DCist Goes to the Opera
Washington National Opera has two more operas scheduled for this season, and DCist went to the prima of the first of them Saturday night, Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito.
Michael Hampe's handsome production, created for the Teatro Municipal de Santiago in Chile, places characters in 18th-century Napoleonic costumes (designed by Germán Droghetti) -- Tito's imperial robes in the final scene appear to be derived from Ingres's coronation portrait of Napoleon I -- in sets clearly showing imperial Rome. In the background, we see the famous Pantheon, but in its present-day form, which was not built until the second century by a later emperor, Hadrian. The earlier Pantheon was indeed destroyed by fire in 80 A.D., but in this production it is part of the fire that Sesto sets in the Campidoglio. For the record, the Pantheon is not located on the Capitoline Hill.
Tenor Michael Schade, who has sung the title role to great acclaim in Europe, was a convincing Tito, with strong sound, but showing slight weakness in some of the challenging runs. Power was certainly not an issue for Russian soprano Tatiana Pavlovskaya, who with her blood-red gown and Queen of the Night sorceress's staff seemed to be auditioning for the role of Lady Macbeth. Mozart wrote some striking low notes for this role, all of which Pavlovskaya sang with perhaps overpowering strength, including the lowest one, in the second act, which was the only moment where her voice almost gave out.
The rest of the cast was generally impressive, too. Russian mezzo-soprano Marina Domashenko had an appropriately virile tone in the pants role of Sesto, a role created by the castrato Domenico Bedini. However, when her part went into a higher range, Domashenko's voice became noticeably lighter and almost vanished on the few agile sections. Puerto Rican mezzo-soprano Jossie Pérez was a charming Annio, a smaller voice that got somewhat lost in duets. Hoo-Ryoung Hwang (Servilia) sang with a wide vibrato that obscured many of her lines, most disturbingly ending up far below some of her high notes. Nikolai Didenko sang with confidence as Publio, perhaps too much confidence since he was consistently behind conductor Heinz Fricke's beat.
WNO Music Director Heinz Fricke conducted with a firm hand, leading his reduced orchestra in a generally good performance, marred only by some imprecision in the horns and an occasionally ununified violin section. The harpsichord sounded quite nice on the recitatives, played well by guest artist Ken Weiss, the principal coach of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program for the WNO. The highlight of the orchestral contribution was the two arias created by Mozart with parts for the master clarinettist Anton Stadler, the clarinet obbligato in Sesto's "Parto, ma tu ben mio" and a part for basset horn in Vitellia's "Non più di fiori." Both solos were beautifully played, the latter presumably on the bass clarinet. Mozart reportedly loved the sound of Stadler's playing, composing some of his greatest pieces of chamber music for him to play. Mozart's favor helped put the instrument on the musical map.
Mozart, who seemed most in his element in the world of comic opera, accepted the commission to write an opera seria in the last year of his short life, for the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia in Prague. Although some accounts relate that Mozart composed the opera in about three weeks, not actually finishing it until opening night, other research indicates that he may already have composed much of the music a couple years earlier, when a plan to create an opera on this libretto fell through. Mozart's student, Franz Xaver Süssmayr (who completed Mozart's Requiem Mass according to his teacher's sketches), did apparently compose the simple recitatives, but this practice was not uncommon. The libretto by Pietro Metastasio had been around for half a century, already set many times by other composers, before Mozart took it up. After another poet, Caterino Mazzolà, had revised the text, the story is a bit of a jumble. The setting is Rome in the first century, during the first year of the short reign of the emperor Titus, although the story is related to history only marginally.
In a sense, La Clemenza di Tito is political fantasy, creators living in an autocracy dreaming about an absurdly benevolent dictator. Although Mozart's Tito forgives all of his enemies, even the betrayal of his closest friend, the historical Titus, is most remembered for the military exploits celebrated on the Arch of Titus, the brutal destruction and pillaging of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Yes, one could be seduced by this fictitious emperor, who insists that the money raised for a temple in his name be used instead to help the victims of the Vesuvius eruption, although the actual Titus spent lots of state money on lavish entertainments in the Colosseum and, of course, his triumphal arch. This is the 18th-century operatic equivalent of President Bartlet on The West Wing: real emperors are just not like that.
You can hear La Clemenza di Tito again on May 11, 14 (the only matinee performance at 2 p.m.), 17, 19, 22, and 27. Students and young professionals, ages 18 to 35, should sign up with WNO's Generation O program, which will likely offer reduced-price tickets to its members.