Salieri and Mozart

I have been listening to a Lot of Salieri and Mozart over the last couple of months, as a direct result of selenak reviewing Amadeus, and I promised her I'd write up my thoughts on them. As usual, I am only about a couple of months late :P (But this let me listen to a lot more Mozart, I guess...)

As for Salieri: I listened to Les Horaces, Tarare (the one that is featured in Amadeus, leading to Shaffer!Mozart's immortal line (at least, it's immortal in our household) "One hears such sounds, and what can one say, but -- Salieri!"), and La Scuola de' Gelosi. I liked the former two a lot, and I started out liking the third but in the end got kinda bored. I did not watch any of these, so I have no idea how they stack up as visual drama.

Horaces and Tarare remind me a lot of late Gluck. selenak informed historically-challenged me that Gluck was Salieri's teacher, so guess that makes sense! There is something about the musical texture that very much appeals to me, in the same way that late Gluck operas appeal to me (although when I went back and listened to some Gluck, it seems to me that Gluck has the more beautiful melodies). And I read somewhere (probably a combo of wikipedia and selenak) that Salieri and Gluck were both interested in the words taking primacy, which I very much approve of -- it's evident in the recordings even though I can't understand most of the words. I honestly think there's a lot to like in these operas.

My overall verdict is that Shaffer!Mozart is much too hard on Salieri :P As he should be, when I thought about it some more: Shaffer!Mozart isn't really acting as historical!Mozart in the movie (as far as I can tell from browsing articles on the interwebs, historical!Mozart liked Salieri's work). Of course, Shaffer!Mozart is the vehicle for Shaffer's ideas about genius and how it interacts with mediocrity and so on, but in addition Shaffer!Mozart is also acting a little here, I think, as a twentieth-century voice of musicality. We've all grown up with Mozart's music; we know what it can do, and we know Salieri wasn't quite doing it. Not because he wasn't a good composer, which I actually think he was! But he wasn't pushing the boundaries of things like Mozart was. It doesn't surprise me at all that Salieri's operas gradually went out of style; they were very good examples of their own time, but by the time Salieri got old, that time was past.

I also fiiiiinally listened to Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which has been on my to-listen list for... probably at least a year now. I listened to the Sung in English version first, and then the Gardiner version (John Eliot Gardiner is my gateway drug to opera in general, see also Mozart and Gluck), and I reactivated my Met on Demand subscription (more on this on some subsequent post) partially because I was going to watch it before writing it up but the Met does not have a video of this at all, boooooo. This turns out to be OK, in the sense that I like to watch operas before talking about them partially because I always miss stuff when I'm listening, but the plot of Serail is extremely simple, so I'm pretty confident I didn't miss an entire subplot someplace (which has happened before in more complicated operas).

(But seriously, the plot is reeeeally simple. Pasha Selim has captured the sopranos and one of the tenors, and the other tenor comes to rescue them. That's pretty much it, that's the plot, except for a bit at the end which I really liked (and which I was unspoiled for). )

The way I feel about Serail is that -- well, I enjoyed it! A lot! It's very cute! but as Mozart, it's rather minor compared to his major works. If he had been remembered based on this, people would have thought he was pleasant, but I don't think he wouldn't have been considered the genius he is today. The arias seem a little more dependent on whizzing scales or simple progressions rather than the gorgeous melodies that Mozart is famous for. (And I can't help but feel that Emperor Joseph II had a point when he said "Too many notes." Am I being a Philistine again? :) ) That being said, there are bits and pieces where you can see what will come later -- like "Welcher Wechsel herrscht in meiner Seele / Traurigkeit ward mir zum Losw" which -- if I knew more musicology maybe I could analyze and describe a little better what I like about it, but since I don't, I will just say, parts of this aria made my brain stop working from sheer loveliness, in the same way that my brain stops during the entirety of "Ach, ich fuhls" or "Porgi, amor." Salieri, bless him, doesn't ever do that to my brain.

But honestly, if I had to choose one of Serail and Tarare and give up the other, I'd probably choose Tarare. (Only in my best of all possible worlds I'd make Gardiner record it, lol.)

(Tangentially, the most hilarious part of listening to Tarare was that in "Martern aller Arten," when Konstanze sings, "Lärme, tobe, wüthe!" my whole brain suddenly flashed back to the part in Amadeus where Caterina Cavalieri sings that line. I don't think I do that with any other Mozart pieces -- oh, okay, fine, I do it with "Confutatis" too but I now have enough independent history with the Requiem that it's not my only association -- and I didn't do it with Tarare either. I suppose it's at least partially because it's such a dramatic cinematic moment in the movie -- which -- is another testament to how good the movie is; it's a dramatic soprano line, sure, but to make it a high point of tension and drama in the movie, unrelated to the drama in the opera, is pretty amazing.)

But then I had to go listen to Die Zauberflöte again, of course. I wrote about a whole bunch of different recordings/a couple of DVDs a while back, and I was pleased by my consistency -- I still feel the same way about all these recordings. :) (I like the Gardiner more than I did then, and Solti a little less, perhaps. I will also note that at the time Gerald Finley's Papageno in the Gardiner production didn't ping me at all; now, having seen and heard and loved Finley in a couple of things since then, it's cool to hear him here too!) I love Zauberflöte so much that I can't really talk rationally or analytically about it, nor can I really honestly compare it to Serail. But I do think that Zauberflöte is a Great Work, and Serail is not, not really. (Also! The Gardiner video production of Zauberflote, a somewhat stylized and choreographed version (but not quite as wacko as the Taymor production) is on Youtube! I haven't finished watching it yet, though. Will report back!)