COMPOSERS: Mozart
LABELS: DG
ALBUM TITLE: Mozart
WORKS: Tutto Mozart! Opera Arias from Le nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni, Die Zauberflöte, Bastien und Bastienne
PERFORMER: Bryn Terfel (bass-baritone), Miah Persson (soprano), Christine Rice (mezzo-soprano); Scottish CO/Charles Mackerras
CATALOGUE NO: 477 5886
After his Wagner year, Bryn Terfel returns to Mozart; and this cunningly ordered gallimaufry of delights shows him voyaging into both the known and the unknown. Mozart provided Terfel with most of his major international opera debuts, so this is a joint celebration for Mozart’s anniversary year.
Figaro’s ‘Non più andrai’ announces Terfel’s immediately engaging character presence – even in extracts – and his joy in the leaping life of words. And half the pleasure of this disc is the contribution of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, with Sir Charles Mackerras setting the perfect pace for Così’s great terzettino (with Miah Persson and Christine Rice), and with the lightest, most seductive orchestral accompanying for ‘Là ci darem’. Here are both Leporello and Don Giovanni – and, new to Terfel, both the Count (a distinctively heavyweight, yet sensuous, take on ‘Vedrò, mentr’io sospiro’) and Papageno (a somewhat stolid ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen’).
Best of all, perhaps, are Terfel’s own excited discoveries: the priceless ‘Cat duet’, with Persson again, from Der Stein der Weisen; his noble and tender valediction in the concert aria, ‘Io ti lascio, oh cara’ (possibly not Mozart at all); the totally authenticated nonsense sorcery, ‘Diggi, daggi’ from Bastien und Bastienne; and the insertion arietta ‘Un bacio di mano’, of which Terfel makes an irresistibly tasty morsel. Hilary Finch