Mozart’s Mitridate, re di Ponto is definitely one of his less often performed works even though it’s astonishingly accomplished for a fourteen year old composer. One can see why. It adheres very faithfully to the opera seria model. Far more so than, say, La clemenza di Tito. The libretto is based on a play by Racine which, frankly, lacks dramatic interest and has a contrived ending. The opera wraps all the loose ends up in about three minutes. Structurally da capo aria follows recitative follows da capo aria with little variation and the arias all adhere pretty rigidly to the formal range of baroque emotions. That said there is some spectacular vocal writing; both lyrical and dramatic, which allows the singers to fully display their skills.
The new recording of Handel’s Alcina from Marc Minkowski, Les musiciens du Louvre and a rather starry line up of soloists is very good and quite interesting. It’s very complete. As far as I can tell all the ballet/dance music is included and so are all the Oberto scenes and all his arias. In all the staged performances I’ve seen (live or video) one or both are usually heavily truncated and I have seen versions where Oberto doesn’t feature at all.
operaramblings 