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Mozart’s Forgotten Little Opera New York
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
07/25/2025 - & July 26*, 2025
Michael Abels: More Seasons
Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 33 in B Flat Major, K. 319: 1. Allegro assai – Zaide, K. 336b [344]: Act I
Erika Baikoff (Soprano), Eric Ferring (Tenor), Ben Strong (Bass-baritone), Denyce Graves (Narrator), Sterling Elliott (Cellist)
Summer for the City Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, Dame Jane Glover (Conductor)
M. Abels/J. Glover (© Eric Schwabel/John Batten)
“Rococo composers wanted to convey the lightness of heart and simplicity of emotional states, by focusing the artistic expression on a single effect, as opposed to conflating multiple disparate emotional states as a counterpoint to themselves.”
Anonymous, “Pianos-Luxury.com”
“I’m a Baroque person. More than Baroque, I’m a Rococo person. I don’t draw straight lines.”
Nuno Roque
The word “swoon” hasn’t been printed since Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. So let me break the mold. The first time I heard “Ruhe sanft” from Mozart’s Zaide, I swooned. The artists were Sir Colin Davis and Kiri Te Kanawa, but they could have been Spike Jones and Fats Waller. The music, with its viola pizzicato opening and its gentle sweeping lines, is one of Mozart’s lesser known but still most glorious creations.
That aria was near beginning of Zaide, and Jane Glover played the whole first act of the opera last night. Those who hadn’t heard it before might not have swooned for the arias in this Singspiel come nowhere near the heroine’s love song, but they sufficed for a work which Mozart forgot.
Zaide does have its incredible technical faults. Starting with the “plot”. A prisoner of a Sultan wakes up to see on his bed the portrait of a woman and falls in love. (This predates Photoshop by a few centuries, so the portrait must be authentic.) The woman, Zaide herself, wakes him up and they decide to escape together and live life forever in love.
That’s Act I. Act II is more complicated–and Act III was never composed. Mozart must have realized that, even for a light “song‑speak” piece, the story was ridiculous.
Added to that, he never wrote an overture. Usually, said Dame Jane, a Mozart symphonic movement is added, and here the chamber Summer for the City Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center played the opening of the cheerful, witty 33rd. A nice piece of fluff for a rather fluffy little operetta.
Since this concert was for a supposedly lovely summer (forget the floods and heat), Zaide fit the bill. The Russian-American soprano Erika Baikoff has a captivating voice, and the top range was wonderful. Where Kiri Te Kanawa made this aria effortless, Ms. Baikoff made the octave jump gymnastic, but it was still effective.
Tenor Eric Ferring did his best with the not very outstanding love arias, and the words to the piece were spoken with dramatic (and humorous) juice by (the usually mezzo‑soprano) Denyce Graves.
Except for that one aria, Zaide’s first act never soared. (I would have preferred Adam de la Halle’s Robin and Marion!) But Dame Jane was effective, and the end gave an Arcadian litheness.
Preceding that was another light piece from another era. Rather, two eras. Tchaikovsky created an original theme, supposedly from that era between Bach and Mozart, and probably amused himself with his eight variations. The variations were difficult for the soloist obviously, but Sterling Elliott made it sound anything but Herculean.
Playing almost continuously for nearly ten minutes, he has a light‑fingered touch, a lightweight sound, and an assuredness which allowed the whole work an ebullience.
The title of the concert was “Timeless Transformations,” and Michael Abels led off the music with his take on Vivaldi’s Seasons. Of course, he had lots of competition here, mainly Max Richter’s fabulous Four Seasons, as well as the Lukas Foss Baroque Variations. But Mr. Abels–whose music for Jordan Peele’s Get Out was as scary as the movie itself–did a good job of it.
Rather, using themes from Vivaldi, Mr. Abels created an intricate contrapuntal tapestry showing a mastery of his craft. I didn’t get excited by the music itself. Until the end, it was wondrous weaving, a mass of canons, fugues, themes and variations. But as an essay in excellent studious writing, it could be studied in any advanced composition class.
Nothing yet has been said about the great British conductor, Dame Jane Glover. Perhaps because her control and her precision were both so perfect, rather than any conductorial idiosyncrasies, one remembered the music.
Harry Rolnick
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