Where to start with Mozart

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Thank you for the suggestion! Actually I was wrong because I've read about this problem years ago on Amazon reviews. Now I find these only in the Mass in c minor (Larry VanDeSande wrote: "Another 1960s technique is apparent whenever the soloists enter: they are so closely miked tney sound larger than life and dwarf the orchestra. When the quartet enters, you hardly know there is an orchestra at all. This creates an unnatural sound picture, like the soloists are standing next to you and the orchestra is somewhere down the street.") He wrote it is a 1960s technique and I thought it is true for the other operas also.
And the Don Giovanni. (Santa Fe Listener: "But if you do buy this set, know that the remastered sonics are birght and the voices very close.")

Overall the three Fricsay Mozart operas I have are wonderfully recorded for the time and stand up extremely well even by today's standards.

However, as far as Don Giovanni it isn't the remastered version I have but the original CD issue from the early 90s. It indeed sounds marvelous. Unfortunately Universal's remastering technique these days isn't always the "unveiling of sound" it claims and can have older recordings sounding "more spacious" but the tradeoff can be a lack of bloom and warmth (strings particularly can sound shrill). The other downside is balances have been known to be altered from the original and not always in a positive way.

What Santa Fe Listener says about the remastered Don Giovanni might well be true. But I can't say for sure. The other thing is is that Santa Fe Listener isn't exactly a revered Amazon "reviewer" around these parts (GMG) and I've found him at times extremely eccentric, especially in his vendetta against Radu Lupu. Apparently Santa Fe Listener spares no expense in acquiring gobs of Lupu recordings only to trash them on Amazon. Why anyone would aurally torture themselves like that just to sound off like an "expert" on Amazon is beyond me.

Anyway, Santa Fe Listener does have a leg up on me as far as Don Giovanni as he's heard the remastered version and I haven't. I'd say if you can find it anywhere the original CD issue is a gem of a recording and well worth seeking out. The remastered version might well prove to be not as disastrous as Santa Fe Listener makes it out to be, too. So it might be worth an audition if you can swing it. 

BTW, the Entführung I have actually is the remastered version and I find the balances ideal. Expertly done in this case. Just goes to show....

[Mandryka]

I saw Peter Brook's adaptation of Magic Flute last week, it's an old production but somehow I'd missed it up to now. No set as such, just a bunch of bamboo sticks for the singers to create improvisations with. No orchestra, just a piano accompaniment, based more or less on Mozart's music, though not always his music for Zauberflöte.

Dialogue in French (the show was in Paris), songs in German, with French surtitles. That's the way to do it, the dialogue is essential, and you need to be able to follow it in an unmediated way.

In his notes Brook says that he thinks that by removing all the connections to masonry he's universalising the opera. That's right I think. And by encouraging the actors to play, like children, he's reconnecting with a spirit of playfulness in Mozart's music. There was some attempt to cut out the fourth wall, the actors engaged with us, and so we, the audience were, in a way, part of this playfulness.

Brook's ideas are nearly 50 years old now, but they still seem at the cutting edge to me.

[Karl Henning]

I don't consider the connections to Freemasonry in Die Zauberflöte at all restrictive; and so, probably, I should incline to consider Brook's project here as arrant bowdlerization.

[Sammy]

I don't consider the connections to Freemasonry in Die Zauberflöte at all restrictive; and so, probably, I should incline to consider Brook's project here as arrant bowdlerization.

Not being as polite a man as Karl, I'll just call Brook's project total crap.

[Mandryka]

Not being as polite a man as Karl, I'll just call Brook's project total crap.

Why?

[kishnevi]

These kinds of "cutting edge" ideas, I can do without.

To be blunt (pun intended) , cutting out the Freemasonry runs counter to the idea of universalizing the meaning, since for Mozart and his contemporaries,  Freemasonry was in the forefront of universalizing religion and the life of the mind in general.

[Parsifal]

Why?

Maybe because the idea that one of Mozart's great works needs to be fixed is idiotic.

[Mandryka]

To be blunt (pun intended) , cutting out the Freemasonry runs counter to the idea of universalizing the meaning, since for Mozart and his contemporaries,  Freemasonry was in the forefront of universalizing religion and the life of the mind in general.

The tense matters, since masonry doesn't mean today what it meant then.

Here's what Brook actually said -- my initial paraphrase wasn't fair, sorry

Débarrassée du symbolisme et de la panoplie habituelle de ses effets scéniques, elle brille d'une fraicheur des origines en remontant aux sources des inspirations d'un Mozart éternellement jeune, entourée de chanteurs talentueux, explorer de nouvelles couleurs et de nouvelles formes.

En abordant Mozart dans un esprit ludique, en cherchant l'osmose entre le jeu et la musique, en plaçant chanteurs et orchestre au même niveau et au plus près du publique,  Peter Brook . . . consigne un « Flûte » d'exception conçue pour que chacun puisse la considérer comme sienne. Le parti pris d'un parcours buissonnier qui renouvelle sans cesse la surprise de pouvoir entrer si simplement dans la magie et la tendresse d'une œuvre éternelle

[Sammy]

Why?

Because Mozart's opera is an 18th century creation.  A great performance will transport the audience back to Mozart's time.  I find it insulting to present the opera as if today's audience can only appreciate the production if it's made "relevant" to modern sensibilities and experiences. 

[kishnevi]

Because Mozart's opera is an 18th century creation.  A great performance will transport the audience back to Mozart's time.  I find it insulting to present the opera as if today's audience can only appreciate the production if it's made "relevant" to modern sensibilities and experiences.

As a counterpoint to Brook,  there's this production which apparently tries to set it as precisely in the time of its composition as possible.
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  (It sits in The Pile, so I can't saw how successful it is or is not).  The Amazon reviews seem to be all over the place and some don't even apply to this production, since they are dated two or three years before its release!  But Giordano Bruno seems to have liked it:

The previous reviewers of this performance have given ratings from 1-star "horrible" to 5-star "moving". I side with the fivers, but for different reasons. On the whole I think the musical ensemble is excellent, and the conducting superb, but what I like most about the production is the "intellectual" satisfaction I get from it. I'm a pre-postmodernist at heart. I enjoy the sense that I have fathomed the composer's intentions--neutralized my own notions long enough to evaluate the AUTHOR's coherence. This is the first production of Magic Flute that seems to me to express the "Enlightenment" themes and to project the Masonic symbolisms cogently and effectively. If the possibility of a rational Mozart doesn't attract you, I'd suggest the new M22 production as the illogical alternative.

[Mandryka]

Because Mozart's opera is an 18th century creation.  A great performance will transport the audience back to Mozart's time.  I find it insulting to present the opera as if today's audience can only appreciate the production if it's made "relevant" to modern sensibilities and experiences.

Magic Fute is only superficially an 18th century opera. The ideas are timeless.

[Parsifal]

Magic Fute is only superficially an 18th century opera. The ideas are timeless.

All the more reason not to screw around with it.

[Sammy]

Magic Fute is only superficially an 18th century opera.

We part ways at square one.  I'd call it a specifically 18th century opera.  There's nothing superficial about Mozart's time of life nor the time period that the work was composed.

[Mandryka]

We part ways at square one.  I'd call it a specifically 18th century opera.  There's nothing superficial about Mozart's time of life nor the time period that the work was composed.

Yes I can understand your point of view about Magic Flute.  I'm only half convinced by what Brook's trying to do with it. At the level of ideas, it does seem trapped in its time.

When you see Brook's production, it's very much like being involved in child like imaginative play. When an actor moves with a stick to present a snake, or when sticks held above an actor represent that he's moving underground in a tunnel. That touches something pretty basic in me.  In that sense, Brook's work goes beyond the 18th century.

[Parsifal]

Yes I can understand your point of view about Magic Flute.  I'm only half convinced by what Brook's trying to do with it. At the level of ideas, it does seem trapped in its time.

When you see Brook's production, it's very much like being involved in child like imaginative play. When an actor moves with a stick to present a snake, or when sticks held above an actor represent that he's moving underground in a tunnel. That touches something pretty basic in me.  In that sense, Brook's work goes beyond the 18th century.

Whether they stage the thing with some silly sticks isn't particularly important to me.  You indicated that they changed the music and/or the story.  When one of the great musical minds composes music to illuminate a story, why would you change it?  Why change the music, or why change the story so that the story that the music illuminates is not the same? 

[Karl Henning]

Die Zauberflöte is an opera both of the 18^th century, and of timeless ideas.

Yes I can understand your point of view about Magic Flute.  I'm only half convinced by what Brook's trying to do with it. At the level of ideas, it does seem trapped in its time.

I agree; at the level of ideas, Brook's project is certainly trapped in its time.

[Mandryka]

He called the thing Une Flûte Enchantée, nor La . . .

At one point I noticed the piano play some music from K475. i thought the music was fine in fact, I had no problems there. The play was cut down, it lasted one and a half hours with no intermission. I thought that worked fine too. I don't much like intermissions.

What was special about the evening was the sense of interaction between the singers. You know, there was no stand and deliver stuff. And some of the gestures were very memorable too. Generally I find movement very powerful emotionally. And  the auditorium of Bouffes du Nord is very special for me, it's the most magical theatre space I know. So it's always a pleasure to be there for me.

[Sammy]

Whether they stage the thing with some silly sticks isn't particularly important to me.  You indicated that they changed the music and/or the story.  When one of the great musical minds composes music to illuminate a story, why would you change it?  Why change the music, or why change the story so that the story that the music illuminates is not the same?

Understood.  There are some folks who have an intense interest in being creative, but interest and ability are not the same.  So, these folks need to use something already produced as a springboard for their limited creative spark.  As would be expected, the resulting product has a stench about it.

But hey, those sticks are a hoot - not only silly but real cheap as well. 

[Mandryka]

Understood.  There are some folks who have an intense interest in being creative, but interest and ability are not the same.  So, these folks need to use something already produced as a springboard for their limited creative spark.  As would be expected, the resulting product has a stench about it.

But hey, those sticks are a hoot - not only silly but real cheap as well.

Well I liked the production very much. And as I said I thought the music was fine.

[jochanaan]

Anyone who has done any theater--and I have--knows that things get changed all the time.  There are several "original" versions of Mozart's Don Giovanni, all from Mozart's hand, and many of us who love the Academy of Ancient Music's Messiah know about the changes Handel made in it during his own lifetime.  So to say that any change is somehow sacrilegious or in any other way improper is unrealistic in the world of theater.

However, I tend to agree that a major revision such as Mr. Brook's should come covered with disclaimers.