Alemania
Solid Gold
Jesse Simon
Mozart was only 14 years old when he set
out for Milan to kick-start his career as an opera composer. Although the
operatic reforms of Gluck were starting to make their presence felt in Paris,
Mozart’s first work for the Milanese stage was very much tailored to the tastes
of its time and audience; yet if Mitridate, Re di Ponto adheres largely
to the formulae of opera seria and offers only brief glimpses of the
masterpieces still to come, it is nonetheless a work of great vigour and
dazzling vocal showpieces.
The new production of Mitridate at
the Staatsoper Unter den Linden – which appeared as the second new production
at this year’s Barocktage after being postponed in 2020 due to the Covid
pandemic – let none of the opera’s potential go to waste: between the subtle
staging of Satoshi Miyagi and the generous performances from Les Musiciens du
Louvre and Marc Minkowski, the evening offered a continuous argument for the
qualities – both musical and dramatic – of a work often dismissed as a
minor entry in Mozart’s operatic oeuvre.
Mozart: Mitridate, Re di Ponto. Marc Minkowski, conductor. Satoshi Miyagi, director. Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, December 2022. © 2022 by Bernd Uhlig.
Although the story of the opera – adapted
from Racine’s tragedy – takes place in the kingdom of Pontus at the time of the
Mithridatic wars, Satoshi Miyagi transferred the action effortlessly to a world
of his own creation. The staging unfolded on a single, deceptively simple set
consisting of four long tiers flanked on either side by staircases that allowed
the characters to move between levels. If the arrangement seemed schematic on
first glance, it was far from static: the upright panels on each level could be
spun around, allowing not only for sudden entrances and exits, but also for
subtle changes in backdrop (the large scenic paintings – the palace interior, a
bamboo grove and a mountainous exterior – were remarkably elegant, drawing on a
muted palette of desaturated golds, yellows and bronzes).
The formal rigour of the set and the
costumes of the opening scenes – in which the brothers Sifare and Farnace were
attired in full samurai armour – suggested that the story had been transplanted
to feudal Japan, but the arrival of military officers dressed in
twentieth-century military uniform brought a quick end to any notion that the
staging would be a mere period piece. And while Mr Miyagi offered allusions to Kabuki
theatre – most notably in the highly stylised movements of Aspasia in the first
act – it was only one of many approaches employed to illuminate the action.
Indeed, for all its oriental surfaces, the staging just as often recalled the
strange world of classical Greek theatre from which Racine so often drew his
inspiration.
Mozart: Mitridate, Re di Ponto. Marc Minkowski, conductor. Satoshi Miyagi, director. Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, December 2022. © 2022 by Bernd Uhlig.
If the staging was wide-ranging in its
dramatic and chronological ingredients, the diverse elements were united by a
level of subtlety one does not often encounter on the Berlin stage. Other
directors may have felt compelled to draw attention to the cleverly
anachronistic use of costumes, but Mr Miyagi wove them seamlessly into the
fabric of his storytelling. It is also difficult to imagine a staging that
could employ so much gold without coming across as excessive or flashy; and
while pretty much everything on the stage was gilded – from the armour and body
paint worn by the brothers, to the brocade of Aspasia’s gowns, to the set
itself – the effect was one of burnished elegance. Even the dance of the
soldiers during the march announcing Mitridate’s arrival in the first act was
tastefully restrained.
Mr Miyagi’s penchant for subtlety extended
to his handling of the action which flirted, at times, with absolute stasis but
was never careless or disinterested. Indeed he managed the nearly impossible
task of highlighting the principal singer in each scene – often going so far as
to ‘freeze’ the background action for the duration of an aria – without
sacrificing narrative momentum. The slow, contemplative pace of the action
helped to draw one completely into the world of the staging; but, having drawn
us in, Mr Miyagi was content to let the singers do the rest, adding subtle
visual flourishes to certain scenes, but never cluttering the stage with unnecessary
activity, or demanding excess movement from the characters.
Mozart: Mitridate, Re di Ponto. Marc Minkowski, conductor. Satoshi Miyagi, director. Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, December 2022. © 2022 by Bernd Uhlig.
The result was a staging that, in the
spirit of opera seria, allowed each singer the time and space to
showcase their vocal abilities. As Aspasia, Ana Maria Labin opened the evening
with a captivating ‘Al destin, che la minaccia’ that set an almost impossibly
high bar for the rest of the performance; its daring leaps and restless flights
of coloratura – all delivered with exquisite poise – represented some of the finest
singing of the evening. If the opera contained no other arias that offered
quite the same trials of technique, Ms Labin reached similar heights in ‘Nel
grave tormento’, in which she alternated between long phrases of convincing
emotional weight and faster sections of brilliant animation.
Angela Brower seemed less interested in
vocal pyrotechnics than in the emotional complexities that challenged Sifare’s
essential nobility, and her finest moments arose from the combination of long,
fluid lines and carefully rendered nuance; ‘Lungi da te’, with its natural-horn
accompaniment, was not merely one of the evening’s highlights, but emerged as the
emotional core of the opera itself. Sarah Aristidou brought a voice of delicate
weight and exceptionally clear tone to the arias of Ismene. Countertenor
Paul-Antoine Bénos-Dijan gave spirited readings of Farnace’s early arias – ‘Son
reo; l’error confesso’ had a pleasing edge of insolence – but it was his
tender phrasing and quiet resolve that gave his aria of redemption ‘Già dagli
occhi’ its distinction. And Pene Pati brought a mixture of quiet authority and
theatrical flair to the title role, with passages of regal command – notably in
‘Se di lauri’ – punctuated by charged emotion and sustained high notes.
Throughout the evening Marc Minkowski
conveyed the sense not only of being in total control of the music, but also of
being able to find exactly the right mood for each aria; under his direction,
Les Musiciens du Louvre delivered performances charged with joyous spontaneity,
and one was left with the impression that both ensemble and conductor were
genuinely thrilled to be sharing Mozart’s score with us. Yet it was neither the
spirited playing of the orchestra, the enthusiasm of the singers, nor even the
restrained splendour of the staging that could claim sole responsibility for
the success of the production: it was rather the perfect balance between its
various elements that transformed this Mitridate into a subtle, stylish,
and thoroughly engaging evening.
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