MUSIC REVIEW : Mozart, Marzipan, Pavarotti at Refreshing Salzburg Festival

After all the pomp and righteous heroism of Richard Strauss in Munich, after all the mystic piety and superhuman pathos of Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, Salzburg offers a refreshing change, even a balm.

Salzburg is the home of Mozart. He clears the head, cleanses the ears. He reinforces the value of the intimate impulse, reasserts the human dimension.

This ancient Austrian city--a convoluted network of post-card bridges, magical gardens, rocky fortresses, fairy-tale castles, historic monuments, operatic marionette extravaganzas, marvelous theaters and legendary marzipan confections--has become a mecca of the fashionable tourist trade, even in the overcrowded pedestrian zones. Parking is a nightmare. English is spoken everywhere; ditto Italian, French, Japanese and Austrian. A few people in the shops and concert halls actually speak German.

Despite crashing commercialism, festive charm still pervades many things, from the tiny movie house that hosts an opera festival of its own to the out-of-the-way restaurant that is dedicated to the memory of the great local basso Richard Mayr to the tiny Baroque church that dispenses sophisticated performances of Mozart masses along with the hope of salvation.

Like Bayreuth, Salzburg is a place where people want to be seen. Tickets for the more glamorous events--most notably those involving the aging and infirm Saint Herbert of Karajan--cost as much as $250, and that is on the white market. The citizenry tend to regard festival events as attractions reserved for wealthy visitors who happen to be conspicuously consuming snobs.

Once in a while, however, a bone is thrown to the masses. One night last week, for instance, an Italian tenor named Pavarotti clutched a small, white tablecloth and mangled a little de rigueur Mozart but did lovely things to a generous sampling of his native canzone .

The big Festspielhaus, which seats only 2,177, had been sold out months ago. But a block away, in the square in front of the 17th-Century cathedral that usually hosts performances of “Everyman,” the management had set up a huge TV screen and a couple of raucous loudspeakers. The tenorissimo thus could be seen and heard, free of charge, by another 2,500 of the devout. Most of them camped on bleachers, some merely happened to be strolling by.

The patient ones, undeterred by alfresco distractions, the damp night air and physical discomfort, were rewarded with a 100-second appearance by their beaming idol--in the too, too solid flesh--at the end of the evening. The sound, incidentally, was no worse than that at Hollywood Bowl.

Elsewhere, longtime Salzburg observers constantly griped about the lowering of standards, the tightening of budgets and the absence of big names. Still, an American visitor could find much to warm the cockles, especially after recent trials by “Ring” and Richards.

Some of the pleasure turned out to be Mozartean, even though it didn’t come from Mozart. At the small Festspielhaus, for instance, an audience of 1,384 could witness a tasteful, elegant, extraordinarily restrained production of Rossini’s “La Cenerentola.”

Michael Hampe, the director of this melodramma giocoso , did away with all caricature, all gags, all buffo tricks. Although the result may have seemed more serious than absolutely necessary, one had to admire the period charms of the designs (a sad valedictory effort by Mauro Pagano, dead of AIDS at 37), and the ensemble eloquence of a cast that included Ann Murray as the coloratura waif, William Matteuzzi as the bel-canto prince (a late replacement for the indisposed Francisco Araiza), Gino Quilico as the baritonal factotum and Walter Berry as a still-formidable if not very idiomatic paterfamilias.

Riccardo Chailly was the hectic conductor. The incomparable Vienna Philharmonic served as the pit band.

Among the more conventional offerings one found Mozart’s “Entfuhrung” in a harsh, overpsyched, undersung, modern production staged by Johannes Schaaf and conducted by Horst Stein. The gala operatic attraction remained Karajan’s ultra-polished “Don Giovanni,” which had been televised in the States last season. In the house it seemed subtler, more flexible, and, in the case of Julia Varady’s impetuous Elvira, better sung. John Aler, the new Ottavio, was sadly outclassed by his stellar colleagues. Samuel Ramey, his fellow American, returned as a visually and vocally handsome but unmenacing, unaristocratic Don.

A less spectacular but, in many ways, more exciting event was a Mozart Matinee conducted with gemutlich brio by Stein in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum (capacity 807). Here three extraordinarily promising young musicians won all hearts.

The Sinfonia Concertante provided a joyful introduction to a virtuosic violinist named Isabelle van Keulen (watch out, Anne-Sophie Mutter) and a remarkably mellow violist named Tabea Zimmermann. Still, the show was stolen, as it were, by Thomas Hampson, formerly of Los Angeles, who brought extraordinary wit, bravado, charm and opulence to a couple of obscure Mozart arias. One wished he had been cast as Don Giovanni.

His performance boded well, in any case, for Salzburg’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” which employs him as Count Almaviva. More later about that, about “La Clemenza di Tito,” and about some quiet, guilty-conscience commemorations of the Austrian Anschluss .