Agenda Venezia

The clemency of the tyrant

 

At the Fenice Theatre, the month of June will close with an important opportunity in which to demonstrate that, in spite of the sharp fund-reduction effected by the preceding Government, the lyric Foundation remains capable of producing ex novo operas; it does not only stage other people’s productions, however splendid these may be. This occasion is important for two reasons: first, because for the current season, this will be the first new staging of an opera (it was scheduled to have been preceded by Il Crociato in Egitto, which was subsequently postponed to 2007). The second reason is that this is an opera which will also be performed at the Salzburg Festival in late July, during the much-publicized 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart: that is to say, in a one-of-a-kind international showcase. And the opera in question is Lucio Silla, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself. This work will be performed in Venice from the 23rd of June until the first of July. The opera will be conducted by Thomas Netopil and organized by Jurgen Flimm. To be presented now for the first time in Venice, this opera represents the young Mozart’s most ambitious work for the Italian public; it was his third experiment with the serious genre, following Ascanio in Alba and Mitridate, Re di Ponto. In spite of the understandable immaturity of some of the passages, already the adolescent composer’s strong ambition can be felt: his exploration of new manners of formal invention (the extraordinary number of nine accompanied recitatives, for example). This talent reaches its apex in the stirring last scene of the first act, a typical shadowy scene in the cemetery of the heroes: Mozart has conceived a great tableau in which diverse figures are skillfully linked in order to produce a fascinating scenic effect, thus presaging the grandiose finales of his more mature period, highpoints, indeed, in the history of opera.