You’d think Mozart and Conlon would be a winning combo. You’d be right. 'But winning combos don’t fill seats, especially when an unfamiliar piece is on the marquee,' writes music critic Hannah Edgar.
A decade ago, when James Conlon led his “Mozart in the Martin” series as Ravinia music director, those concert operas — performed by the choicest international stage talent and the Chicago Symphony — sold out the 850-seat Martin Theatre every night.You’d think Mozart and Conlon, who has been warmly received here since stepping down in 2015, would be a winning combo. You’d be right. But winning combos don’t fill seats, especially when an unfamiliar piece is on the marquee.
Imagining Mozart toggling to the austere “Tito” from his effervescent “Magic Flute” is enough to induce secondhand whiplash. Given the work’s uncharacteristically mixed reception, it’s quite likely Mozart felt the tweak, too. “Tito” sometimes sounds as if Mozart himself isn’t convinced by Metastasio’s musty libretto .
Polenzani was the exception, his stentorian voice often conspicuously so. At first, that brashness typified the one-dimensional “enlightened despot” trope that “Tito” audiences have found stale for centuries. D’Angelo was no such slow burn, her Sesto streaking out of the gates as a production highlight and staying there. Her buttery voice thrilled in every register; if its lower reaches were autumnal, they were a New England autumn, blazing with tempera-bright intensity.Yu was also uniquely convincing as the object of Sesto’s affections. In a sea of witchlike Vitellias, Yu made her believably lovable — in other words, almost worth committing aggravated arson for.
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