The Jewel Box
Press reviews
Jewels indeed
Opera, November 2006
Mozart’s The Jewel Box is a real treasure-trove: a delicious concoction - mimicking the 18th C form of pasticcio (here, a collation of solos and ensembles filched from diverse Mozartian sources) - so as to make a lively divertissement.
Its deviser, Paul Griffiths, has drawn on not just arias from operas Mozart never completed (Lo sposo deluso, L’oca del Cairo) but also items he wrote for insertion into operas by others – Anfossi, Piccini, Cimarosa – and used them imaginitively to ‘reconstruct’ a Pantomime in which Mozart and Aloysia Lange (Constanze’s sister) took part in 1783.
The music mostly dates from the 1780s: it’s top-drawer ‘mislaid’ Mozart, of uniformly good quality, and though it aches for more recitative, the wheeze of stitching these numbers together with an almost Straussian libretto is something one can be deeply grateful to Griffiths for.
As Jeremy Gray’s graphically staged La cappriciosa corretta (Martin y Soler) proved earlier this summer, Bampton’s inventive daring grows ever more finessed. Apart from the problem of catching the words here – all in English translation, except for a ‘tragic muse’ figure, sung by Michaela Bloom, who delivered her coloratura outbursts (shades of the Queen of the Night) in Italian; armed with a slightly edgy sound she made a remarkably fine job of them - one could have appreciated more fully the arcane twists of Gray’s thoughtful staging. Too much seemed elusive or fussy here, not helped by the hyperactivity of Serena Kay’s Composer and Alex Grove’s Dottore: for all the apt Harlequinade atmosphere, gestures seemed more hack than stock, and the cloaks were awful.
Yet musically Bampton served up a scintillating evening. From a serene overture onwards (Lo sposo deluso) the London Mozart Players under Matthew Coorey made sumptuous work of the buoyant score, with woodwind to be relished and a wonderful double-stopped double bass solo – a bit like the Dittersdorf concerto - for Richard Alsop. Kay and Grove are both fine singers, and she negotiated her middle range as adeptly as he did his two sweeping, characterful arias.
There were further delights: Vojtech Safarik sang the composer’s Father in a handsome, plainish but resonant bass. Ilona Domnich, a Bampton regular, positively blossomed as the Colombina figure, with a lovely bloom and roundedness to the voice; she and tenor Mark Chaundy, who sang with a gorgeous, wan sensitivity as the pantaloon lover Pedrolono, brought a striking pathos to the later stages. Marc Labonnette, especially in a late aria for Pantalone, revealed the full richness, power and flexibility of his magnificent, buccaneering baritone. The ensembles, three quartets and two brilliant trios, were terrific. Jewels indeed.
Roderic Dunnett
Top-drawer Mozart, served up with panache
Opera Now, January 2007
One of the most rewarding aspects of Bampton’s recent productions has been the slick quality of the orchestral playing under a series of conductors – Edward Gardner, Alexander Briger, Murray Hipkin - who have gone on to achieve great things elsewhere. Bampton’s use of the London Mozart Players for its latest foray into rare 18 th Century Opera at both Westonbirt School and St. John’s Smith Square provides yet more evidence, after this summer’s Taming of the Shrew, that this prodigiously talented company is going from strength to strength.
True, no indoor venue can quite match the atmosphere of an Oxfordshire or Gloucestershire garden setting. However Bampton’s September appearances at St. John’s have become a welcome and regular autumn feature. A few seasons back they served up a brilliantly honed evening of rare Mozart, embracing the music from The Cairo Goose and The Deluded Husband, both 1780s operas which Mozart abandoned - but whose musical quality is top-notch, the surviving arias and ensembles like precious lost gems.
Now they have turned to another valuable Mozartian gem, The Jewel Box, a witty harlequinade, deftly pieced together by Paul Griffiths, which embraces not just music from those two discarded operas, but arias which Mozart supplied for operas by lesser mortals – Galuppi, Picinni et al.
Bampton always seems blessed with a bumper cast of talented singers. All three of Mozart’s quartets (including one for a Bianchi opera) impressed, including one from Lo sposo deluso heard right at the start. At its completion the action intensifies, as the various Harlequinade characters frantically hunt for a ‘composer’ (Serena Kay), whose own artistic yearnings are projected onto the ‘sublime’, semi-abstract person of a coloratura soprano (Michaela Bloom). Both of these are spirited young singers, and Bloom made a handsome job of the difficult coloratura role for the inscrutable ‘muse’.
Here and there I was puzzled and mystified by the action, as so easily happens when teasing opera materialises in English without surtitles. Some of the wittier ironies proved elusive. But what made the evening shine was the quality of the other voices: a touching, wistful performance from tenor Mark Chaundy as the hapless lovesick Pedrolino; plenty of boisterousness but also finessed singing from the gutsy Pantalone, Marc Labonette; and a glorious blossoming from Ilona Domnich in the tender arias of Colombina. Thanks to Bampton’s glowing delivery, there was no doubting, either, the quality of this music which Griffiths has so cannily conserved: this was top-drawer Mozart, served up with panache.
Roderic Dunnett
brilliantly performed... MusicOMH.com
Bampton Classical Opera deserves
huge praise for putting on this new Mozart opera
during the much-publicised 250th anniversary
year of Mozart’s birth. Indeed,
I would be hard pressed to think of any other celebratory
event more relevant than this production. The
Jewel Box is mostly unknown, yet it is pure Mozart
and was performed by Opera North in 1991, during the
200th anniversary year of Mozart’s death.
The music, compiled by former music critic Paul Griffiths,
comes from 25 Mozart compositions, most of which were
written for operas that were left unfinished or as insertions
for other composers’ operas. Based on evidently
very thorough research, Griffiths also compiled the libretto
from works by such 18th-century masters as Goldoni, Metastasio,
Palomba, Petrosellini, da Ponte and Veresco.
Apparently, Griffiths based his idea for The Jewel
Box on a letter which Mozart wrote on 12 March 1783.
Mozart reports to his father that he took part in a pantomime
as Harlequin, with his sister-in-law as Columbine and
others as Pierrot, Doctor and Pantaloon. As the music
- composed by Mozart - has long been lost, Griffiths
seems to have aimed to recreate a similar plot but based
on the music now chosen. The characters in the current
libretto are as mentioned in Mozart’s letter, that
is, Dottore (the doctor), Pantalone, Colombina, and Pedrolino.
New characters include The Composer, The Father (that
is the composer’s father) and The Singer of opera
seria. Loosely speaking, the plot concerns competition
between opera buffa and opera seria. In the event, music – in
both forms - wins.
Director Jeremy Gray made the most of the very small
space available for his cast of seven singers, all of
whom responded very well to what looked like meaningful
direction. Costumes and lighting were also pleasing and
credible. It would have been helpful to make young Vojtech
Safarik, playing the father, look a bit older (with appropriate
make-up).
Of the singers Serena Kay (The Composer) sounded the
most experienced and accomplished, but all of them coped
well with some very difficult vocal lines. Ilona Domnich
(Columbina) sounds like a promising Susanna, Despina,
but also a Countess. Marc Labonette (Pantalone) has a
commanding baritone voice as well as a strong stage presence.
Vojtech Safarik displayed an impressive bass voice and
huge stamina.
Though clearly owing to space restrictions, unfortunately
the orchestra (London Mozart Players) and conductor (Matthew
Coorey) were placed behind the singers. Notwithstanding
apparently two television sets – installed to show
the conductor to the singers – ensemble work suffered
from time to time: television sets are not adequate substitutes
for proper contact with conductors.
Orchestra and conductor gave us real Mozart. Particular
praise is due to double bass player Richard Alsop for
his brilliantly performed virtuoso obbligato part and
to oboist Celia Nicklin for her sensitive solo playing.
