No apology needs to be made for the eighteen-year-old Mozart's La finta giardiniera. A dramma giocoso like Don Giovanni, it finds the composer already experimenting with a genre of mixed character; the piece runs the gamut of styles from a striking mad scene (reminiscent of opera seria) to moments of all-out humour (the legacy of opera buffa, the comic genre from which dramma giocoso is derived). There are two particularly extraordinary sections to the score: Sandrina's two-part aria-cavatina 'Crudeli, fermate crudeli' and the four-movement septet finale of the second act. The former shows that Mozart could already write an aria of sinister darkness (it depicts the heroine lost in the dark) while the latter demonstrates his ability to handle a large-scale, multi-part finale, over a decade ahead of the complex finales from the more famous Da Ponte operas. La finta giardiniera is a hugely charming piece whose brilliance has yet to be recognised.
But this new DVD of the opera is more likely to turn off a whole generation of opera goers than make them aware of its strengths. Last year, Salzburg played host to productions of all twenty-two of Mozart's operas, and Deutsche Grammophon decided with admirable determination to film them all for release on DVD, of which this Finta is one example. Yet it was inevitable that there would be a variety in the quality of the performances and productions, and I don't really feel that this one deserved to be filmed (though the musical performance is very fine indeed).
Doris Dörrie evidently felt that Giuseppe Petrosellini's libretto was staid and decided to replace the story that Mozart set to music with one of the most execrable production concepts I have ever experienced. Rather than setting the piece in the garden of the Mayor of Lagnero, Dörrie transports the action to the garden centre section of a DIY superstore. In so doing, the classical outdoor setting becomes one of artifice; and Mozart's evocation of nature jars in this plasticised setting. Dancers prance on dressed as giant pansies; a Venus flytrap half-eats Count Belfiore, who emerges with his arm in a sling and covered in blood; when Sandrina (the 'false garden girl' of the title, who is really Countess Violante in disguise) is hidden in a dark place by Arminda, she finds herself on the shop floor and is terrorised by an animated giant tarantula.
That the concept doesn't work is made blatantly obvious in the first-act finale when Don Anchise the mayor refers to the Count's treatment of him with the words 'Here, mocked and betrayed, is a famous man, a Podestŕ [mayor]'. This sentence makes absolutely no sense in Dörrie's production, where Don Anchise is the branch manager of the garden centre - why would he refer to himself as a mayor and as 'a famous man'? I simply could not get to grips with a production that goes out of its way to be as nonsensical as possible.
Had this been a simple CD recording, the story would have been different. Ivor Bolton conducts the Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg with admirable attention both to period performance practices (he uses almost no vibrato in the strings, for instance) and the needs of the drama. The cast is undistinguished but largely very good, with John Mark Ainsley a firm-toned Belfiore, Ruxandra Donose lively in the trouser role of Ramiro and Véronique Gens showing versatility and sensational legato singing as Arminda. The stand-out performance for me is Adriana Ku?erová as Serpetta: she manages to rise above the deplorable production and sing with flair, revealing this character to be a Despina-in-waiting. Alexandra Reinprecht, however, is hugely disappointing as Sandrina/Violante, her harsh vibrato very ill-suited to Mozart.
The DVD is worth exploring as a way of becoming acquainted with a fascinating score - but you might want to keep your eyes shut.