Mozart’s misfit blossoms

DEUTSCHE Grammophon has released a new recording of Mozart’s long-unloved last opera, “La Clemenza di Tito.” On the back of the two-CD set, the company calls it the first recording in more than a decade of “Mozart’s late, dramatic masterpiece.” Every one of those claims -- except that Mozart wrote the opera late in life -- is deceptive, debatable or downright wrong.

The blurb goes on to maintain that “Clemenza” is “a gripping tale now undergoing an unprecedented renaissance in opera houses worldwide.” That part is true.

“Clemenza” has been slowly creeping into the repertory during the past two decades. But it still is a score that I suspect few opera-goers, other than hard-core Mozarteans, know or look forward to encountering.

Unlike Mozart’s mature comic operas, with their universal insights into sex and society, “Clemenza” is a stilted opera seria, with stoically elevated heroic gestures from which we are supposed to derive moral refreshment. Though in the midst of writing “The Magic Flute,” Mozart accepted the “Clemenza” commission to celebrate Leopold II’s coronation in Prague. He was to base the new work on a half-century-old libretto, already used by 45 composers, about a kindly, mensch-among-mensches Roman emperor.

Mozart was ill, and death may well have weighed on his mind. He had begun his Requiem, which he never lived to complete. He was not as impoverished as romantic legend has it, but he had many expenses and needed money. His wife was pregnant with their sixth child.

With only the overture and a march left to go on “Flute,” Mozart set out for Prague just 18 days before the Sept. 6, 1791, premiere, beginning work on “Clemenza” during the coach ride from Vienna. He was so rushed that he turned the recitatives over to his pupil, Franz Xavier Sussmayr, who also completed the Requiem.

The premiere proved a flop. The empress is famously said to have dismissed it as “German rubbish” (although it’s an Italian opera in form and language, and Mozart was Austrian). Mozart died three months later at age 35. The opera did catch on to a certain degree after his death. But by the middle of the 19th century, it went back out of fashion and stayed that way for a century or more.

Typical of the attitude toward “Clemenza” is that of one of our finest Mozartean minds, the pianist and scholar Charles Rosen: “It is difficult to convey how unmemorable it is,” he wrote of the opera, which he otherwise barely mentions in “The Classical Style,” his classic 1971 study of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Moreover, he let that statement stand in the book’s 1997 revision, along with his doubt “that even the greatest of stagings could save it.”

DG’s assertion that “Clemenza” is a dramatic masterpiece is obviously not universally shared. But most major houses now mount the work. An opera jet-setter, next month, could attend three productions on three consecutive evenings (Nov. 25, 26 and 27) in Oslo, Budapest, Hungary, and Prague, Czech Republic.

Calling the new DG set the first complete “Clemenza” recording in more than a decade is also misleading. Released two weeks ago and only shortly after the DG set is a more complete recording conducted by Rene Jacobs on Harmonia Mundi. DG trims the recitatives, we find out. Moreover, four -- count ‘em four -- DVDs of the opera already have been released this year as part of the Mozart crush, this being the anniversary of his 250th birthday.

A compassionate leader

CLEARLY, “Clemenza” is upon us. And the timing, it turns out, couldn’t be better. This is a perfect opera for the 21st century. Only now, after decades of research into period style, are we learning how to effectively perform the opera, to make it sound modern as well as seem theatrically relevant.

And if exalting a generous and wise leader able to disarm his enemies through compassion was nothing more than a dutiful pat on the back of 18th century monarchs who commission operas, that political message now feels remarkable in a world where high-minded statesmen are in such short supply.

If anything, Tito, the emperor, is, in the version by Pietro Metastasio (the supreme opera seria librettist), way too nice. He chooses not to marry Berenice, the woman he loves, because that would not best serve Rome. He rejects his next choice because she loves another.

There are many typical opera seria plot elaborations, which include a scheme to kill Tito by his best friend, Sesto. Sesto loves Vitellia. Vitellia, who wants to be empress, uses Sesto to foment revolution, etc., etc. Though terribly hurt by the betrayals, too-too good Tito pardons all.

Such a sorry plot was surely a terrible comedown for a composer accustomed to the multifaceted characters he had to work with in “The Marriage of Figaro,” “Don Giovanni” and “Cosi fan Tutte.” But Mozart and librettist Caterino Mazzola did a considerable rewrite of Metastasio’s original libretto, a series of recitatives and arias. A master of ensemble numbers, Mozart added duets and trios in which he could more deeply explore the dynamics between characters.

He then wrote music that broke the bounds of formal beauty, conveying characters full of inner conflicts. Desperate to be loved, Tito sets himself up to be hurt, is hurt, whines and lashes out. Vitellia is hard-hearted, but she goes too far even for her and is psychologically torn apart by having compromised Sesto. Sesto, meanwhile, has his own testosterone issues, and that gets all the more complicated since Mozart makes him a pants role for a mezzo-soprano. Tito, a tenor, is, in fact, the only major male role in the opera (Sesto’s friend Annio is also a pants role). Little surprise that provocative stage directors find mouth-watering the prospect of simulating so much same-sex lovemaking.

Curiously, though, “Clemenza” has thus far proved most effective as modern theater when it is allied with early music performance practice, as is made evident by the new CDs and DVDs.

The orchestras on both CD sets are led by conductors with period-practice credibility. On the DG recording, Charles Mackerras moderates the historical emphasis by relying on the modern instruments of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, but he insists on stylistically informed, crisply articulated playing. At 80, the conductor has mellowed. He remains the detail man he has always been, but he also revels in late Mozart lyric bloom. There is, in this work, much unbelievably beautiful music, and every bit of that beauty reaches the loudspeakers.

Jacobs is a more aggressive period practitioner. His band is the feisty Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. His sound is aggressively ancient-instrument. And his musical approach is just plain aggressive, so much so that the theatrical impact is extraordinary. He, in fact, demands such a propulsive edge and includes such extravagant vocal embellishments from his remarkable singers that this performance doesn’t sound historical at all but more like Mozart reinvented by Stravinsky. Instead of beauty, Jacobs strips away all pretense to get inside the darkest corners of the characters’ psyches.

Both sets have first-rate casts. Get the Mackerras for Magdalena Kozena’s fiery Sesto, as well as for Rainer Trost’s noble Tito and Hillevi Martinpelto’s voluptuous Vitellia. Turn to Jacobs for the sheer vocal fireworks of Alexandrina Pendatchanska (Vitellia), Bernarda Fink (Sesto) and Mark Padmore (Tito). And put away your iPods. These are recorded too well for the sonic restrictions of downloading or transferring.

Next month Harmonia Mundi issues a Super Audio version of Jacobs’ recording, which could be mind-blowing.

And on DVD

THE four DVD releases tell the story of the history of “Clemenza” in our time. DG has reissued the video of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s “Clemenza” film based upon his neo-Classical 1970 production. James Levine conducts a cast of Met singers from the time. It’s handsome but feels, in sight and sound, bloated by today’s standards.

Ursel and Karl-Ernst Herrmann came up with a postmodern production in 1992 and it’s still around, still stunning to look at in its highly stylized way. If you can get to Paris by Monday, you can see it at the Palais Garnier. A performance filmed earlier this year in Paris is also just out on Opus Art, conducted by Sylvain Camberling and highlighted by Susan Graham’s Sesto.

But the “Clemenza” for our time is on a TDK DVD taken from the 2003 Salzburg Festival (and repeated at the festival last summer). The early music authority Nicholas Harnoncourt conducts, often from unpredictable points of view.

The production by the Austrian somewhat avant-garde director Martin Kusej is somewhat updated. It is not without silliness -- the Roman people are modern tourists in a museum.

But the actual characters are real and tormented and nasty -- and they don’t mind showing it. Vesselina Kasarova’s Sesto is a strikingly unhinged lover; Dorothea Roschmann’s Vitellia is a frightening sexual predator; Michael Schade shows Tito’s clemency at least in part as the product of a deranged mind. The Vienna Philharmonic is in the pit and sumptuous. On the stage above, the drama is dirt-encrusted.

The fourth “Clemenza” DVD, on Arthaus Musik, comes from the Drottningholm Opera in Sweden, 1987. It might be two centuries earlier. The attempt was to return to musical and theatrical mannerisms of an earlier century, unfiltered by the present. The disc serves one purpose: It reminds us why it took so long for “Clemenza” to arrive.

mark.swed@latimes.com