1. For his last opera, La clemenza di Tito, Mozart composed brilliant music. The controversial Swiss director Milo Rau, who likes to reduce canonical theater texts to a stub, chooses to leave Mozart’s notes untouched in his opera debut at the Opera Vlaanderen.
2. Mozart’s music is vibrant and alive at Opera Vlaanderen, where this production can be seen live for the first time, after the online premiere in 2021 from Geneva. Musical director Alejo Pérez makes the orchestra and choir shine, does not shy away from highlighting abrasive dissonances and above all: he carries his singers.
3. Mezzo Anna Goryachova is great as Sesto, the man who, out of love for the power-hungry Vitellia, is willing to kill his friend, Emperor Tito. With her deep-dark contralto register, Goryachova gives you goosebumps, her sparkling coloratura extends far beyond the show. Her Sesto, with its fragile, torn masculinity, is magnificent.
4. But the other roles are also wonderfully cast: soprano Anna Malesza-Kutny as Vitellia, desperately humane even in her heartfelt heart; tenor Jeremy Ovenden as Titus: a generous alpha male who embraces revolution to maintain power. The Dutch mezzo Maria Warenberg impresses as Annio.
5. Mozart wrote his opera for the coronation (1791) of Leopold II, who presented himself as an enlightened ruler. To meet this self-delusion, Mozart uses the story of the forgiving Roman emperor Titus. Milo Rau – who lives for shattering power dynamics – then asks the question: is Titus really that noble? He situates the story in the art world: Tito is a star artist at Rau who ‘plays’ his commitment to maintain his position. And then asks himself the question: As a director, don’t I do exactly the same? Am I not monetizing my commitment with this production? In this way, the Roman story, Mozart’s revolutionary time and 2023 constantly merge, while yellow vests and paramilitaries run rampant on stage and ominous images from the margins (filmed in the wings) appear on the screen.
6. The richness of images in the performance is overwhelming. Art and reality swirl grimly around each other, straight through burning Rome, the modern art world and the IS caliphate. Almost every scene ends with an iconic image that is staged as a tableau vivant, as Rau previously did with The Lamb of God. This time they are images of revolution, such as Honecker and Brezhnev’s kiss and The death of Marat that arise on stage.
7. As artistic director of NTGent (2017-2023), Rau published a ten-point manifesto about the future of the theater. With his innovative documentary theater, which is also regularly shown in the Netherlands, he wants to bring the ‘real’ world onto the stage by letting ‘ordinary’ people participate. That can be a gimmick, but it works here. Rau shows the outside world in all its horror, beauty and power. Some extras are visibly moved when their mini-documentaries appear on the screen, while the leading actors sing their arias with dedication.
8. Rau has expressed suspicion of ‘professionalism’ in the past (because ‘bourgeois’) and the opera business is the most professionalized of all the arts. But even though the hyper-trained singers share the stage with ‘ordinary’ people, it is done with admiration and mutual respect. The love shines through.
9. In any case, Rau does not feel too big to sin against his manifesto. See point 8: this beautiful turntable decor, a Janus’s head of art studio and destroyed city, will never fit in a van. For someone who constantly insists on collectivity, diversity and the ‘real world’, it is striking how much Milo Rau productions are about Milo Rau. The form of this review is also about Rau. But Rau sees through this and counters it with a performance that far transcends him.
10. Why do I have to see this? The chilling executions? A child gently shaking her mother’s corpse and then crawling against it? Where’s the pseudo-Roman parlor intrigue I paid for? The revolution and the dying remained on the cold side of the gate, didn’t they? Yes, it’s raw. But this is theater, and theater is a magical machine, where reality is bigger than it seems. The heart that is cut from the chest of ‘the last Antwerp inhabitant’ at the beginning is passed from hand to hand, and it continues to beat.