TV Reviews : Mozart Ill-Served by ‘Die Entfuhrung’ on PBS

Johannes Schaaf’s Salzburg Festival staging of “Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail” (on PBS’s “Great Performances” tonight at 9 on Channel 24, 9:30 on Channel 28) holds attention through violent clashes of style.

On Andreas Reinhardt’s bright, formal unit set of symmetrical towers framing a flat seascape, Schaaf attempts a reconsideration of Mozart’s 1782 Singspiel that explores ethnocentrism and the oppression of women.

For starters, he emphasizes a problem that most productions try to overcome: In the libretto, the European characters are , indeed, utterly devious and self-absorbed. But Schaaf fails to make the Turkish harem oppressive enough to justify the captive women’s reactions--pushed to a kinky extreme here. In its sexual outlook, this is definitely a post-”Amadeus” production, but its inconsistencies and clumsy execution keep it from being persuasive.

Far too often, Schaaf resorts to off-the-rack farce and an empty pictorialism that undercut or contradict his more original ideas. Moreover, at its most provocative (the enslaved Constanze writhing in sadomasochistic agony, for example), the action remains fundamentally estranged from the music. Schaaf may want to keep pulling us from a comfortable, “traditional” viewpoint into deeper perceptions. But where does that leave Mozart?

Ill-served, for the most part, since conductor Horst Stein scarcely delivers a probing interpretation of the score, and the vocalism is largely undistinguished.

Inga Nielsen lacks the agility, range extremes and depth of suffering for Constanze, and Deon van der Walt is the standard callow, mellifluous Belmonte. As an operetta-weight Blonde, Lillian Watson efficiently inflicts sexual abuse on a mannequin--one of the production’s pseudo-feminist innovations. Heinz Zednik makes a stale, hollow Pedrillo.

As the Turks beginning to confront their cultural preconceptions, Ulrich Wildgruber (Pasha Selim) crudely portrays lust, anger, forgiveness and a brooding sadness, and Kurt Rydl (Osmin) never seems a genuine threat (or a genuine bass) as he blusters and waves hangmen’s nooses.

Schaaf directed this TV version, which is sung in German with English subtitles. The camera angles usually prove more astute than the microphone placements.