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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Male altos would have made this opera sublime, 30 Oct 2007
Light music indeed. The overture is a sublime piece of lightness and brightness that flutter around in our ears. The whole opera is dedicated to Venus and her son Ascanio, to love and its goddess, though the opening chorus introduces liberty as its main objective. Mozart is so modern then to pretend that love is a road to liberty: without liberty there can't be love. And Venus is so brilliant in her soprano voice with all the necessary embellishments Mozart provides her with. But Ascanio sung by a mezzo soprano loses the essential element of this 18th century, the famous Italian castrati. It would have been so much better to have had a male alto rather than a female mezzo soprano. For a recent (2002) recording in Utrecht I am surprised to have to face the confrontation of mother and son in the vocal garb of two women. A voice is not only a question of range but also of all the harmonics provided by the physical body of the singer. That's also quite audible in Ascanio's solo piece opening the second scene. It lacks the somberness a male voice would have added. The argument is typical of Marivaux's comedies. One lover turns transvestite to observe the other lover and test her or his love. Here Ascanio plays the transvestite and that fits him so well, especially with the pleasant sounding songs, ritornellos or arias Mozart entrusts him with, and the mezzo soprano tries to give her singing the worried depth it deserves. The meeting of Ascanio and the fawn is promising though the couple mezzo-soprano-soprano gives it too much femininity, so that the chorus of the shepherds stands out genially though it should have extended the duet. This choice of two women for two men is taking a lot of femininity out of the tale and the music, and that makes Mozart sound slightly precious, light, entertaining instead of deeply concerned by the impossibility in the real world to have love and liberty together. In other words Don Giovanni is lurking behind this entertaining opera but having women in the place of men is drastically reducing the power and force of the message, all the more so visually in a full operatic production. When Aceste finally appears we are thankful he is a tenor, a man, just like the shepherds. This only man is a priest hence moral authority. He cannot endorse the liberty-loving love singing of both Ascanio and the fawn. It makes love the appanage of only women. When Silvia arrives on the stage and starts singing the beauty of freely-chosen love she sounds so powerful and she should be the female echo of the careful caution of Ascanio who does not want to be fooled by a woman. Silvia's serious tone is in contradiction with the generally accepted idea that women are light and have to fall. Mozart regenerates women in the most convincing way he can: his music. We then feel fully what we missed with Ascanio who should have regenerated the generally accepted idea that men just take what they desire and don't care for the damage they may cause. That is contained in the music, in the singing, in the voices. And that's why a man must be a man and a woman a woman. It is not enough for Venus to call Ascanio her son and for Aceste to call Silvia his daughter. In Italian only the last vowels of the two words change from filio to filia and the difference between an alto and a mezzo soprano is just as subtle and small but fully significant. I particularly like the very expressive recitative that leads the same singer to an aria and then to a conclusion provided by the shepherdesses' chorus. Three facets of the opera for one character who is thus captured as deep, reflexive and even ethical, like Silvia at the beginning of the second act. And we can imagine what the confrontation of that Silvia with Ascanio would have been if Ascanio had really been what he is called, a garzon, a boy. And when the fawn joins them, what could it have been if he had been a real fawn and not a female, hence a nymph, particularly the long aria `Dal tuo gentil sembiante' and its ten odd minutes. So when the opera comes to an end and Ascanio has discovered the full love Silvia feels for him and Silvia has found the depth of Ascanio's love, when Venus guarantees this perfect free and loving union, Mozart can move to politics, which is always natural with this free mason. The city of Alba will flourish because of the love that is the melting pot of its destiny, And what's more Aeneas will be able to flourish for ever through his descendants procreated and reared within the sacred perfection of free love. The future of human history is thus founded on love as the guarantee of good fortunes and riches, and on the succession of human generations, each one descending from the previous one, each one ascending from the same previous one. This descending ascendance is the union of the two human sexes in love. And politics have to be love and nothing but love. Aceste, as a priest and father, is thus equaled to Venus, as a goddess and mother. We feel here the relation of Mozart with his own father to whom he was always grateful, even if fearful and awed, and with his own son too for whom he composed the famous story of the Magic Flute. Mozart is the most mature child of music or the most immature adult who still believes in love. He may even reach the intensity of his Requiem in some pieces like the chorus `Sendi celeste venere'.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
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