Don Giovanni

Act 1 Scene 1 (extract) ‘Notte e giorno faticar’

Leporello

Jingyu Cao

The opening moments of Don Giovanni: Leporello moans about being a servant, how he wants to be a gentleman, how he hates waiting around in all weathers for his master to complete his seductions. Then he hears the sound of people arriving. Usually it is Donna Anna in hot pursuit of Don Giovanni but this time it’s ...

Così fan tutte

Act 1 Scene 8

Despina

Beth Taylor

... another servant hating their job. She dutifully makes phenomenal hot chocolate for her privileged young employers but is only allowed the aroma of it, not the flavour. It’s just not right! Before our eyes, Despina morphs smoothly into one of her ancestors, Serpetta the maid from La finta giardiniera, written fifteen years before ...

La finta giardiniera

Act 1 Scene 9

Serpetta

Beth Taylor

Nardo

Jan-Magnar Gard

Nardo the gardener approaches Serpetta the maid and they have a passive-aggressive flirtation, each singing a song with barbed meanings at each other – one gets the feeling this is their usual behaviour towards each other and they both quite enjoy it. Serpetta tells Nardo she would have no trouble finding a husband if she wanted to find one.

Don Giovanni

Act 1 Scenes 4–5 (extract)

Don Giovanni

Cuan Durkin

Leporello

Jingyu Cao

Elvira

Dani Croston

Seemingly unaffected after the Commendatore’s killing, Don Giovanni gets on with his day. Leporello is still traumatised, finding the courage to tell his master that he is living a bad life. Giovanni is angered but swiftly forgives Leporello, telling him of his plans for his latest conquest. Suddenly he senses a new beauty approaching in the distance. Donna Elvira arrives, hunting for Don Giovanni, a man she considers her husband – she is torn between love and fury. Giovanni and Leporello do not yet recognise her.

Idomeneo

Act 3 Scene 2

Idamante

Max Robbins

Ilia

Georgia Tolson

A much purer love is portrayed. In the aftermath of the Trojan War, a Greek prince and a Trojan Princess (now a prisoner) find politics and family loyalties get in the way of their love. Only when the prince faces death trying to save his people does he find the courage to declare his love openly. The Trojan princess says she loves him as well. In a Mozartian deep-cut, they sing a duet written for the 1786 Vienna revival where Idamante was first played by a tenor rather than a castrato.

Le nozze di Figaro

Act 2 Scene 5–6 (extract)

Contessa

Grace Oliver

Conte

Matias Carbonetti Schwanek

The Count is positive his wife is hiding a lover in a cupboard in her bedroom. He brings tools to break down the door. The Countess protests her innocence but admits the person in the cupboard is Cherubino the priapic page. The Count is incensed, vows to kill Cherubino. But then the door opens to reveal ... well, usually it’s Susanna, the Countess’ resourceful maid, but this time it’s someone else entirely.

Le nozze di Figaro

Act 4 Scene 7

Bartolo

Matias Carbonetti Schwanek

Basilio

Samuel Horton

Basilio, the odious cleric/singing teacher/procurer, tells a fable about how to avoid trouble in all kinds of personal interaction. With an unhealthy dose of self-loathing, he says you have to make yourself repulsive to people, and then they don’t want to be near you.

Così fan tutte

Act 2 Scene 5

Dorabella

Ellie Stamp

Guglielmo

Cuan Durkin

Fiordiligi

Georgia Tolson

Ferrando

Samuel Horton

The sisters at the centre of Così’s wager about their fidelity are having a first quasi-date with their Albanian admirers. It’s extremely awkward at first. Fiordiligi takes her preferred Albanian away for a stroll round the garden, leaving a perplexed Guglielmo (Fiordiligi’s boyfriend but now in disguise NB) with Dorabella, (his girlfriend’s sister and his best friend’s girl). He follows the rules of the wager and woos Dorabella, who seems up for some harmless fun. But proximity to each other raises the temperature and the wooing goes far further than either intended.

La finta giardiniera

Act 1 Scene 7 (extract)

Arminda

Sinéad Carroll

Contino Belfiore

Samuel Horton

Il Podestà

Max Robbins

Arminda, a proud woman, is being married off by her uncle the Podestà (a local government official) to a young Count she’s just met. He pays her extravagant compliments but she brushes them off, accusing her husband-to-be of being flighty and potentially unfaithful. The men protest the Count’s steadfastness. She tells the Count how single girls these days are far too quick to believe young mens’ promises – a warning Dorabella in the previous scene would have done well to heed. Arminda will be an excellent wife, she says, but if the Contino ever proves untrue, she might have to resort to physical violence.

Don Giovanni

Act 1 Scenes 9–10

Don Giovanni

Matias Carbonetti Schwanek

Zerlina

Beth Taylor

Elvira

Sinéad Carroll

Arminda is proved only too right as Don Giovanni seduces the young bride, Zerlina. The dashing cavalier dazzles her with compliments, tells the young country-girl that he will change her life, he will make her a lady, that he wants to marry her. She is initially cautious but so tempted – “Vorrei e non vorrei” she says in the classic Da Ponte expression of ambiguous, knife-edge emotion: “I would like to and I wouldn’t like to”. Don Giovanni does not give up and, in the end, Zerlina is fully prepared to abandon the life she had planned with her bridegroom, Masetto. Donna Elvira (or is it Arminda?) interrupts the seduction and takes Zerlina away, telling the young girl to learn from her miserable example of betrayal.

Le nozze di Figaro

Act 1 No 3 Recit and Aria ‘Se vuol ballare’

Act 3 No 18 Recit and Aria ‘Hai già vinta la causa?’

Conte

Jan-Magnar Gard

Figaro

Jingyu Cao

Susanna

Beth Taylor

Tacet Servants

Cuan Durkin

Samuel Horton

Matias Carbonetti Schwanek

Max Robbins

The next two numbers are staged as a single scene, revealing a hidden but still direct confrontation between Figaro and his master, the Count. Where is the epic duet of showdown between the two? Perhaps it was too politically charged to write such a scene in 1786, but Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte still find a way to make the two men address each other directly in solo arias, Mozart utilising the same structure of future-tense repetitions in each aria to point up the connection – “I will know” for Figaro and “Will I see?” for the Count. In the first aria, a furious Figaro swears a clear-eyed vengeance on his ungrateful master for daring to try to sleep with Susanna, Figaro’s bride-to-be, cleverly burying his anger in the ironic rhythms of a noble dance. In the Count’s aria, two acts later, the Count reveals just how much the low-born but far cleverer Figaro intimidates him. Admitting his depression, the Count cannot bear to see Figaro happy with Susanna while he is alone and rejected by her. The Count’s nightmare is that Figaro might be laughing at him. He cheers himself up with the certain knowledge that his omnipotent social position can enforce any solution he desires.

Don Giovanni

Act 2 Scene 10

Don Ottavio

Max Robbins

Zerlina

Beth Taylor

Masetto

Cuan Durkin

Elvira

Dani Croston

Don Ottavio finds himself in the unlikely position of suddenly being the alpha male – the Commendatore is dead, Don Giovanni is a fugitive on the run. Leporello has just evaded their clutches and Ottavio, now in charge, addresses his troops, the unlikely combination of Elvira, Zerlina and Masetto. He asks them to try to console his fiancée, the inconsolable Donna Anna, while he goes and has important meetings with the authorities to organise a terrible vengeance on Don Giovanni. He will return with good news of Giovanni’s death, he is sure.

Idomeneo

Act 1 Scene 6

Elettra

Dani Croston

In the aftermath of the Trojan War, Elettra, daughter of the Greek high king Agamemnon of Argos, takes up residence/takes refuge on Crete after the murder of her parents (it’s a whole other story and a very good one ...). There she develops feelings for and ambitions towards Prince Idamante, the son of the Cretan King Idomeneo – perhaps she could marry him, she thinks, ultimately becoming the queen of Crete. News arrives that Idomeneo, returning from the war, has been drowned. Spotting that Idamante might be in love with the recently arrived and imprisoned Trojan princess Ilia, Elettra senses that all her plans will come to nothing. She vows painful revenge on Idamante and Ilia, calling to her aid the Furies – ironically, the same goddesses of vengeance who should be pursuing her for her part in the death of her mother Clytemnestra. It’s a tangled web ...

La clemenza di Tito

Act 2 Scenes 7–8

Annio

Ellie Stamp

Emperor Tito

Samuel Horton

Publio

Jan-Magnar Gard

Ancient Rome: There has been an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the Emperor Tito. The culprit is, astoundingly, Tito’s best friend Sesto who has been spurred on by his love Vitellia, the ambitious daughter of a previous Emperor. Annio, a leading courtier, pleads with Tito to show mercy for Sesto – Tito is a good man, there is a good chance of his eponymous clemency. Left alone, Tito agonises on what to do – the Emperor should send Sesto to his death but the man, the friend, wants to be kind, wants to forgive. He ruminates on the pressures of high office, saying that a peasant in a meagre hut lives a more peaceful and honest life.

La finta giardiniera

Act 2 Scene

Sandrina

Caroline Bourg

Arminda has abducted Sandrina (the obstacle to her plans to marry the Contino Belfiore) and left her to die in a dangerous forest, prey to wolves. With an 18-year-old Mozart experimenting with an ambitious cavatina-cabaletta structure, Sandrina begins a spiral into insanity and lost identity, bewailing her fate, asking the gods for help. A complex psychological study in what we would now call PTSD (so much happens to her before the curtain even rises on Act 1), Sandrina cannot begin to cope with the situation. Ultimately, she finds a cave and hides away.

Don Giovanni

Act 2 Scene 1–2 (extract)

Donna Elvira

Georgia Tolson

Leporello

Jingyu Cao

Don Giovanni

Cuan Durkin

On the run from the authorities, Don Giovanni makes time for another (maybe his last?) seduction. He swaps clothes with Leporello, the better to seduce Donna Elvira’s maid. Elvira comes to the window, however, opposing feelings still swirling in her heart (“Vorrei e non vorrei”...). Giovanni makes Leporello mime to Giovanni’s sweet words of seduction and Elvira believes in his love again, proving Arminda’s words in No 9 all too true. Leporello can only laugh – these posh people are crazy ...

Le nozze di Figaro

Act 4 ‘Contessa Perdona’ into Final Chorus of Figaro

Conte

Jan-Magnar Gard

Contessa

Caroline Bourg

Full Company

And in the end, there is love and maybe there is forgiveness? Mozart, especially in collaboration with Da Ponte, always includes the question mark in some way. The Count begs forgiveness of the Countess and she believes his words. Everyone celebrates the end of a crazy day of torment, hilarity, despair, betrayal and love.