Ravinia 2022, Issue 4

TODD ROSENBERG Matthew Polenzani returns to the title role of Tito at Ravinia August 12 and 14, having first portrayed the benevolent emperor at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2014. on dramatic and theatrical values. Plot and characters are placed under the microscope of current political, social, and ethical ideas. Texts, by far, provoke knottier challenges than the music. In an overwhelming majority of cases, the text and social context could be considered time bound, but the music isn’t ensnared in the era of its composition. Otherwise we would no longer be listening it. Music itself accords a sense of permanence, a quality of timelessness. La clemenza di Tito is an interest- ing example of this duality. Mozart’s penultimate opera (its premiere preceded that of The Magic Flute by 24 days), asks several important questions. A Roman emperor grants clemency—pardon for traitorous actions—as well as forgiveness of per- sonal wrongs. Do these magnanimous acts invite us, in 2022, to reflect on parallels in today’s world? An astounding number of op- eras—45, including one by Gluck— were drawn from the original 1734 libretto by Metastasio, the indisputable giant of 18th-century Italian poetry. The story, though overused in Metas- tasio’s time, is still interesting, import- ant, and relevant. But why is Mozart’s opera still produced on contemporary opera stages and not any of the others? It is, I believe, because Mozart’s genius elevated and reinvigorated what had already become a tired subject. His music renders it seaworthy today. Mozart’s religious, metaphysical, and social orientation often brought him to the issues of justice, clemency, and forgiveness. They are recur- ring themes in his works. His three great final works, completed in 1791 during the last four months of his life, symbolically represent three powerful (at times conflicting) forces in his ex- traordinary spiritual and intellectual soul. They are, in reverse order: The Requiem Mass (left incom- plete at his death on December 5). Although written in response to a commission that he had continually delayed fulfilling, this piece reveals the formidable influence of his Ro- man Catholic education. It is not only the last but, even in its incomplete form, the greatest of his sacred works. The Magic Flute (premiered on September 30). He accomplished several goals in creating this unique Singspiel: He had produced a work in German with native singers for a non-aristocratic audience. Most important, it was a fairy tale replete with the philosophical, ethical, spiritual, and intellectual symbolism of the Freemasons. He succeeded in expressing (though not revealing) his long-held Masonic principles through popular entertainment. Whatever the conflicts and contradictions between Roman Catholicism and Freemasonry were, they seemed to pose no problem to Mozart. La clemenza di Tito (premiered on September 6) , the work onstage here at Ravinia on August 12 and 14. It tangentially draws from both of Mozart’s two spiritual sources, but is far more secular. The contemporary question of good governance, men- tioned above, is central: how does a good and just monarch rule? Mozart answers: with compassion and mercy. The political complexities surround- ing the new emperor and Mozart’s probable disinterest in them (his goal was more practical: he needed pa- tronage) are beyond the scope of this essay. But Mozart clearly prizes not just the royal virtue of clemency, but also the personal virtue of forgiveness. The perennial debate pitting justice and mercy as opposing exigencies is surpassed by the Christian concept of absolution. The monarch represents God on earth, less by his self-appoint- ed divine right, but by virtue of his magnanimous generosity of spirit. In the words of Nicholas Till, au- thor of Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, Virtue, and Beauty in Mozart’s Operas , “Mozart’s Clemenza is not a conventional hymn to enlightened despotism, as is usually claimed, but a missile lobbed in the aristocratic counter-revolution to absolutism.” The aristocracy, represented by the Bohemian Estates, vigorously debated the emperor’s power to pardon, partly in response to perceived imperial abuse. Similar tensions can be sensed RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 1 – AUGUST 14, 2022 10