by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

April 2001
The Abrons Arts Center

Read press reviews of this production.

credits

Conductor Neal Goren
Production Christopher Alden
Scenic Design Andrew Cavanaugh Holland

CHARACTERS
Scipione Robert McPherson
Costanza Celena Shafer
Fortuna Georgia Jarman
Publio, Brian Downen
Emilio, Benjamin Sosland
Licenza Asako Tamura

CHORUS OF HEROES
Julie Baron | Jae-Eun Paik | Shani Phillpots | Lawrence Bianco | Colm Fitzmaurice | Miguel Hernandez-Bautista | Andrew Martens

Costume Design Fabio Toblini
Lighting Design Allen Hahn

conductor's notes
How is it possible in 2001 to be presenting the American stage premiere of a Mozart opera? That's the first question everyone asks about our production of Il sogno di Scipione. And the first thing that must be said in response is that this is no piece of damaged goods. Mozart's music is exquisite, if surprisingly un-Mozartean. Audiences accustomed to Handel's large da capo arias will find themselves on familiar ground. And while the musical language evokes Handel, the length does not; Sogno comes in at well under two hours. Then what of the drama? It's true that there are no murders or love affairs, but the opera is about nothing if not seduction.

So why hasn't it been done before? My best guess is that Sogno is too difficult to cast successfully. The vocal writing is far more virtuosic than any of Mozart's other works, even such throat-twisters as Mitridate, which was composed one year earlier. Two of the tenor roles and all three soprano roles call for easy high C's and relentless vocal agility. I can think of no other opera in the entire repertory with such uncompromising technical requirements. As he got older, Mozart simplified the vocal writing in his operas, much as Verdi did a century later, probably because he was unable to find singers capable of performing the music as he imagined it.

I am delighted to say that we have found a cast of young Americans who are up to the challenge. Not only do they possess the requisite technical mastery for their roles, but they each possess the one essential psychological ingredient necessary to make the music jump from the page: fearlessness. Fearlessness born of a hunger to demonstrate what they can do.

As the curtain opens, the Roman consul-elect Scipio awakens in heaven, confronted by two goddesses, Constancy and Fortune. They inform him that he must choose one of them to be his guide through the rest of his life, knowing that the other will forsake him. As the opera progresses, Scipio calls upon his forebears for advice. Here we have a typical 18th-century allegory, but with a significant difference. These goddesses have distinctly human personalities: They threaten, coerce, and seduce in attempting to win their prize. It's the Judgement of Paris morphed with Everyman. The prolific librettist Metastasio, who wrote the text in 1735, denoted it an azioni teatrale, a work to be staged.

Mozart composed the music in 1771, for the ordination to the priesthood of his employer, Sigismund, Count Schrattenbach. Unfortunately, Schrattenbach died before it was ever performed. The following year Mozart proposed that Sogno be presented during the installment ceremonies for the Archbishop Colloredo, but there is no evidence that the proposition was accepted. The opera appears to have waited until 1979 for its world premiere, in Salzburg. But this was not the first time the music itself was heard: In 1773 Mozart added a finale to the overture and presented it as a symphony, now known as K141a.

There is an additional distinction of Il sogno di Scipione that must be mentioned. Directly preceding the opera's final chorus, an entirely new character enters in order to sing an aria and recitative in praise of Mozart's employer Schrattenbach: "Why should I search amongst the relics of the past for what heaven has granted us in you?" When Mozart proposed the opera for Colloredo's installment ceremonies he simply erased Schrattenbach's name from the text and substituted Colloredo's. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the only instance of a commercial in an opera. In this democratic age every ticket buyer is a patron, and Licenza's sincere praise will be directed at our entire audience. - Neal Goren

director's notes
A libretto recounting a dream - at first it seems like Metastasio's gift to a modern Jungian-minded opera director! The dream turns a bit nightmarish when one is faced with the endless succession of endless da capo showpiece arias. But anxiety gradually gives way to bliss as one falls in love with Mozart's sixteen-year-old genius and the free-flowing inspiration with which he humanizes the hoary formality of opera seria in this Sogno.

One is reminded of a film made a few years back, Two Girls and a Guy, in which the young man, played by Robert Downey Jr., is confronted by two girls with whom he is having simultaneous affairs. He is forced not only to choose between them but also to face up to the demands of responsible adulthood, which loom over his narcissistic young life. There is a striking similarity to the predicament of Metastasio's and Mozart's Roman general Scipio, caught in a love triangle of sorts with two demanding goddesses and harangued by the ghosts of his illustrious forbears who warn him that his destiny is to oversee the destruction of the African enemy that has posed an ancient threat to Rome.

An Eighteenth Century opera seria and a late Twentieth Century film, old world formality and modern slackerish narcissism: disparate bedfellows to the dreaming hero of Il Sogno di Scipione, who seems a kind of Everyman (and woman), waking up from his (her) dream to get dressed and face the day ahead. - Christopher Alden