Concertante opera is always a risky business. There aren‘t many scores that can withstand a lack of action on a musico-theatrical stage, but if there is one that can, it‘s Mozart’s Idomeneo, Rè di Creta. His first truly great opera, it premiered in Munich in 1781. I thought if anyone could pull it off, it would be Simon Rattle, with his Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. A come-down from the Berlin Philharmonic? I think not. Things I heard them do under the late, lamented Mariss Jansons have never been surpassed in all my experience.
And what better place to do the job than in a part of the very palace where the work was first performed, with Mozart’s favorite ex-Mannheim orchestra under his old friend Cannabich? Mozart knew exactly what that ensemble was worth, and he set them the task of their lives. Gustav Leonhardt was ecstatic when he first got to know this greatest of all opere serie ; “It has the most worked-out wind parts of any opera!“, was his comment.* The same could be said of the string parts.
Simon — pardon me, Sir Simon — is the finest conductor I ever worked under,** be it ever so briefly. One early Haydn symphony, back in his days as chief at Rotterdam. Four performances on four consecutive nights, each one spontaneous and different, each one valid in its own way. I never saw such a bunch of hardboiled pro’s hanging on the minutest movements of a baton, or facial expressions, in that manner.
How utterly devastating and crushing to realise, before three notes of the overture had sounded this evening (they were out of tempo), that something was wrong. After the fourth came (Overdotted. But Mozart had double dots, Simon! They‘re eighth notes!), I knew things were going to be very rough indeed.
I don‘t know how to begin describing how awful it all was, and would rather not relive the hour I endured before bolting. Every single tempo was wrong, without exception. Mostly way to fast. And I use the term „tempo“ loosely. The concept was AWOL; every change of Affekt in the text wrought an alteration in the vital pulse that holds an aria or chorus together. The way a Classical master shows his mastery is by building a coherent edifice of contrasting emotions in a framework that is articulated like a Classical facade — with absolute regularity, only in the dimension of time, not space. Maestro Rattle used to know that. Why did he go over to the Dark Side? Was it fear of being a stick-in-the-mud when all around you are high on the latest street drug? Fear of sounding like the late great Colin Davis, who didn’t know from gut strings and non-vibrato, but had that which you have sloughed off, at least where the Classics are concerned: musicality? Fear of not putting your personal stamp on a pre-existing masterpiece, like graffiti on a monument?
What else can I mention… The great rush made everything sound the same. The magnificent choral Ciaccona honoring Neptune was a hopeless helter-skelter that would have sent the god plunging for the deep. The harpsichordist wouldn’t stop adding distracting frills. The accompanied recitatives, which all sources say must be played in tempo, and which Mozart shaped like the peerless craftsman he was, were chaos. Do we wait for the singer to finish before going on? Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no, with no discernible logic. (The secco‘s, the only element where creative rhythm is required, were, in a bizarre reversal, too metrical.)
All these extraneous pseudo-nuances of timing would have been utterly out of the question under 18th-century operatic conditions, aside from the fact that they are simply, demonstrably, dead wrong.
I watched the beginnings of all this happen under my very eyes. It started with the sainted Nikolaus Harnoncourt‘s Mozart / da Ponte cycle with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, for which I was harpsichordist for some ten years, including revivals and recordings for TelDec. The man had become addicted to shocking audiences. What was salubrious at the beginning became madness as his fame rose. How often did I hear him say in rehearsals, “Das soll ein Skandal heißen!”, with relish. Little weirdnesses started creeping in, and grew and grew — but thank God without the leprosy of „free tempo“. THAT came from later keyboard “specialists”, the Good Lord help us.
Another tributary to Noah’s Musical Flood was J. E. Gardiner, who bears so much guilt in the dreadful trend towards streamlined over-acceleration. And then came René Jacobs, ex-countertenor, whose sense of taste in music as a conductor resembles a box of cheap Belgian bonbons, selected at random, melting in the sun on a beach in Knokke-Heist.
Enough.
What made this disappointment especially bitter was that we had just spent half an hour in the hallowed Cuvilliés Theater, across the courtyard from the scene of the crime, the Herkulessaal. Named after the great French architect-designer who created it, opened at the Residenz of the Bavarian Electors in 1753, destroyed in 1944, all of its ornate woodwork had been removed for safekeeping and is now the only theater interior (built into a new outer shell) to have resounded to a Mozart opera premiere. (The interior of the Estates Theater in Prague was completely rebuilt in the early 19th century.) These boxes witnessed Anton Raaff striding down to the footlights, taking his stance, and belting out “Fuor del mar“ in Allegro maestoso. I wasn‘t going to wait around and hear that done as a Presto delirioso.
The last time I felt betrayed remotely to this degree was when I took my daughter to the Concertgebouw and heard Philippe Herreweghe rush through Bach‘s B-minor Mass. I thought he too would surely be one of the stalwarts. That misconception was also based on respect for past work.
My first harpsichord teacher told me about a professor he had known at Harvard who only read scores in silence, since he couldn’t bear what performers did to his beloved music. I was appalled at the time. Now…I get the dude.
December 18, 2023
* Leonhardt was a bit of a latecomer to the form. I was playing the harpsichord for that 1983 production in the lovely old Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg, then home of the Nederlandse Operastichting.
**And not to pull status, but I have worked under Bernstein, Leinsdorf, Stokowsky, Zinman, Norrington and Haitink. (OK, the first three when I was at Juilliard. So sue me for mentioning them.)
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