The Sunday Telegraph

July 25, 2004

Mitridate, Re di Ponto

Michael Kennedy

Written for Milan in 1770 when he was 14, Mozart's opera seria
Mitridate, Re di Ponto is due for revival at Covent Garden next
season in what is one of Graham Vick's most inventive productions.
But the Classical Opera Company stole a march at St John's, Smith
Square, on Wednesday when it gave what is claimed to have been
the "world premiere" of the original version. This included seven
numbers (six arias and a duet) which Mozart had to leave out of the
first performance.

The 1770 cast insisted on some rewriting to suit their vocal vanity.
The tenor who sang Mitridate was a troublemaker intent on showing
off his speciality of upward leaps. Mozart had to revise his first aria,
"Se di lauri il crine adorno", four times, the final version containing six
top Bs and a top C. At St John's the less flamboyant second sketch
for this aria was performed in an orchestration and completion by
the Mozart scholar Stanley Sadie, who also provided a short linking
section for another aria and reconstructed the second adagio in
Aspasia's marvellous "Nel grave tormento". The work is a
musicological minefield, and, wisely, was cut, with a minor role
omitted.

Under its founder Ian Page, the company gave a highly creditable
performance, leaving one awestruck by Mozart's budding histrionic
genius. If some arias are in the common coin of the day, several are
ablaze with something exceptional, for example the counter-tenor
Farnace's "Va, l'error" and his final elegy, the long and beautiful duet
"Se viver non degg'io" for two sopranos, Sifare (a travesti role) and
Aspasia, and, above all, Aspasia's cavatina "Pallid' ombre", worthy of
mature Mozart. Already in his music he could give the characters
dramatic life they otherwise lack, particularly the choleric and
impetuous Mitridate, splendidly sung by the tenor Tom Randle with
hyper-responsiveness to the text and what his colleagues were
singing about.

None of the arias is easy and three sopranos -- Lucy Crowe
(Aspasia), Rebecca Bottone (Sifare) and Cora Burggraaf (Ismene),
with Tim Mead (Farnace) -- were hearteningly equal to the
challenges.