Vienna Festival Weeks

Three particularly bland hours of Mozart destruction

Mozart as Milo Rau sees him.(Bild: Wiener festwochen/Nurith Wagner Strauss)

Festival director Milo Rau set out with his first opera production to "destroy the elitist self-image of opera". He succeeded in doing so with "La clemenza di Tito". Much to the displeasure of the audience.  

He comes across like a messiah in the ranks of brisk opera demolishers: Milo Rau (47), Swiss theater director, smart revolutionary professional and director of the "Free Republic" of the Vienna Festival, which he proclaimed, dared to tackle an opera for the first time in Geneva in 2021: "La clemenza di Tito", Mozart's coronation opera for Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia.

Due to coronavirus, the "Tito" premiere was streamed. Rau has now adapted the production for Vienna. With the aim of "destroying the elitist self-image of opera", as he proclaims his message in the program booklet. As an "opera demolisher", he goes to great lengths. The noble Enlightenment story of the emperor's clemency is brought into the present day. A crash landing in every respect. Nobility is merely a means of brutally maintaining power.

"La clemenza di Tito" as a trash story in the trailer park(Bild: Wiener festwochen/Nurith Wagner Strauss)

Full of kitschy sentimentality, it tells how 19 refugees living in Vienna feel, then a story about Mr. Kowalek, the "last Viennese", who is killed. He rambles on about xenophobia in the trailer park ghetto. Corpses dangle under a shed in the refugee camp (stage: Anton Lukas). The finale of Act 1, the spectacular Capitol fire - with Donald Trump association! - becomes a ridiculous mini-fire in a dustbin. Cheap, banal, helpless, as Rau interprets Mozart "topical, contemporary, critical".

Musically, the Camerata Salzburg under Thomas Hengelbrock (with the sole exception of the Schoenberg Choir) is at provincial theater level. Jeremy Ovenden is a vocally pale, boring Titus; his aria "Se all'impero" is disappointing. Anna Goryachova (Sesto), Anna Malesza-Kutny (Vitellia) and Maria Warenberg (Annio) are lackluster. At least Sarah Yang (Servilia) was reliable. Outraged booing. A throwaway production!