Making Demands

Got a bit operatic today. It's been quite some time since I've listened to my CD box-set of Mozart's big seven operas under the baton of John Eliot Gardiner. At the time I got this at a bargain price I considered it a great buy, and I suppose I still do. The orchestral playing is obviously of the highest order, crisp and vibrant and wonderfully clear in its textures, and wonderfully recorded. I suppose the voices are of the highest order as well, though I'm a bit more hesitant on this one since I generally struggle to appreciate really 'operatic' voices, especially those of the ladies, since they always sound a bit over-cooked to me. But I'm getting better at shedding my prejudices, and most of the time the singing sounds pretty much high-powered and often gorgeous to even these weak ears. But despite the many, many virtues of what's on offer I have a basic problem in listening to the operas, which has made me wonder whether it was right for me to buy the set after all.

I know that it's just not good enough to listen to what's on offer without following what all the warbling's about, so I make a determined effort to listen. But it's not easy. The cheapo-cheapo nature of the box-set means the operas come without the librettos. Now I have an excellent book comprising precisely the librettos in question, but because Eliot Gardiner's versions involve all sorts of cuts, the correspondence is by no means perfect. Also I'm hopeless at hearing the Italian clearly and often get lost simply as a result of this. So there I sit with the book of words (it's big and thick) on the table, with the little booklet provided with the CDs detailing the order and numbering of tracks balanced on top of that, listening hard and trying to follow - and usually succeeding. But at the cost of getting sort of exhausted, generally after about fifteen minutes.

I suppose this didn't work too badly for the first five operas of the set, but then I came to La Clemenza di Tito and just couldn't manage to get on with it. There were wholesale cuts to the libretto in the very first recitative with which the opera opens and I couldn't even distinguish between the two voices of the ladies warbling away, and since one of these was meant to be a chap, in true opera seria fashion, it all felt a bit cock-eyed and pointless. The result: I put the set aside for months.

Until today, that is, when I forced myself to sit down and get to grips with the piece. And I'm very glad I did. It doesn't have any of the obvious charms of Cosi or Figaro or Don Giovanni as an overall opera, but it's got bags of tunefulness and what I've gradually come to understand as Mozartian orchestral wit and sprightliness. Like all great creative work you come to grips with it by allowing the encounter, even it takes a bit of work to do so. In fact I've got a sneaking suspicion that it's the need to do the work that helps open up a potential for listening with understanding that may have been far too deeply hidden before. Sometimes demands are worth making, though perhaps I might have been less ambitious and just bought single operas rather than the whole set to avoid at least occasionally feeling overwhelmed.