Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88391 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-01-03
• Rating: Exempt
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Anamorphic, Box set, Classical, Colour, DVD-Video, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: German, English, French, Spanish, Italian
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 212 minutes

Synopsis
Mozart's last opera commissioned for Leopold II. Sylvain Cambreling conducts.

Customer Reviews

Opera-U-Like
This is Mozart's last opera, allegedly written in 18 days as an occasion piece for the coronation of the Emperor Leopold II of Bavaria. It is an opera seria with the recitatives probably written by Mozart's pupil Sussmayr. It contains some of Mozart's most sparkling music but is let down by those interminable recitatives. In fact most of the plot is contained in the recitatives with Mozart's arias applying the occasional glorious punctuation. I love it all the same and I am always fascinated by the depiction of Tito the kindhearted emperor who cannot stop forgiving his enemies even when they try to kill him and to burn down the Capitol.

This French production from the Paris Garnier sets the action in the age of enlightenment. In other words, instead of presenting an allegory of noble kingship to flatter Emperor Leopold, it is actually set in Leopold's time. This Tito is very much a Napoleonic figure. The directors, Karl-Ernst and Ursel Hermann seem sensitive to the fact that it was written soon after Mozart's three Da Ponti masterpieces and almost contemporaneously with the Magic Flute. So what we get is largely a comedy of manners like the Marriage of Figaro with the trouser-role of Annio being very much a Cherubino figure. At the end we get some of the mysticism of the Magic Flute with a blindfold Sesto appearing before Tito in a scene reminiscent of Tamino at Sarastro's court. The overall effect is to intellectualise Mozart's sword and sandals potboiler and to turn it into something that it is not intended to be.

Christoph Prégardien is a thoughtful Tito, recognisibly humane without being too sanctimonious. I particularly liked the scene where he gets Sesto to confess to his attempted assassination by saying "confess to your friend, the emperor shall not know". I was less happy with Susan Graham as Sesto although she has the best music in the piece. Her "Parto, parto" was thrilling but, on the whole I find that I am not very happy with mezzos in this role and think that perhaps it is time to give a counter-tenor a crack at it. Hannah Esther Minutillo is more successful in the other trouser role as the Cherubino-like Annio. The duet between these two castrato parts is always a high-spot of the opera. Catherine Naglestad is impressively restrained as Vitellia, Tito's neglected mistress. The directors oblige her to eat quite a lot of fruit during the performance and also, bizarrely, to put on warpaint while she is dispatching Sesto to murder Tito. I was also bemused by the scene where she has to put her hand down Annio's blouse while sweet-talking him, presumably a sure-fire way of discovering that he is Hannah Esther Minutillo in drag. Still, modern directors do strange things. The strangest was at Tito's first appearance: behind him a giant baked potato smothered in garlic butter and topped by a serving wench is rolled across the stage. Could the production have been sponsored by Spud-U-Like?