Arias Mozart Uncovered


Arias

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MUSIC: Overture from "The Marriage Of Figaro"

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Prague has always loved Mozart.

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When he came here in 1787, he found the city aflame with Figaro fever.

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"Here," he said, "they talk about nothing but Figaro.

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"Nothing is played or sung or whistled but Figaro. Nothing, nothing but Figaro."

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In this programme I'm going to explore how Mozart developed his characters

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and so captivated his audiences.

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Later, Andrew Shore and Toby Spence join me to talk about the two heroes of the Magic Flute.

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But we'll start with Susanna, beguiling heroine of the Marriage Of Figaro

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sung by the Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling.

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One of the marks of Mozart's genius in his operatic writing

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is the way he develops characters in the course of a piece.

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They have a journey which is absolutely depicted in terms of their vocal line and style

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and Susanna is a great case in point in Figaro,

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because she starts as this earthy thing, this earthy girl

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and she becomes something transcendent, much more like the Countess, her mistress.

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The quality of her vocal line changes immensely.

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Let's have a look at the aria she sings in act II when she's messing around with Cherubino

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and it's frivolous and very girlish.

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Brash, girlish, cheeky and full of fears

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but by the time she gets to that extraordinary Deh vieni aria

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she is sort of fused with the Countess, they become more or less the same vocal type.

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The Countess has sort of set a template,

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these very intense, long and rich lines

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which Susanna takes on and becomes one and the same.

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Let's look at Deh vieni now.

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So here we have a very, very different side to Susanna,

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it's like she's kind of come of age, in a way.

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The range is much broader, of what she's singing.

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She's singing much lower than before

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and there's a sense of much greater strength and intensity to the line of her melody

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compared with what's come before,

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much more extreme and much closer to the precedent that the Countess has set.

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Let's look at the last part of the aria where Mozart piles on the pressure,

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the sense of tension and release.

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So what about Mozart's male characters?

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Something that has always fascinated me is his creation of two very different types of man,

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the hero Prince Tamino and a simpmle bird catcher, Papageno,

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in his last great masterpiece, the Magic Flute.

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So there we have it, the two men side by side,

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these two, in a sense, opposites, or, as I see it, opposite sides of the same coin.

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They are, after all, only different manifestations of humankind.

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Papageno, country bumpkin, simpleton,

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and Tamino, this great stoical hero

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who's on a rigorous quest towards enlightenment, I suppose, in the piece.

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The question for me always is which one is Mozart?

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Papageno's a very straightforward chap.

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Down to earth, no complications sort of bloke.

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He's got three overwhelming passions in the opera, I think,

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for food, drink and sex.

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He gets food and drink in exchange for the birds that he catches

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but he can't get the sex. Not enough of it. Not any of it.

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I think that's his driving motivation right through the piece.

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We hear it in his first song

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and it carries him right through until he finally finds the girl of his dreams,

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-of his life, his Papagena.

-He sings this amazing, basically pop song at the start of the show

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and because it's strophic, the same tune repeated through three verses,

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people can be singing along by the third verse.

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It's a real song of communication, he comes on like a popular comedian,

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who the audience really want to see

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and before long, he's talking directly to them

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and before we know it, he's trying to flirt with the ladies in the audience.

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And, like a comedian coming on stage,

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singing that to the audience, telling them about himself,

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he then realises there are other people sitting higher up in the theatre,

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so he starts singing again, exactly the same words.

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The big challenge for Tamino is to find his place,

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certainly in terms of the audience, who are going to love this guy from the start.

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Naturally.

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Papageno is pie and mash to Tamino's boeuf Wellington, really.

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THEY LAUGH

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It's very difficult to carry Tamino off, especially in the audience's eyes,

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because they are far more interested, always, in Papageno's story,

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because he's so much more human.

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So he doesn't really carry the audience.

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But it's an age-old story of what it takes to go through to full maturity.

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And that's a very compelling story.

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The first melody it gets out of him is that sixth,

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which is such a key interval for Mozart

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when he's writing about intense feelings of longing and love.

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And right here we get these very cramped, constricted intervals,

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we get a sense of how difficult this man's journey is going to be.

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how difficult it already is, he's just discovered this woman

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and he's absolutely fallen for her.

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Tamino's character type is a much more complex, demanding one

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and my sense is that Mozart is a little bit of both,

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because, essentially, truer than anything of Mozart is the fact that he represents the human condition,

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so it is both the Papagenos of this world and the Taminos.

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Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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E-mail [email protected]

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