Saga of revenge and mercy

A dream to bring Mozart's penultimate opera to the Auckland stage is to be realised, writes arts editor LINDA HERRICK.

When Mozart wrote La Clemenza di Tito in 1791, he was in dire financial straits, in no position to turn down commissions.

Already working on a requiem mass for a client, he was belatedly asked to create an opera honouring Austrian Emperor Leopold II's crowning as king of Bohemia.

On August 25, Mozart started writing the score in the coach taking him, his wife and their newborn baby to Prague, where the opera would be staged - on September 6. He finished writing it the day before the premiere. Three months later, he was dead.

Given the harried circumstances, La Clemenza di Tito is not one of Mozart's strongest works in terms of dramatic credibility, although - even if he wasn't trying too hard - the music remains beguiling and powerful. Set in Rome AD79, the "plot" involves a spurned woman's botched plot to assassinate Emperor Tito and burn the Capitol. Tito's climactic forgiveness - or clemency - is the moral point of La Clemenza's narrative, being staged for the first time in Auckland on Sunday.

Appropriately, given the opera's original conception, this Auckland Chamber Orchestra version, with the ACO chorus, is not a fully staged affair, focusing instead on the music and performances by Paul Chappory (Tito), Joanna Heslop (Vitellia, who plots the assassination), Anne Gerbic (Tito's friend Servilia), Zan McKendree-Wright (Sesto, the pawn in Vitellia's plot) and Helen Medlyn (Annio, in love with Servilia).

The cross-genderisation in the cast is deliberate, says musical director Peter Scholes. "The two roles of Sesto and Annio were traditionally sung by castrati but now they are called the 'trouser roles' and are sung by women," he explains.

It's long been a dream of Scholes' to bring La Clemenza to an Auckland audience. "It is part of a master-plan to expand in terms of the kinds of things the ACO was doing. La Clemenza is our grand Christmas splash.

"It is a bizarre story in a sense. We have a Roman emperor who survives assassination attempts and then decides it's wrong to condemn these people to be thrown to the beasts and that he will forgive them.

"In these days, with the terrorist attacks, there is the statement at the end, 'the repentance of which you are capable is worth more than constant fidelity'. It is a utopian dream of having rulers who are forgiving, and everyone gets blown away by a sense of goodness which is contagious."

The orchestra staging may be no-frills but director Raymond Hawthorne "has had some wonderful ideas for minimal ways to give the audience enough of the drama," says Scholes - not least of which is provided by Hawthorne in the spoken narrative which will string the storyline together.

"As much as I love the grand spectacle of fully staged opera, primarily it should be about performance and music," says Scholes, before going on to list what he likes about Mozart's penultimate opera (before The Magic Flute). "Mozart's perfection of form and shape, beautiful contrast of melody, the harmonic relationship between the singers, and the blend of ensemble numbers, beautiful solos ... "

* La Clemenza di Tito, Auckland Town Hall, December 9.