LA CLEMENZA DI TITO
The opera fell into virtual disuse during the Romantic era. An increasingly low regard for the work began with hack biographers and critics and was canonized by Wagner. The objections had to do with the speediness of its composition (18 days, according to legend, although the evidence does not support this), and with what critics perceived as Mozart’s lack of interest in the subject matter (in fact, he had been contemplating setting the libretto for two years). Furthermore, to speed things up the recitatives were written by a student of Mozart’s, though probably not Sussmayr, as is often presumed, given Mozart’s low opinion of his talent. Because the form was the older opera seria–which Mozart had not explored since Idomeneo and which lacked the wit and ensembling of his popular stage works–critics assumed that he didn’t care for the form. They also assumed that he was already sick and uninspired while working on La clemenza di Tito, though The Magic Flute and the unfinished Requiem are from the same time and are seen as being among Mozart’s most inspired works.
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Soprano Carol Vaness made Vitella deliciously evil and scheming. The range of the part is one of Mozart’s most fiendishly difficult–the singer must go from very pronounced low notes to the coloratura register, often in a single bound. Vaness’s voice is also heavy for Mozart, but she sang with great style and color, was vocally strong, and projected well in most of the difficult passages–although she lost power with her lower notes in the climax of the opera, where her acting also got a bit hammy.
The sets for this La clemenza di Tito, which were borrowed from the Grand Theatre de Geneve, were a series of tacky geometric shapes–complete with visible wrinkles–set up to resemble ancient Rome under construction. The flat buildings looked as though they had been outlined in black Magic Marker, the scaffolding as though it had been colored in brown crayon. There were falling backdrops and floating scenery that moved so awkwardly and conspicuously that it was hard to believe that they were working the way they were supposed to. The costumes were Roman in conception–rather than Roman via 18th-century powdered wigs, etc–which makes sense.
