Gratuitous Musickal Posting (TM)

Ran off my videotape of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro last evening. I've finally decided that the reason Don Giovanni just beats it out as the better opera is that the action especially in the last act of Le Nozze gets rayther muddled.

This particular performance is not a'tall bad. My only staging quibble is that it couldn't resist the urge to stick revolutionary overtones into the story (particularly with the peasant choir scenes, but also with Figaro's "Se Voi Ballare" aria). This is wrong. I can't speak for the original play by Beaumarchais, but Mozart, while a liberal, was no radical. The crisis of the piece is caused by Count Almaviva trying to undo the reforms he's established in order to bed Susanna, but from the beginning it's plain that the resolution called for is for him to return to his wife, not to lose his head.

Anyhoo, I throw out two musickal observations here just for the heck of it:

First, Barbarina's opening aria in Act IV is, musically, very close to the second movement of the Piano Concerto No. 18, except that it is in triple time instead of 2/4 (or whatever the piano piece is). I don't know why, but I find this rather delightful.

Second, the ballet danced by the Count and Contessa in Act III is a riff on music from Gluck's ballet Don Juan. I don't know what, if any, significance this has - Gluck was famous for his ballets, so perhaps it was a tribute - but in any event, the reference is unmistakable.

So there you have it. I may run off Cosi fan Tutte tonight.