Mozart: Mitridate, re di Ponto. Pene Pati (Mitridate), Ana Maria Labin (Aspasia),Angela Brower (Sifare), Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian (Farnace), Sarah Aristidou (Ismene), Sahy Ratia (Marzio), Adriana Bignagni Lesca (Arbate), Ken Sugiyama (Actor). Satoshi Miyagi (stage director), Tiziano Mancini (director for the screen). Les Musiciens du Louvre. Marc Minkowski (conductor). C Major 767908 DVD. Total Time: 161:00.
DIGITAL REVIEW — This dramatically quite static December 2022 taping of Mitridate, re di Ponto, recorded live at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden, merits attention for its high musical values though there are rewarding competing versions both audio and video.
Mozart’s first important opera appeared in 1770, when he was a touring 14-year–old sensation. It draws on models by then-established composers including Josef Mysliveček and Niccolò Jommelli and does not up-end any opera seria traditions. But every time I see the later (and more often staged) Lucio Silla or La finta giardiniera, I think fondly of my more compelling experiences in the theater with Mitridate. Boston Lyric Opera tackled it in the fall of 2024 in a staging dominated by Lawrence Brownlee’s role debut in the murderously difficult title part. The extravagant arias demand virtuoso singing, and some of them reward repeated listening.
Marc Minkowski leads his superb instrumental ensemble Les Musiciens du Louvre — graceful string playing, precise and mellow wind instruments — through the swift, rather generic overture. Video director Tiziano Mancini does allow home viewers some satisfying views of the playing in the pit.
Initially, no particular action is mimed during the overture; rather, Miyagi deploys stagehands in black-clad kuruko outfits with lanterns to set a mood. But by the up-tempo third section he yields to the fashion of most contemporary operas stagings, sending on characters we don’t yet recognize to perform symbolic acts of which we can only guess the significance.
Spatially, Junpei Kiz’s gilt set may remind Metropolitan Opera-goers of the multi-level Babylonian pyramid on which Nabucco and Abigaille risk life and limb. But the overall design concept — quite handsome across the board, including elaborate ceremonial costumes by Kayo Takahashi Deschene — clearly draws on Japanese (and specifically Kabuki) models.
Stage director Satoshi Miyagi’s notes on the production make clear that to him Mitridate tells a universal story, more about family dynamics than particular historical or geographical data. And indeed the libretto — unlike those of the composer’s later opere serie, Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito, quite dependent in plot terms on the specific contexts of the Trojan War’s aftermath and early Roman Imperial succession struggles — has little “local color” that ties it to the historical Mithridates the Great (135-63 BCE) per se.
Pontus (“Ponto”) was a Persia-derived but linguistically and culturally Hellenistic Greek Kingdom occupying the eastern banks of the Black Sea, including Crimea, where the opera is in fact set. Alternately a fierce foe and a client state of Rome, it reached its zenith under this sixth Mithridates, who eventually was defeated by Roman forces under Pompey, precipitating the king’s suicide — an episode much described by Classical historians such as Appian. Miyagi runs with the idea of cultural contrast between Ponto (Asia) and Rome (Europe). It seems that the director asked his cast to try and preserve a certain mask-like facial impartiality and deliver their text and music straight to the audience; movement is choreographed in a similarly stylized way. It’s an interesting idea, but perhaps — one feels after a while — not the most enlivening way of dealing with an opera seria composed of rather prolix da capo arias.
The motor of the Racine-derived romantic (if that’s the word) plot is that Aspasia is pursued not only by her beloved Prince Sifare (a soprano castrato part) but also his personally and politically treacherous brother Prince Farnace (an alto castrato part); this understandably enough enrages their (high tenor) kingly father Mitridate, who considers Aspasia his fiancée. In addition, Mitridate has brought home from his latest military foraging the Parthian princess Ismene — who loves Farnace — and is pushing her to marry Sifare.
None of the cast who created the 14-year old prodigy’s opera at Milan’s Teatro Regio Ducale left reputations that have survived the centuries, but one — the Stuttgart-born soprano Antonia Bernasconi (1741–1803), who tackled Aspasia — made an international career, singing also in Austria and England. She evidently was initially suspicious of the juvenile composer/conductor’s abilities; she was so delighted with his first, showily demanding piece that he wrote her two more to match it.
It’s a high-wire coloratura part like Giunio in Lucio Silla (1772), looking forward to such future diva parts as the mature composer’s Constanze, Elettra, and the Queen of the Night. If lacking the sheer tonal beauty of such accomplished Aspasias as Arleen Auger and Yvonne Kenny, Romanian soprano Ana Maria Labin gives a remarkably assured and expressive performance in this testing role, to which her secure decorations add augmented difficulties. Definitely a talent to watch.
Of the four leading roles, Aspasia and Ismene are the only ones Mozart cast with a female singer. In modern times, the two warring brother princes have sometimes been taken by women — by singers of the caliber of Lella Cuberli and Edita Gruberová (Sifare) and Tatiana Troyanos and Agnes Baltsa (Farnace). Here, Minkowski splits the gender difference. Europe-based American mezzo-soprano Angela Brower — known for guest stints at San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Met — takes on Sifare, with her accustomed musicality and pleasant, clear tone. The initial “Soffre il mio cor con pace” demonstrates a technical proficiency that does not fail her. Taking a structural leaf perhaps from Handel’s Italian operas for London, Mozart gives us just one duet, for Act Two’s finale: what the condemned Sifare and Aspasia think is their final farewell, “Se viver non degg’io.” Labin and Brower — tied in rope cords, and (typically of the blocking here) never making eye contact — deliver this lovely number very well.
As with Idomeneo — a more benevolent figure, but for whom Mitridate seems in some respects an advance study — the regal title character takes a while to arrive onstage: here, not until the middle of Act Two. But while Mozart’s Cretan king was crafted on an aging voice, his Pontian ruler demands a high-lying fearless exponent starting up front with his scarifying entrance aria “Se di lauri,” with its octave leaps up to high D. The role is performed here by the rising Samoan tenor Pene Pati, who on Jan. 6 made a positive though not triumphant Met debut as Rigoletto‘s Duke. Pati has charm, good diction, and a basically pleasing lyric tone. At the Met, he had trouble placing some of his forte high notes, and here he tends to croon them. Both were fine performances by a still-developing artist not yet the complete technical master of his voice; one hopes he’s allowed to mature without premature overexposure.
The gold standards of filmed Mitridates are both Americans: Richard Croft on an earlier (2006) Minkowski Decca performance from Salzburg, a rather awful Günter Krämer production also offering a terrifically intense Farnace by Bejun Mehta; and Michael Spyres on Erato’s contemporary war-themed 2016 Théâtre des Champs Élysées staging with a somewhat less dulcet but equally compelling Farnace in Christophe Dumaux. Minkowski’s new version provides a terrific introduction to a beautifully sung Farnace by the engaging, very talented Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian, who has yet to make a North American career. With Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, he must be counted among the leading countertenor hopes of the rising international generation, both in timbre and acting ability. Neither Decca’s Aspasia nor Erato’s Sifare is the equal of the interpreter on the new release; but this is a case of there existing several fine but no definitively cast version. Sampling online is recommended. But anyone into Mozart should experience Mitridate at least once.
Ismene’s music — like that of the somewhat similar “ignored fiancée” figure Tamiri in Il re pastore — is less interesting than that of the others, rather insipid in places. Sarah Aristidou is adequate to her assignment but doesn’t transcend its inherent limits. Saddled with an unfortunate mustache as local governor Arbate (originally another castrato role), Adriana Bignagni Lesca is unremarkable in comparatively routine music. Pompey doesn’t appear in the opera; Rome is represented by the second tenor part of Marzio, a Roman officer friendly with Farnace, hoping to convert him to Roman fealty. Dressed in nondescript European clothing, bright-voiced Malagasy tenor Sahy Ratia fares well in his lone aria.
Multiple directorially invented roles are taken by Ken Sugiyama, billed as “Actor.” In Regietheater, such additions usually betoken an admission that a new-to-opera director does not trust the chosen cast of singers to execute his or her conception, and/or — as one wise colleague has suggested — that one of his or her actor friends needs a job. Sugiyama is dignified and versatile onstage, but one quickly tires of all the unscripted “takes” his presence offers. A choreographed martial march before Mitridate’s entrance (and subsequent uniformed maneuverings) confirms that the Met has no monopoly on inapposite dance episodes.
