An opera about Mozart’s collaborator Lorenzo Da Ponte dulls down that librettist’s picaresque story.
Thomas Hampson as Lorenzo Da Ponte in ‘The Phoenix’ Photo: Lynn Lane By Heidi Waleson April 30, 2019 3:32 p.m. ET
Houston
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte were a perfect partnership, creating “Le nozze di Figaro,” “Don Giovanni” and “Così fan tutte,” three of the greatest operas ever written. One could only wish that some of that alchemy had rubbed off on Tarik O’Regan and John Caird, respectively composer and librettist (as well as director) of “The Phoenix, ” which is based on Da Ponte’s life story and had its world premiere on Friday at Houston Grand Opera. Instead, their opera is text-heavy and musically repetitive, with none of the quicksilver wit of the man who was its inspiration.
Da Ponte’s picaresque life story is certainly good fodder for theater. Born to Jewish parents in Italy in 1749, he converted with his family to Catholicism at 14, and got an education by studying for the priesthood. Banished from Venice for debauchery, he made his way to Vienna and for a few halcyon years collaborated with Mozart. Then their patron Emperor Joseph II died (as did Mozart), and Da Ponte was dismissed from court. Da Ponte married and moved on to London, where he was librettist for the King’s Theatre. Beset by creditors, he and his family fled to America in 1805, where he embarked on a series of commercial endeavors (grocer, schoolmaster, distiller, opera house impresario), all of which failed. He died in 1838, at age 89.
Messrs. O’Regan and Caird constructed the tale as a kind of tragicomedy. The 83-year-old Lorenzo (Thomas Hampson) and his son Enzo (Luca Pisaroni) have written an opera about Da Ponte’s life to raise money for the New York opera house venture. “The Phoenix” (which is also the title of the Da Pontes’ opera) is its dress rehearsal, with action occurring both onstage and backstage, sometimes simultaneously. Six principal characters play all the main roles in the opera-within-an-opera, with the Da Pontes playing themselves, and Enzo also playing his father as a young man. The title refers both to Mozart’s wry description of a great librettist—a mythical creature “forever talked about, but never seen”—and to Da Ponte’s own serial rebirths from the ashes.
Early scenes nod to the real Mozart-Da Ponte technique of integrating serious and comic moments; the orchestral language, particularly the use of mallet instruments, is fresh and appealing; and the imaginatively harmonized choral numbers are arresting. However, the solo vocal writing, particularly Lorenzo’s lengthy narrations of his early life, is uninteresting, and so much of the music is slow that the pacing of the opera sags. At first, these serious numbers have some dramatic force: there is the plaintive lullaby that Da Ponte and his Venetian mistress sing to their child; the somber departure of Emperor Joseph to war; a passacaglia for chorus and soloists that ingeniously marries Da Ponte’s life in London to the ebb and flow of the Thames. But as one ponderous set piece follows another, particularly in Act II, the disasters and failures, rather than Da Ponte’s urge for life, are what resonate, and not in a fun way.
There are other technical drawbacks. The libretto alternates between English and Italian, with so much information packed into it that the listener is glued to the supertitles, regardless of which language is being sung. There are a great many episodes, but while we are continually told things about Da Ponte and his aspirations, the music never really lets us feel his complexities as a character. In part, the division of the role was the problem: Mr. Hampson, who had a distractingly bad wig and sounded stentorian, was more of a narrator than a participant. Mr. Pisaroni’s lyrical baritone was more affecting, but the opera still painted both the rakish young Lorenzo and the ambitious Enzo in broad strokes.
Mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb sang the role of Maria Malibran (the famous 19th-century singer); in the Da Pontes’ opera, she played Nancy, Lorenzo’s long-suffering wife, and Mozart—the two people Lorenzo truly loved. She was better as the fey, unearthly Mozart; as Nancy, her voice took on a slightly metallic edge. Tenor Chad Shelton was Patrick Kelly, who had all the other male roles (Casanova, Emperor Joseph, etc.); they seemed musically interchangeable. As Giulietta and Faustina, high sopranos Lauren Snouffer and Elizabeth Sutphen supplied some welcome comic relief, battling performance nerves backstage and each other on it, as a pair of dueling divas in London. Patrick Summers was the efficient conductor; he also played the fortepiano continuo for the secco recitatives.
David Farley’s rickety-looking set evoked the backstage of a simple theater and used the turntable for fluid scene changes; cleverly, when Da Ponte got to America in Act II, the background opened up to suggest bigger spaces while maintaining the theater conceit. He also designed the basic period costumes. Lighting designer Michael James Clark differentiated the many locations; for example, sneaky, dark Venice from enlightened Vienna. Mr. Caird’s functional directing got the story from episode to episode, but it couldn’t help the opera catch fire.
Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).
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