* This review is part of a series on the 2006 Salzburg Festival, in which the 22 filmed operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were diversely and, sometimes, radically staged by the most innovative directors working in opera today. The results provoked wildly mixed reactions and controversy, proving that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart remains a vital voice in the world of 21st century music.
Here are two operas composed by a fifteen- year- old Mozart. He composed the first, the dramatic serenade Il sogno di Scipione (The Dream of Scipione), for his patron the Archbishop Colloredo (with whom he later had a famous falling out with). The music is set to Pietro Metastasio’s allegorical libretto. The Roman commander Scopione must choose between Fortune (the goddess of earthly pleasure) and Constancy (the goddess of moral virtue). Unable to make up his mind, Scipione presses questions in a series of existential passages. He discovers he is in the temple of heaven. He moves from the Elysian Fields to Elysium, where he meets the spirits of his father, Aemillius, and grandfather, Pubilius. They advise him that duty is above all and diligence will be rewarded with beautiful dwellings. Skeptical of mere luck, Scipione chooses the virtue of Constancy and invokes Fortune’s wrath, manifested in a great storm. Scopione endures the elements but awakens to find the test was a dream. Licenza praises Scopione for his steadfastness.
Director Michael Sturminger, Blagoj Nacoski as Scipione, Louise Friba as Constancy and Bernarda Bobro as Fortune flesh out the composer’s conflicting priorities in a Buñuel-esque reverie. With Mozart’s later Giovanni, familiarity breeds contempt. Scipione is Giovanni’s alter ego. He finds refuge and passion within Constancy’s joy in repetition. Constancy, coming off, at first, as a June Cleaver type, even has children here, yet she, like Buñuel’s suburban Severine, is also erotically unhinged.
Continue reading M22: THE MOZART OPERAS AT SALZBURG (2006): IL SOGNO DI SCIPIONE & ASCANIO IN ALBA
For his Salzburg production, Claus Guth’s intertwines Mozart’s neglected, unfinished work with Adama (Earth in Hebrew), by 21st century Israeli composer Chaya Czernowin, commissioned especially for this project. During Mozart’s brief lifetime, he worked with traditional forms and then, especially later in his career, defied those forms. It is one of the great tragedies of music that Mozart did not live another ten to twenty years. His late works (such as the Symphony in G 
Barely evading the woman scorned (Elvira), Leporello and Giovanni move on to Zerlina. Zerlina is engaged to Masetto, and Leporello is instructed to lure Masetto away. Elvira, however, returns to level numerous accusations against Giovanni. All of this is witnessed by Donna Anna, who now recognizes Giovanni as the voice of her father’s murderer. Again, Anna passionately pleads with Ottavio to avenge her father. At a masked ball, Giovanni attempts to rape Zerlina, but he is interrupted by the masked trio of Donna Elvira, Donna 
Over two hundred years later, The Marriage of Figaro remains an extraordinarily three dimensional work, which does not flinch from portraying deeply flawed characters. Numerous filmed versions of the opera have been released on DVD, but the 2006 Salzburg entry may be the most uncompromising to date. There is, of course, Peter Sellars’ mid-nineties version (which, aptly, takes place in Trump Tower), but the line-up of the 2006 