Mozart: La Clemenza di Tito
August 2006 Reviewed by: Wes Marshall Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

The term "classical music" is a catchall that includes various epochs of composed music -- Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern. About 40 years ago, a movement started amongst academics to perform older music in a more historically accurate manner, using period instruments and styles. New, smaller orchestras began to pop up around Europe using original instruments with gut strings and valveless brass, and limited vibrato in singing, all at a sprightlier pace. This had a tremendous impact on Baroque music especially, where the standard had been a conflating of Baroque and Romantic performance practices.

The Baroque era closed with the deaths of Bach (1750) and Handel (1759). The Romantic era started around 1806-1808 when Beethoven offered his Eroica, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. The half century between, the Classical period, was overlooked by those interested in historically accurate performance until the mid-1980s when Arnold Östman (for Mozart) and Roger Norrington (for Beethoven) began to offer period renditions of classical works.

This version of La Clemenza di Tito came about when Östman was in residence with the Swedish Orchestra of the Drottningholm Court Theatre, offering rapt audiences performances of Mozart’s finest operas. His effervescent recordings of Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan Tutte and Le Nozze di Figaro on L’Oiseau Lyre records won every imaginable award and topped almost every recommendation list.

Lucky for us, the Theatre and a group called RM Arts recognized that they had history in their grasp and filmed several of the performances. The 400-seat Theatre, built in 1766, was shut down in 1800 and lay virtually untouched until it was re-opened in the 1920s. All of its original machinery, sets, and costumes were still in their original condition so that, today, the period detail is real. Orchestra and conductor are clad in period costumes with powdered wigs and are seated at floor level with the audience. The singers are all conversant with the latest pedagogy on period performance. In short, if Mozart had walked into Östman’s La Clemenza di Tito, his only surprise would be how the audience was dressed. Well, one other difference: Östman has wisely conceded to current custom by putting women in the roles of Sesto and Annio rather than the more traditional castrati.

ArtHaus has released four Mozart operas -- Idomeneo, La Finta Giardiniera and Cosi Fan Tutte besides the present DVD -- and all are worth having. Clemenza is Mozart’s final thought on opera. The story is a recurring one in Classical opera: a bad leader, confronted with love, rethinks his view of life and becomes a good leader. Lani Poulson brings the house down in her aria "Parto, ma tu ben mio" (chapter 20), but all the cast is superb. As with all Mozart operas, the art is in the details, and here we get some of his best ensemble writing. Watch the Number 10 Terzetto (chapter 22, where Anita Soldh is especially delicious) or the end of Act 1 (chapter 24) where the whole ensemble sings out. Every facet of the performance is lovingly shaped and a revelation to those who think period performance equals dry academia.

The film is slightly grainy and the sound as dry as you would imagine for an opera performed in a 400-seat theater. As usual, ArtHaus gives us a short essay and nothing else in the way of extras.

The raison d'être here is history. Not only do we get a glimpse of what a real Classical opera looked and sounded like, we also get history-making performances by Arnold Östman and his group.

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