a cautionary story for contemporary occasions – Seen and Heard Worldwide

Portugal Marvão Worldwide Music Pageant [2] – Mozart, Die Entführung aus dem Serail: Soloists, Cologne Chamber Orchestra / Christoph Poppen (conductor). Castelo de Marvão, Portugal, 21.7.2024. (LV)

Manufacturing:
Director, Units, Costumes – Sabine Theunissen
Lighting – Anatol Washke

Solid:
Belmonte – Martin Mitterrutzner
Pedrillo – Patrick Grahl
Konstanze – Leonor Amaral
Blonde – Heekyung Park
Osmin – Yannick Spanier
Bassa Selim – João Grosso (spoken function)
Dancer – Cláudia de Serpa Soares

To have a good time its tenth anniversary, the Marvão Worldwide Music Pageant mounted Mozart’s happiest opera in a manufacturing that amplified its message of forgiveness into a pleasant cautionary story for our time. Director Sabine Theunissen turned her concern – ‘Do we have now to decide on one facet with a purpose to exist?’ – right into a inventive idea wherein the character of Bassa Selim gained new significance. Acted by João Grosso with brooding depth, Bassa Selim roamed the paraPets, stairs and courtyard all through the opera, narrating and commenting on the story and tracing the tracks of his personal unrequited love for Konstanze. This gave him a continuity and persona that made his deus ex machina perform extra attention-grabbing and sympathetic. The consequence was much more compelling than the easy Singspiel function Mozart supposed.

At one level, conductor (and the Pageant’s co-artistic director) Christoph Poppen joined within the enjoyable, pretending to develop bored with Bassa Selim’s lengthy monologues (in Portuguese with subtitles in English on a video display screen) and urging Grosso to ‘hurry up’. It was a intelligent and efficient approach of bypassing the opera’s unique spoken dialogue and connecting extra straight with the viewers. Theunissen additional enriched the motion with dancer Cláudia de Serpa Soares, who represented Bassa Selim’s favourite spouse or maybe his complete harem, shadowing Konstanze all through the opera, at one level slithering up and down the staircase from paraPet to courtyard. On the finish, when Grosso forgave his enemy’s son, Belmonte, and his buddies, Serpa Soares reappeared at his facet.

With its theatrical aptitude, the youthful joie de vivre of the singers, the calm hand of Poppen and the excellent Mozartian fashion of the Cologne Chamber Orchestra, it was not only a well-meaning, enterprising efficiency however a real Mozartian miracle. And when one of many characters mentioned, ‘I’m certain Mozart would rewrite it immediately’, it was a nod to the truth that Mozart labored very carefully along with his librettist – simply quick ahead 242 years and also you get the Marvão Pageant model. My solely grievance was that the scene the place Pedrillo plies Osmin with wine was too temporary – however maybe getting drunk today is now not so amusing.

The evening earlier than it had been photographers who had swarmed the ramparts. This time, with swallows swooping and darting across the fort and the occasional eagle gliding excessive within the skies searching for prey (and maybe for music critics), it was the singers, actors and dancer who used all the fort as their stage, together with the courtyard wherein the viewers sat and the orchestra performed. Martin Mitterrutzner’s ardent Belmonte (good to have a tenor who seems and sings like a hero) walked via the orchestra and sat in with the second violins at one level. Yannick Spanier’s bass-light however earnestly comedian Osmin tended crops just like the captain in Mister Roberts. When Belmonte anachronistically motioned to his wristwatch at one level to rush alongside his co-conspirators of their escape try, it was an ideal comedian (if maybe unintended) contact.

The spirited younger solid was led by Leonor Amaral’s great Konstanze. She used her heat, agile voice to summon all of the opera’s feelings of affection misplaced and located and dazzled along with her coloratura in ‘Marten aller Arten’. Heekyung Park’s pert and fairly Blonde had the sort of stage presence that saved Osmin on his toes whereas delivering a brilliantly sung ‘Welche Wonne, welche Lust’. Patrick Grahl’s Pedrillo sang ‘In Mohrenland gefangen warfare’ with heartbreaking magnificence, melting hearts within the courtyard.

Even the costuming was curiously endearing. Osmin and Pedrillo wore comparable blue and white plaid shirts, presumably to signify their employment, whereas Bassa Selim wore a blue and purple tartan. And Osmin, Blonde and some others wore fuzzy bed room slippers, presumably as a much less stereotypical different to conventional ‘Turkish’ slippers with their turned-up toes.

On the podium, Poppen paid consideration to particulars with out turning into fussy, by no means impeding the motion nor circumscribing the enjoyable. Mozart’s attribute use of divided violins enlivened the orchestral dialogue, and the solo enjoying from the flute, oboe, violin and cello in ‘Marten aller Arten’ was distinctive. The consequence was a well-balanced, partaking efficiency that revered Mozart’s work whereas entertaining the spectators. And the purely musical expertise had shocking audiophile impression even within the out of doors house.

For 2025, the Pageant will shift its focus. Opera can be put aside, the Cologne band will stay at house and the programming will consist solely of chamber music. However the splendid isolation and fantastic thing about the Marvão panorama will proceed to supply the chance for musicians and audiences alike to go away worldly cares behind. As a younger Portuguese violist mentioned to me, Marvão is just ‘the perfect summer time pageant there’s’.

Laurence Vittes