The Full Seraglio

Though it will be a year before the new Glyndebourne production of Mozart’s Turkish comedy, conducted by Robin Ticciati, is released on DVD, the argument has already begun, with The Guardian praising its revelatory aspects and The Times and the Daily Telegraph dismissing it for its prolixity.

For The Guardian, the production’s  completeness is what counts, along with the quality of the performance. Every spoken word, every aria, every possible note of music appears to have been included, to compelling effect,  in the irresistible version presented.

The critic, Tim Ashley, observantly claims that the restoration of so much material, usually omitted, is a rare treat.  For his rivals, however, the whole thing  is merely a drag, which made them  feel like administering the kick in the pants Mozart famously received from his employer  on departing from Salzburg.

But the fact is that Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail is a sublimely copious opera, not necessarily improved by established cuts - the Glyndebourne version evidently has twenty scene changes.  Though the work’s  sheer richness originally disturbed the Austrian emperor - who reputedly responded to it with the words, “Too beautiful for our ears, my dear Mozart, and monstrous many notes”  - the truth is that the composer toiled long and  hard to get it the way he wanted, and that he succeeded brilliantly in his efforts.

The gifted director, David McVicar, has clearly appreciated this aspect of the piece and Robin Ticciati - who, in his concert  performances with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra has proved himself a Mozartian of exceptional promise - has gone as far as to insert a fragment of the great B flat major Wind Serenade, written around the same time, at an appropriate moment in Die Enfuhrung. Too many notes, dear Ticciati? In the context of this production, maybe  not.

More than any other Mozart opera, perhaps, Die Enfuhrung is a work that people like to tamper with. Sir Thomas Beecham, another outstanding Mozartian, used to separate Contanze’s two great arias in Act Two so that they were not heard one after the other. He was wrong to do so, as we now recognise.

Today, as ever, Belmonte’s aria at the start of Act Three is considered gratuitous. But is it really?  Everything, it seems to me, depends on the beauty of the performance. How good or bad  this comprehensive Glyndebourne production is is something we shall not know in Scotland until we see it on DVD. But I look forward to being reassured by it.
17 June 2015