no regrets. It is a live performance but that is okay. Alot of the recitives are cut but most of the recictives are boring and have no drama. The cast is great, and I have no recomendations except for the Clemenza conducted by Colin Davis. Buy This!

Mozart's great operatic comedies are acclaimed by everyone, or nearly everyone, but I don't know whether there is much of a consensus yet regarding this, his last opera of all. The libretto may not be wonderful, but surely it is not bad either? Up to now Mozart had managed to avoid toga-trailing tableaux, but there was nothing else for it this time. Even here there was a certain amount that he could alleviate by purely musical means, and it seems that he exercised some influence over Caterino Mazzola who had been given the task of making something tolerable out of this nth reworking of a text originally by Metastasio and hacked all but to death since. What they contrived to add between them was duets and larger ensembles, mainly trios, providing a merciful break from the traditional opera seria scheme of recitative followed by aria followed by recitative...etc etc. There are four accompanied recitatives, and these are Mozart's own work, but it appears that he had to leave the `secco' recitatives, accompanied only by the harpsichord continuo, to Suessmayr, the dutiful workhorse who `completed' Mozart's Requiem not much later. These are never the jewel of any opera, and as Gardiner has been criticised for pruning them I shall take his side in the matter and say, in my favourite quotation from Hamlet, `For this relief much thanks.' Even when they are the master's own work they can be wearisome, and at least by reducing their length Gardiner allows them to be sung with some dignity. In Giulini's great Don Giovanni the solution applied is to rush through them, and it is hard not to be reminded of the Chipmunks.

The other thing Mozart could do, through his genius as a born dramatist, is to give some individuality to the music of the various characters. He could not do this to the extent that so excited Shaw's admiration in Don Giovanni, but he does not leave them as singing statues, which is a fate they were asking for. The better side of the libretto is its clarity, and that helped. The worse side (and this is a good point made by the liner note author Hans Guenter Klein) is that there is no development of the character of Titus himself, who is an impossible goody-goody. I suspect that this more than anything else is what gets this opera marked below Mozart's greatest, but I wonder whether anyone except myself feels that the overture is not his best either.

The direction has the qualities that I am coming to expect confidently and welcome thoroughly from Gardiner. Taste is impeccable, the sense of proportion is admirable, the workmanship is flawless and the use of period instruments is musical. The singers do very well in general, but the women outshine the men, and this is not entirely because only two roles, Titus himself as a tenor and Publius as a bass, are sung by men in this account. It is partly the consequence of Publius's being a smallish part and that of Titus being not all that much bigger and mainly featured in the second act. For me, the real reason is that these male soloists do not have the vividness and the `profile' that their woman colleagues have. However, thinking positively as ever, I suppose that the very limited size of the roles limits the importance of this criticism.

Overall the performance makes as much impact as I could fairly have expected. Mozart could go some way towards irrigating a musical Sahara, but even he had his limits. However this is very late Mozart indeed, if such an expression can be used legitimately of a composer all of whose works are early works. The solo and ensemble numbers are heavenly (what would you expect?), the singers do them justice, and if there is a `star' among them it is probably Julia Varady as Vitellia, which either is meant to be the biggest part or the singer makes it seem that way. The recording is unobtrusive, which is the most suitable kind of recording for this kind of music and this kind of interpretation. The liner note is very good indeed, and there is the customary Archiv paraphernalia of a summary as well as the full libretto, these and the liner note being in parted tongues as usual. Highly recommendable, so highly recommended.

like harnoncourt's tito, this is a good dramatic performance. the singing, acting, and playing are impeccable, and, unlike harnoncourt, it's not too hard to tell who is who. the timbres of the female singers are pretty well differentiated, though not as well as on hogwood's set. the only singer who has some trouble is varady. her upper register is ravishing, but she is very clearly out of her element in the (much) lower register that, in all fairness, is really only suitable for a contralto. here, della jones on the hogwood set does a much better job. jones has a wider vocal range and can actually sing the low notes, while varady only sounds like she's trying (unsuccessfully) to impersonate a male. otherwise, a good performance. i still prefer the hogwood set, however. while not as dramatic, it's more elegant, and probably truer to mozart's intentions. la clemenza di tito, after all, was commissioned for the aristocratic crowd.

Esta es una de las versiones cumbre dentro de la discografía de esa belleza mozartiana que es 'La Clemenza di Tito'.

En el equilibrado reparto sobresale con luz propia JULIA VARADY, una Vitelia antologica que se pasea triunfante y sin problemas por la endemoniada tesitura de su personaje (2 octavas y media!!) en la que es la mejor creacion discografica de este personaje con mucho.

El Sesto de ANNE SOPHIE VON OTTER esta lleno de sensibilidad, buen gusto y saber hacer mozartiano y la Von Otter le hace justicia a su personaje

ANTHONY ROLFE JONHSON en Tito no pasa de la corrección, porque la voz no es especialmente atractiva y el canto de coloratura se ve algo forzado por momentos, y su diccion es demasiado anglosajona

En los papeles secundarios SYLVIA McNAIR es una Servilia de bello canto pero de diccion demasiado anglosajona, lo que tambien puede aplicarse al Annio de CATHERINE ROBBIN. Solo discreto el Publio de CORNELIUS HAUPTMAN

Tanto el MONTEVERDI CHOIR como los ENGLISH BAROQUE SOLISTS son dos conjuntos excepcionales, que bajo la experta batuta de JONH ELIOT GARDINER terminan de redondear la que es una de las mejores versiones en disco del 'Tito' mozartiano.