COMPOSERS: Mozart
LABELS: Virgin
ALBUM TITLE: Mozart: Opera and Concert arias
WORKS: Misero me!… Misero pargoletto, K77; Ch’io mi scordi di te?…Non temer, amato bene, K505
PERFORMER: Elina Garanca (mezzo-soprano), Frank Braley (piano); Camerata Salzburg/Louis Langrée
CATALOGUE NO: 332 6312
Elina Garanca is a Latvian mezzo who is equally happy as a Dorabella or a Fiordiligi. This recital shows her wide-ranging coloratura in both the hysterical sighs of the former, and rock-like protestations of constancy in the latter. But it also reveals a flavoursome, dark legato which can snarl into anger at any moment. This is how we hear Garanca as Mozart’s very own Dido: singing the recitative and aria, ‘Ah, non lasciarmi, no’, which the young composer wrote
to words by Metastasio.
The same poet inspired Mozart’s 15-minute scena, ‘Misero me!…Misero pargoletto!’, written on his first trip to Italy. Garanca as Timante suffers the full range of Oedipal fear, shame and desolation in a long, impassioned recitative, which shows off both Mozart’s and her own skill in tracking every nerve of the text.
Garanca brings a melancholy majesty to her Vitellia (‘Deh, se piacer mi vuol’), and her lustrous mezzo has immediate dramatic presence as the enraged Ramiro from La finta giardiniera. The Camerata Salzburg is her accompanist; and that superb Mozartian Louis Langrée makes a diva of every woodwind soloist within that band. Hilary Finch