Opera Ballet Vlaanderen opens the new opera season with the first opera production that theater director Milo Rau has to his credit. An ambitious project because La Clemenza di Tito is as opera seria an absolute masterpiece, the culmination of the genre in Mozart's oeuvre.
Art is power
Curiosity was great because Milo Rau is defined as a "much-discussed theater maker, filmmaker and sociologist" (press release OBV) and with an open mind we headed to the opera. The set has two sides: a kind of artist's gallery and a bleak and dark refugee camp. Milo Rau calls it in his own explanation "the glamorous hipster world of an art gallery" versus "people who have to sleep on the street". Those people who have to sleep on the street are part of Milo Rau's theater manifesto, because he wants to "put an end to the artistic bourgeoisie" of opera. Now let the people of Rome not be so pro-emperor in Mozart's opera as Tito returns after a great battle, but populating the plot of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito with refugees from virtually all problem areas of the world (as it turns out later in the performance) is quite a far-reaching Hineininterpretierung.
So Tito is not an emperor for Milo Rau but a hack painter. Hence the slogan mentioned above, which forms roughly three-quarters of the performance on the back wall of the set. As a character, however, he barely stands out. He is a plaything of his surroundings, who strip him of his clothes, dress him again, push the paintbrush into his hands, but of the aristocratic ruler who ultimately places his clemency above his reign and his power, hardly a trace remains. As a self-appointed artist, Milo Rau makes of him what he wants to make. What Mozart composed no longer needs to apply in our theatrical world.
Milo Rau's message – however socially engaged it may be in reality – is more important than Mozart's opera which premiered in Prague in 1791 as an occasional work to celebrate the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia. Wouldn't the manifesto that Milo Rau rightly wants to show on stage be much better served with its own creation without misusing Mozart's existing and masterfully composed opera?!
Fragmented story
Since Milo Rau appropriates Mozart's opera for his own message, he also lets the composition proceed differently than in the original. For example, he starts the performance with the ending. Why? The orchestra members didn't know it themselves….The festive overture only follows afterwards. The opera is also repeatedly interrupted by own stories, sometimes a comical Antwerp resident – whose heart is then ripped out….!! -(later in the performance comes the "joke" that it was only a silicone heart). The second act receives a long prologue from an elegant lady from Aleppo who tells her story, in her admittedly colorful language and on poetic text. Beautiful, but what is it doing in this opera?
While opera houses try their best to project the texts, here during the texts of the last magnificent arias of the piece (Tito: Se all'imperio, Vitellia: Non più di fiori) anecdotal data about the extras that Milo Rau gives a place in his piece are projected. This serves neither the singers nor the opera. Moreover, it makes the otherwise straightforward story a confusing whole, whereby the essential relationship between the characters is lost.
Milo Rau believes he has that right: "my Clemenza is anything but in line with the opera tradition as we know it…/…By puncturing opera utopia and dismantling Mozart's work, many opera connoisseurs and critics experience my La clemenza di Tito as destructive. The convergence of different facets, the parallelism of music and action, and the tension that arises when you present old works in a new way, intrigue me."
The music remains beautiful…
In this production the singers really have to do their best to prevent their character from sinking into the chaos of the whole….The beautiful slender tenor of Jeremy Ovenden convinces, although his presence lacks the authority and clemency of Tito. The vocal performances of Anna Goryachova (Sesto), Anna Malesza-Kutny (Vitellia) are also admirable. Maria Warenberg confirms as Annio the positive impression she made during the KEZ this year and Sarah Yang can at times, through her touching singing as Servilia, make one forget her silly costume with winter wool hat….Alejo Pérez lets the small orchestra play with nuance and smooth sonority. The obligatory clarinet passages sound wonderfully beautiful and the recitatives are dosed with the right expressiveness.
Mozart's La clemenza di Tito conveys in an opera populated with four main characters in a compelling and sober way how lust for power and love are tragically intertwined. Milo Rau makes chaos of it.
WHAT: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, La Clemenza di Tito
WHO: Milo Rau [director], Alejo Pérez [conductor] With: Jeremy Ovenden, Anna Malesza-Kutny, Anna Goryachova, Maria Warenberg, Sarah Yang, etc.
WHERE: Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Antwerpen
WHEN: Sunday 10-9-2023 (premiere) More performances Antwerpen until 21 September Ghent: 1 to 8 October