Marvão Summer Music Festival, Part 2: Opera

The highlight of my Marvão Festival weekend was the semi-staged version (acting, minimal sets) of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio, an overall musical and dramatic delight. I've always found Mozart to be a compelling opera composer, especially when his works are performed with lightness of touch and a bit of vulgar wackiness. He perhaps used humor to reveal human emotion and behavior better than any composer. This opera, composed in 1782 when Mozart was 26, is a lot of fun. The plot is more lucid than many from this era, involving the efforts of two young men to abduct their girlfriends who have been captured by the Turks and then imprisoned in the Pasha's seraglio (harem). The Turks were always on the minds of the Viennese, especially since the 1529 Siege of Vienna, in which the Viennese repulsed the Turks' efforts to capture the city (and western Europe). The siege remains as a prominent bit of European history, as you can see in museums throughout Austria and southern Germany. For example, the Dresden palace museum is  stocked with lots of  Turkish tents, swords, uniforms, and other battle souvenirs. 

Abduction is a singspiel, in which the plot moves forward using spoken (German) text, interrupted by arias and choruses. This is an early precursor of modern musical theater, and differed from typical Italian operas, in which sung recitative was used to forward the plot. In this production the director made the sound decision to update the opera by modifying the spoken text, keeping the arias unchanged. Even better, the text was spoken in Portuguese to better involve the audience. It was impressive that the pan-European cast was able to speak Portuguese well, while also singing in German and acting with panache. The audience responded with lots of laughs and applause. The director/writer added some nice updated references in which the onstage narrator commented on Mozart and modern society. For example, he opined that this opera is about gender equality, but if Mozart had lived into our time, he would have promoted equality of all types, a very nice thought. I think it's also highly likely, since Mozart usually give the women the upper (moral) hand in his operas, and here he avoids easy racist tropes about the Turks, somehow treating everyone sympathetically. The director also made nice use of the castle surroundings, even having some music and dialogue happen inside a castle tower with major echo effects (real, not electronically produced!) . 

The music was glorious. The Chamber Orchestra of Cologne, conducted by Christophe Poppen, played with buoyancy and brisk tempos, just the way I like Mozart. I was smiling broadly from the overture onward, just listening the the orchestra. All of the pan-European soloists were good actors and sang with confidence. The chorus was omitted, presumably due to limitations of space  or budget. It's not used all that much, though, so was an acceptable omission. 

This opera contains a number of musical gems. One standout is Costanza's virtuosic aria "Martern aller Arten" (Tortures await me), superbly done by Portuguese soprano Leonor Amaral. This is an aria that is worth your listening to. It's long (almost 10 minutes) and has an elaborate instrumental introduction done as a little concerto grosso, in which a mini-orchestra of solo cello, violin, oboe, and flute alternate passages with the full band. This instrumentation continues throughout the aria, and the soprano often joins the small orchestra as a chamber player, not as a soloist. For example, a rapid ascending scale can start in cello, pass to violin, and be completed by the soprano. I do not really know of anything like it in opera, and it's evidence of Mozart's genius. Too often the aria is just done as a soprano coloratura showpiece, but here the orchestra and soprano achieved just the right balance. You can get a sense of this in this YouTube video, where the conductor seats the four orchestral soloists in front of the orchestra, partnering with the soprano. This aria was famous from its very first performance, and you can relive this experience in this wonderful excerpt from the movie Amadeus. BTW, I had not watched this in many years, and was delighted on re-viewing the movie. Tom Hulce seemed too juvenile to play such a genius when I first saw it, but now I think he is just right, and the period costumes and re-creations of music of the time is excellent. From both the movie and the music you can surmise that Mozart was both in love/lust with and awed by his star soprano, and I think that's the best way to listen to this music. 

This wonderful opera was the highlight of my weekend in Marvão, and if this is typical of the opera performances there, I will definitely return to this castle-concert hall next year!