![]() The National Theatre Orchestra responded with a graceful performance, at once elegant and full-bodied. She can even pull expression out of a harpsichord. Conductor Julia Jones is a veteran of Mozart in opera houses throughout Europe, and brought a fine balance to the score, with a bright, measured style that illuminated the music while supporting the singers. And the ensemble work was razor-sharp, especially the closing “A tutti contenti saremo cosi,” which gave the performance an electric finish.įortunately all the changes did not affect the music, which was marvelous. Adding nifty characterizations were Kateřina Jalovcová (Marcellina), Tomáš Šelc (Bartolo) and Josef Moravec (Basilio). Lukáš Bařák was a competent if lightweight Figaro, and Pavol Kubáň made for a compelling Count, offering a sly combination of swagger and buffoonery in both his acting and singing. Her subsequent duets with Krovateva were a delight. As Countess Almaviva, Barbora Perná nearly stole the show with a tender, glowing “Porgi amor” to open the second act. ![]() Ekaterina Krovateva was a vivacious Susanna, managing smart, sensitive vocals while darting around the stage. The cast in the premiere was uniformly strong, with outstanding performances in particular by the female leads. The “garden” in the fourth act is a phantasmagorical forest of giant mushrooms and other strange fauna in lurid colors, hardly conducive to romance but a surreal touch worthy of Dalí. ![]() The sets by Falko Herold are strikingly imaginative, even magical when Susanna calls for a room in the second act that materializes out of thin air. Choreographer Jan Adam keeps the constant running and coupling smooth and spot-on in the timing. Horáková likes to fill the stage with bodies in motion, giving the piece a kinetic quality ideally suited for comedy. Which is a shame, since most of the other elements work very well. One can only wonder, how exactly did we get here? But eventually they become a focal point rather than a supplement, epitomized by Barbarina (Marie Šimůnková) and Cherubino (Jarmila Balážová) teaming up in front of the curtain for a torch version of Tutto Nero, an Italian cover of the Rolling Stones’ Paint It, Black. These initially add variety and flavor, with the strolling accordion accompanist a particularly nice touch. Grimm had been astounded by the prodigy Mozart when the musical family from Salzburg visited Paris in 1763 therefore when Mozart and his mother arrived in 1778, Grimm was keen to serve as his manager and mentor.Confusing matters further, Horáková and her team spice up those dull recitatives and interludes between scenes and acts with invented characters and additional music, modern snippets of disco, jazz and rock. Nichts als Musik im Kopf: Das Leben von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He shared with Mozart one important contact: the Baron von Grimm, writer, diplomat and secretary to the Duke of Orleans. The Chevalier de Saint-Georges is often termed “the black Mozart” (as in Chi-chi Nwanoku’s Radio 4 documentary, In Search of the Black Mozart) and the US president John Adams judged him “the most accomplished man in Europe”. His father, George Bologne de Saint-Georges, had brought the boy to Paris and made sure he received the finest education. His name was Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799), and he was a “mulatto”, the illegitimate son of a Guadeloupe plantation owner and an African slave girl. Eleven years Mozart’s senior, he was a local celebrity both as a musician – violinist and composer – and as a swordsman. One musician numbered among Marie Antoinette’s closer acolytes as her music teacher.
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