Thursday’s noon hour in the concert was a really great idea; combine the COC Ensemble Studio with the COC Orchestra for an all Mozart concert.  Mozart’s Symphony No.35 in D major (Hafner) was split into into its four movements with pairs of arias inserted between the movements to create what Johannes Debus, conducting, described as an opéra imaginaire.  It worked really well.

The symphony brought ou the best in the orchestra and while it was quite loud in the small space of the RBA it was by no means overwhelming.  Similarly balance between singers and orchestra was excellent.  Better, in fact, than it sometimes is with piano!

And so to the arias.  First up was Emily Rocha with “Deh vieni, non tardar”.  She sang with beautiful rich tone and just sounded gorgeous.  Angelo Moretti’s “Il mio tesoro” was dramatic and characteristically Italianate.  Good Stuff.

The second set saw Emma Pennell sing “or sai chi l’onore” with considerable power and very clean top notes with no hint of squalliness.  That’s something not every soprano can achieve in that space.  Then Ben Wallace sang “Rivolgete a lui lo sguardo”.  What’s that you say?  Well it’s an aria, intended for Guglielmo, that didn’t make it into Così fan tutte in the end.  It includes the couplets:

Se si parla poi di merto
Certo io sono e egli è certo
Che gli uguali non si trovano
Da Vienna al Canadà,

Which is likely the first reference to Canada in an opera and certainly predates Rossini’s La cambiale di matrimonio.  Let’s just say that Ben had a lot of fun with it.

The third set featured a well characterised version of “Non più andrai” from Nick Murphy and a dramatic and accurate “Parto, parto”, with some rather good coloratura from Ariana Maubach.

Definitely an experiment worth repeating!

Photo credit: Karen E. Reeves