Gratuitous Llama Netflix Musickal Movie Review

Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, performed by the Drottningholm Court Theatre Orchestra under the direction of Arnold Ostmann.

A mostly good, solid production of Mozart's great opera that could have been fantastic.

The Drottningholm Court Theatre (in Sweden) was around in Mozart's own time. It's much smaller than the modern opera house and brings to the performance an intimacy impossible to achieve in a place like the Met. Carrying on in the spirit of the theatre itself, this production goes all out for authenticity, using fabulous period backdrops and candle-like lighting. The orchestra (as well as the cast) dress in period clothing and when Ostmann comes out into the pit, one can almost sense what it must have been like to see Gangerl doing the same thing (except for the fact that Ostmann is about a foot and a half taller than Mozart and far more handsome).

The cast includes:

Per-Arne Wahlgren as Conte d'Almaviva
Georgine Resick as Susanna
Ann Christine Biel as Cherubino
Erik Saeden as Dottor Bartolo
Karl-Robert Lindgren as Antonio
Sylvia Lindenstrand as Contessa d'Almaviva
Mikael Samuelson as Figaro
Karin Mang-Habashi as Marcellina
Torbjeorn Liliequist as Don Basilio
Birgitta Larsson as Barbarina

Don't worry if you've never heard of any of them. Neither have I. But all of them sing beautifully and put in solid acting jobs as well. My only criticism is of Wahlgren's Almaviva. I don't want to get into the story too much here, but I must say that while he looks the part, being much taller and more imposing than everyone else, he doesn't bring the latent ferocity that the role requires. (If you want a really first rate Almaviva, try Rodney Gilfrey's performance in this production under the direction of John Eliot Full of Himself Gardiner.)

As for the music, well, this is why I don't call this performance fantastic. Part of it is, I think, a technical issue. This performance was recorded live in front of an audience in 1981 and obviously transferred to DVD from tape. Unfortunately, the tape seems to have been of a rather poor quality - several times it sounds slurred, like the soundtrack from those educational films they used to make us watch in school. Furthermore, there are some sound balance issues: The Drottningholm Court Theatre Orchestra is one of the most aggressively period instrument groups out there and was even more so back in those days, meaning that its sound was very dry, very fast and very thin. A recording would have to have been just about perfect in order to catch all the subtlety and nuance in their performance and, as I say, the audio here couldn't quite keep up with them. (On the other hand, I used to have a studio recording they made of Cosi fan Tutte a few years later that was absolutely perfect.)

But part of the problem here seemed to be with the DCTO itself. Ostmann gallops through the score. While this is not, in and of itself, a bad thing, I think it sometimes gets to be too much for the ensemble: In a couple of places, they come wildly out of whack with the singers. (Of course, this might have been the singers' fault as well.) Most notable to me was the patter song passage in the middle of Dr. Bartolo's vendetta aria:

Se tutto il codice
dovessi volgere,
se tutto l'indice
dovessi leggere,
con un equivoco,
con un sinonimo
qualche garbuglio
si troverà.

(If I have to search
the whole legal code
If I must read through
the whole index
With an ambiguity,
With a synonym,
There will be some quibble
there to be found.)

At one point, it seems as if Dr. Bartolo is about half a measure ahead of the orchestra. The discrepency is painful enough that I wondered if it was deliberate.

Apart from the sound quality, though, the production is well done, with good camera work and clever staging. I would also note the excellent subtitles, which are far more faithful to the libretto than most I have seen.

On the whole, I'm not sure that I would actually buy this recording, but I would certainly rent it again. And if you're interested in getting a sense of what a performance of Le Nozze in Mozart's own time might have looked like, I'd definitely recommend seeing this one.