COMPOSERS: Mozart
LABELS: TDK
ALBUM TITLE: La finta giardiniera
WORKS: La finta giardiniera
PERFORMER: Rudolf Schasching, Eva Mei, Christoph Strehl, Isabel Rey, Liliana Nikiteanu, Julia Kleiter; Zurich Opera Orchestra 'La Scintilla'/Nikolaus Harnoncourt; dir. Tobias Moretti (Zurich, 2006)
CATALOGUE NO: DVWW-OPFINT
PRESENTATION: ***
La finta giardiniera, premiered in
Munich in 1775, was composed
when Mozart was just 18. Of all the
operas written before his maturity,
this opera buffa is by some distance
the most interesting: musically
ambitious and a pointer to Mozart’s
later masterpieces, it is dramatically
complex, dealing seriously with
genuine emotional entanglements
beneath its farcical surface.
This Zurich production resets it
in the present day. If this inevitably
compromises its network of 18thcentury
class hierarchies, Tobias
Moretti’s well-prepared staging
defines characters and relationships
with a genuine sense of style, only
going too far in the addition of
extraneous business to enliven (or
rather distract from) the essential
action. But it’s more than capably
sung and acted, with Eva Mei
visually and vocally memorable as
the Countess disguised as a gardener,
Rudolf Schasching supplying
amiable buffoonery as the amorous
mayor Don Anchise, and Julia
Kleiter enjoying herself as the mayor’s
spiky, unruly servant, Serpetta. The
other high-born pair – Isabel Rey’s
flamboyant Arminda and Christoph
Strehl’s vain Belfiore – are wittily
satirised as a couple of self-regarding,
empty-headed celebs.
Visually the show provides good
fun in Rolf Glittenberg’s smart
new villa set and Renate Martin and Andreas Donhauser’s fashionconscious
contemporary costumes.
Nikolaus Harnoncourt, working with
the well-appointed Zurich Opera’s
own in-house period-instrument
orchestra, brings flair and insight.
George Hall