Making Mozart’s Music Sing

It’s difficult to decide where to begin in praising Deutsche Grammophon’s new “Le Nozze di Figaro” (445 903, three CDs), the most intelligent, sensitive and purely enjoyable recorded realization of Mozart’s ever-so-human comedy in memory.

Its guiding spirit is conductor Claudio Abbado, leading the pinpoint responsive Vienna Philharmonic with consistent dash, wit and understanding.

Abbado and his superb cast of singing actors convey a more palpable feeling of ensemble in this studio recording than is projected by any of the several editions based on, or actually taped at, live presentations.

Lucio Gallo’s Figaro suggests more the volatile revolutionary, less the charmer than Figaros of an earlier time, creating a temperamental resemblance between himself and the angrily blustering, womanizing--and resplendently sung--Count of Boje Skovhus, while silvery voiced Sylvia McNair, their common object of desire, is a brainy, adult Susanna, less in need of Figaro’s protection than his resourcefulness.

In such company, only Cecilia Bartoli would do as Cherubino, and here she is, singing with optimum engagement and skill, creating a portrait of smitten, randy youth that virtually pops out of the loudspeakers, while Cheryl Studer as the Countess conceals waning vocal resources with subtle verbal inflections, portraying a noble, sensitive woman doomed to love a man unworthy of her.

Vocal appoggiaturas are enhancingly, not merely dutifully applied in this strikingly successful “Nozze di Figaro,” a theatrical (even without visual aids) and musical experience that consistently charms, touches and delights.

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A new “Die Zauberflote” on the Erato label (12705, two CDs) is an ensemble effort based on the 1994 Aix-en-Provence Festival staging, but studio-recorded last year. The ubiquitous William Christie conducts his period-instrument Arts Florissants ensemble and an excellent chorus in yet another example of what is becoming one of the most fruitful musical partnerships of our time.

The performing edition used here, presumably Christie’s own, decorates Mozart’s notated score with light-fingered imaginativeness, most notably in the instance of the Three Ladies, elevated to near-star status with numerous trills and elaborate vocal cadenzas: one felicitous touch among many in a production that wears its scholarship so unobtrusively.

The youthful cast has two familiar components, the seasoned but still boyish Tamino of Hans Peter Blochwitz and the echt Viennese Papageno of Anton Scharinger, who combines--shamelessly--the late Erich Kunz’s classic portrayal with the appealing timbre of a young Hermann Prey.

Among the other principals, all well suited to their tasks if not quite knockout vocalists, Rosa Mannion is a winningly girlish Pamina, Natalie Dessay a benign Queen of the Night, and Reinhard Hagen a Sarastro who sounds like a youth wearing a false beard rather than the usual somber authority figure in keeping with Christie’s, and Mozart’s, notion of “Die Zauberflote” as a fantasy for, and perhaps by, ageless children.

Christie’s pacing is bright, springy, propulsive--fast but never rushed, words and music dovetailing with exquisite naturalness, while the orchestral execution is notable both for precision and sweetness of tone.

*

In contrast to these fully realized operatic accomplishments, London Records’ new version of the most subtle and refined of Mozart’s stage creations, “Cosi fan tutte,” is about nothing more than singing and the playing of musical instruments (444 1472, three CDs).

The singing heads--some of whom sing exceedingly well-- sound like short-term house guests rather than people who have inhabited their roles. Since they include such vocal and dramatic paragons as Renee Fleming, Anne Sofie von Otter and Olaf Bar, the failure to make the composer’s, and librettist Lorenzo da Ponte’s, points rests with conductor Georg Solti, who has never been a sympathetic Mozartean.

Time and again in this dispiriting production, Solti, who presides over the excellent Chamber Orchestra of Europe, blunts characterization and inhibits the warmth of Mozart’s vocal structures (whether sung or played) by drawing straight lines rather than sculpting phrases.