0:00:02 > 0:00:06MUSIC: Overture from "The Marriage Of Figaro"
0:00:11 > 0:00:14Prague has always loved Mozart.
0:00:14 > 0:00:19When he came here in 1787, he found the city aflame with Figaro fever.
0:00:19 > 0:00:22"Here," he said, "they talk about nothing but Figaro.
0:00:22 > 0:00:28"Nothing is played or sung or whistled but Figaro. Nothing, nothing but Figaro."
0:00:29 > 0:00:33In this programme I'm going to explore how Mozart developed his characters
0:00:33 > 0:00:36and so captivated his audiences.
0:00:36 > 0:00:42Later, Andrew Shore and Toby Spence join me to talk about the two heroes of the Magic Flute.
0:00:42 > 0:00:47But we'll start with Susanna, beguiling heroine of the Marriage Of Figaro
0:00:47 > 0:00:50sung by the Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling.
0:00:50 > 0:00:55One of the marks of Mozart's genius in his operatic writing
0:00:55 > 0:00:58is the way he develops characters in the course of a piece.
0:00:58 > 0:01:02They have a journey which is absolutely depicted in terms of their vocal line and style
0:01:02 > 0:01:06and Susanna is a great case in point in Figaro,
0:01:06 > 0:01:10because she starts as this earthy thing, this earthy girl
0:01:10 > 0:01:15and she becomes something transcendent, much more like the Countess, her mistress.
0:01:15 > 0:01:18The quality of her vocal line changes immensely.
0:01:18 > 0:01:22Let's have a look at the aria she sings in act II when she's messing around with Cherubino
0:01:22 > 0:01:25and it's frivolous and very girlish.
0:02:39 > 0:02:42Brash, girlish, cheeky and full of fears
0:02:42 > 0:02:46but by the time she gets to that extraordinary Deh vieni aria
0:02:46 > 0:02:50she is sort of fused with the Countess, they become more or less the same vocal type.
0:02:50 > 0:02:53The Countess has sort of set a template,
0:02:53 > 0:02:56these very intense, long and rich lines
0:02:56 > 0:03:00which Susanna takes on and becomes one and the same.
0:03:00 > 0:03:02Let's look at Deh vieni now.
0:03:44 > 0:03:46So here we have a very, very different side to Susanna,
0:03:46 > 0:03:49it's like she's kind of come of age, in a way.
0:03:49 > 0:03:52The range is much broader, of what she's singing.
0:03:52 > 0:03:55She's singing much lower than before
0:03:55 > 0:04:01and there's a sense of much greater strength and intensity to the line of her melody
0:04:01 > 0:04:03compared with what's come before,
0:04:03 > 0:04:08much more extreme and much closer to the precedent that the Countess has set.
0:04:08 > 0:04:11Let's look at the last part of the aria where Mozart piles on the pressure,
0:04:11 > 0:04:15the sense of tension and release.
0:05:26 > 0:05:29So what about Mozart's male characters?
0:05:29 > 0:05:33Something that has always fascinated me is his creation of two very different types of man,
0:05:33 > 0:05:37the hero Prince Tamino and a simpmle bird catcher, Papageno,
0:05:37 > 0:05:40in his last great masterpiece, the Magic Flute.
0:06:17 > 0:06:21So there we have it, the two men side by side,
0:06:21 > 0:06:26these two, in a sense, opposites, or, as I see it, opposite sides of the same coin.
0:06:26 > 0:06:30They are, after all, only different manifestations of humankind.
0:06:30 > 0:06:34Papageno, country bumpkin, simpleton,
0:06:34 > 0:06:38and Tamino, this great stoical hero
0:06:38 > 0:06:43who's on a rigorous quest towards enlightenment, I suppose, in the piece.
0:06:43 > 0:06:47The question for me always is which one is Mozart?
0:06:47 > 0:06:49Papageno's a very straightforward chap.
0:06:49 > 0:06:53Down to earth, no complications sort of bloke.
0:06:53 > 0:06:57He's got three overwhelming passions in the opera, I think,
0:06:57 > 0:06:59for food, drink and sex.
0:06:59 > 0:07:03He gets food and drink in exchange for the birds that he catches
0:07:03 > 0:07:06but he can't get the sex. Not enough of it. Not any of it.
0:07:06 > 0:07:10I think that's his driving motivation right through the piece.
0:07:10 > 0:07:12We hear it in his first song
0:07:12 > 0:07:17and it carries him right through until he finally finds the girl of his dreams,
0:07:17 > 0:07:23- of his life, his Papagena.- He sings this amazing, basically pop song at the start of the show
0:07:23 > 0:07:26and because it's strophic, the same tune repeated through three verses,
0:07:26 > 0:07:29people can be singing along by the third verse.
0:07:29 > 0:07:34It's a real song of communication, he comes on like a popular comedian,
0:07:34 > 0:07:37who the audience really want to see
0:07:37 > 0:07:40and before long, he's talking directly to them
0:07:40 > 0:07:45and before we know it, he's trying to flirt with the ladies in the audience.
0:08:23 > 0:08:26And, like a comedian coming on stage,
0:08:26 > 0:08:29singing that to the audience, telling them about himself,
0:08:29 > 0:08:33he then realises there are other people sitting higher up in the theatre,
0:08:33 > 0:08:37so he starts singing again, exactly the same words.
0:08:37 > 0:08:40The big challenge for Tamino is to find his place,
0:08:40 > 0:08:44certainly in terms of the audience, who are going to love this guy from the start.
0:08:44 > 0:08:45Naturally.
0:08:45 > 0:08:51Papageno is pie and mash to Tamino's boeuf Wellington, really.
0:08:51 > 0:08:52THEY LAUGH
0:08:52 > 0:08:57It's very difficult to carry Tamino off, especially in the audience's eyes,
0:08:57 > 0:09:01because they are far more interested, always, in Papageno's story,
0:09:01 > 0:09:03because he's so much more human.
0:09:03 > 0:09:06So he doesn't really carry the audience.
0:09:06 > 0:09:12But it's an age-old story of what it takes to go through to full maturity.
0:09:12 > 0:09:16And that's a very compelling story.
0:09:16 > 0:09:20The first melody it gets out of him is that sixth,
0:09:20 > 0:09:22which is such a key interval for Mozart
0:09:22 > 0:09:26when he's writing about intense feelings of longing and love.
0:09:45 > 0:09:49And right here we get these very cramped, constricted intervals,
0:09:49 > 0:09:53we get a sense of how difficult this man's journey is going to be.
0:09:53 > 0:09:57how difficult it already is, he's just discovered this woman
0:09:57 > 0:09:59and he's absolutely fallen for her.
0:10:30 > 0:10:36Tamino's character type is a much more complex, demanding one
0:10:36 > 0:10:40and my sense is that Mozart is a little bit of both,
0:10:40 > 0:10:47because, essentially, truer than anything of Mozart is the fact that he represents the human condition,
0:10:47 > 0:10:51so it is both the Papagenos of this world and the Taminos.
0:11:00 > 0:11:02Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:11:02 > 0:11:05E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk