This year’s Mozartwoche in Salzburg offered a few brave souls the unique chance to compare two complete settings and selections from a third setting of Giovanni de Gamerra’s opera seria, Lucio Silla, K 135. The main event of the ten-day festival was a staged performance of Mozart’s setting (Milan, 1772), given three times (24 and 29 January, and 1 February 2013) at the Haus für Mozart under Marc Minkowski (and reviewed elsewhere by Adeline Mueller). Five numbers from Pasquale Anfossi’s version (Venice, 1774) were performed in concert by Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, conducted by Jérémie Rhorer, in the Großer Saal of the Mozarteum on 28 January, along with two early symphonies by Mozart, K 110 and 201, and a symphony by Rigel (reviewed here by Adeline Mueller). Unfortunately, the soprano Sylvia Schwartz had a bad cold and could not sing all the pieces (in an edition by Ulrich Leisinger), but fortunately, she recovered and was able to sing on 2 February in Johann Christian Bach’s setting (Mannheim, 1775) in the Großer Saal, conducted by Ivor Bolton.
In conjunction with these performances, there were two round tables: the first occurred on 24 January, titled ‘Lucio Silla oder: wie Tot ist die Opera Seria des 18. Jahrhunderts?’ with Christian Esch, Ulrich Konrad, Louwrens Langevoort, and moderator Eleonore Büning. I participated in the second, which focused on ‘The Operatic J.C. Bach and Mozart in Milan, London, and Mannheim,’ along with Karl Böhmer, Stephen Roe, and moderator Ulrich Leisinger. I should also mention up front that I was responsible, with substantial assistance from Ulrich Leisinger, for preparing the edition of J.C. Bach’s Lucio Silla from which the performers worked; Luke Green, harpsichord and repetitour, revised recitatives when they needed to be trimmed.
The plot derives from Roman history, and De Gamerra sent a draft of his drama to Metastasio for advice. The prima donna, Giunia, has been told that her lover Cecilio is dead, and the despot Lucius Sulla, who also killed her father Gaius Marius, is trying to force her to become his wife. She’ll have none of it, and resists his advances, saying she will hate him until her death. The plot is complicated by Cinna, who is a friend to Cecilio but who is also loved by the seconda donna Celia, Sulla’s sister. Aufidio (cut in Minkowski’s production) urges Sulla to be ruthless in forcing Giunia to marry him. While visiting her father’s grave, Cecilio suddently appears to Giunia, who takes him for a ghost. Thus act 1 ends with an ‘ombra’ duet between the prima donna and primo uomo.
Then in act 2, the characters plot Sulla’s assassination; first Cecilio tries to convince Cinna, then Cinna suggests that Giunia kill him on their wedding night, then Cinna decides he must do the deed himself. (This confusing sequence was cleaned up to a certain extent by the local court poet Mattia Verazi for J.C. Bach in Mannheim.) But eventually the impetuous Cecilio confronts Sulla himself, and act 2 ends a dramatic trio between Cecilio, Giunia, and Sulla (most effectively staged with stop-action effects). Finally, in act 3, after the lovers say their goodbyes, Sulla does some soul-searching himself. In an act of extreme clemency he pardons his enemies, pairs Cecilio and Giunia, Cinna and Celia, and abdicates his rule, for which he is praised in chorus (and dance) for his love of liberty.
It is not really fair to attempt to compare Anfossi’s setting to the other two (more-or-less) complete versions given here. The overall impression from the several numbers we heard is that Anfossi was more comfortable in the opera buffa idiom, even though there is little opportunity for comic relief in this libretto. It is also difficult to compare a staged production (Mozart’s) of an opera with a concert performance (J.C. Bach’s). In the case of the former, the mise-en-scène by Marshall Pynkoski, with set design and costumes by Antoine Fontaine, was almost flawless. This was an anti-Regietheater staging, entirely faithful to the text (music and words), with brilliant tableaux and dances. He allowed the singers to sing their long arias, often coming front and center stage for the repeat of the first part. I’ve heard people say after, for instance, a totally non-sensical production of J.C. Bach’s Temistocle at the Mannheim Nationaltheater in July 2012, ‘it makes you think, doesn’t it’? (In this case, only about how bad the staging was.) But eighteenth-century opera is more about feeling than thinking, as well as listening to the virtuosic singers. In this production the audience was allowed to experience the beauty of the music, without lots of aimless wandering, partial undressing, body painting, and so on. The production will be given this summer at the Mozart Festival, and I hope it will be released on DVD; it is a much superior staging to that of Jürgen Flimm’s for Salzburg in 2006, in which the director cynically has Sulla abdicate only at knife point.
For me, and for others in the audience, the most beautiful moment in the opera was Sulla’s last aria, which Minkowski wisely borrowed from J.C. Bach’s setting. Mozart’s Sulla was Bassano Morgnoni, an inexperienced ‘church tenor from Lodi’ (as Leopold described him), and his last aria was cut in Milan. Bach, on the other hand, had Anton Raaff, one of the greatest tenors of the century, as Sulla, and though somewhat past his prime (he later created the role of Idomeneo in 1781!), he was given an expansive concertante aria with obbligato oboe, bassoon, and horn in B-flat. Mozart’s opera could easily have been called ‘Cecilio e Giunia reuniti,’ since these characters, first sung by Vincenzo Rauzzini and Anna de Amicis, dominate the score and drama. But De Gamerra’s drama is really about the internal conflict of Lucius Sulla, who acts against his desire to conquer Giunia and rule Rome but ultimately controls his passion. De Gamerra sums up the moral of the story in Sulla’s last recitative: ‘Ah sì, conosco a provo che assai più grata all’alma d’un menzogner splendore è l’innocenza e la virtù del core.’
Most of the differences between the two operas can be accounted for in terms of the original casts the two composers had available. Anna de Amicis (Giunia) was the star of Mozart’s opera, and Bach had launched her career as a seria singer in London, with his first two operas there, Orione and Zanaida in 1763. (Karl Böhmer pointed out that the Mozarts first met her in Mainz in summer 1763, fresh from her triumph in London.) Giunia is one of Mozart’s strongest female characters, and she dominates the opera as Alcina dominates Handel’s eponymous opera. Dorothea Wendling (Bach’s Giunia and later the first Ilia in Idomeneo) has the same number of arias, but they are much less flashy than Mozart’s. What a pity that Minkowski followed the lead of Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s 1990 recording and omitted the pathetic ‘Parto, m’affretto’; Amicis would not have stood for it, and indeed, Teodora Gheorghiu includes it on her recent album of ‘Arias for Anna de Amicis.’
Rauzzini was one of the star castrati of his day, and Mozart gave him one more aria than his counterpart, Francesco Roncaglia, in Bach’s setting. Similarly, Daniella Mienci (Mozart’s Celia) has one more aria than Elisabeth Wendling (Bach’s Celia, later the first Elettra in Idomeneo). In Milan, Cinna was sung as a ‘trouser role’ by the soprano Felicità Suardi, but in Mannheim, Cinna was written for the bass Giovanni Battista Zonca. The biggest difference, as I hinted at earlier, is in the title role, and Anton Raaff in Bach’s version has two arias more than Morgnoni in Mozart’s. (This deficit was restored in Salzburg by inserting the last aria of Bach’s opera in Mozart’s, and the tenor Rolando Villazón made the most of it.) Mozart later wrote a similar aria for Raaff in act 3 of Idomeneo, and it would not be entirely out of place in Lucio Silla.
The similarities between certain numbers are also striking, though there is no evidence that Bach would have known Mozart’s version. Mozart was able to borrow a score of Bach’s version from Georg Joseph Vogler in Mannheim in 1777–78, and he apparently ridiculed J.C. Bach’s setting of the aria ‘Pupille amate’; according to Mozart, Vogler referred to the ‘abscheüliche aria vom Bach, die Sauerey,’ even suggesting that Bach was drunk when he wrote it. In fact, both Mozart’s and Bach’s settings are in A major and 3/8 metre, and while Mozart’s is more cantabile, Bach’s is hardly ‘ridiculous’ or ‘a filthy mess’ (however you want to translate ‘Sauerey’ in this context).
After hearing the two operas within the space of 24 hours, just 12 hours apart (on Friday night and Saturday morning), I would give J.C. Bach’s Lucio Silla a slight edge over Mozart’s. First of all, Bach had more in experience: in 1775 he was 40 years old, in the prime of his career; Mozart was only sixteen in 1772, and though in Lucio Silla he surpassed his earlier operas for Milan, Mitridate and Ascanio in Alba, he had not reached full maturity. Second, Bach was writing for a better orchestra in Mannheim than the one in Milan. Several of Bach’s arias have obbligato winds, including solo flute (Giunia’s no. 14), three clarinetti d’amore (Silla’s no. 9), and solo oboe, bassoon, and horn (Silla’s no. 21). Mozart later had the opportunity to write Idomeneo for basically the same orchestra and took full advantage of it. Bach also had more variety in his cast (three sopranos, two tenors, one bass to Mozart’s four sopranos and two tenors), and overall stronger singers, with the exception of de Amicis and Rauzzini.
The Salzburg cast of J.C. Bach’s opera featured Sylvia Schwartz as Giunia, Lydia Teuscher as Cecilio, and Benjamin Hulett as Silla; they were extremely well matched in the duet and trio. The secondary characters—Carolyn Sampson as Celia, Andrew Foster-Williams as Cinna, and Andrew Tortise as Aufidio—were also stylish, and everyone’s Italian was clear and crisp. Ivor Bolton led the Mozarteumorchester in a vigorous performance, capturing the energy of Bach’s accompaniments for the famous Mannheim orchestra. The Salzburger Bachchor added elegance to the ensemble, whether in mourning (in act 1) or celebrating (in act 3). For me, Silla’s final aria is the highlight of the work, having a cathartic effect after all the dramatic tension. Mozart clearly admired J.C. Bach and only surpassed him with Idomeneo and the later Viennese operas.