Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart full baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at 17 he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and the Requiem. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.

Mozart learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate—the whole informed by a vision of humanity "redeemed through art, forgiven, and reconciled with nature and the absolute." His influence on subsequent Western art music is profound. Beethoven wrote his own early compositions in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years."



From a casting point of view, Pynkoski scores a coup or two as well, with baritone Phillip Addis turning in a triumph as a youthful and overly-amorous Count Almaviva. He’s paired with equally strong soprano Peggy Kriha Dye, beautifully cast as his much put-upon consort, the Countess Rosina.

Meanwhile. mezzo Wallis Giunta brings a winsome charm and a fine set of pipes to the role of Cherubino — surely opera’s most abused and amusing pants’ role — while soprano Carla Huhtanen is equal parts charm and pragmatism in the role of Susanna, lady’s maid to the Countess and putative bride in the titular marriage to the Count’s manservant.

In a lovely bit of continuity, mezzo Laura Pudwell returns to the Marcellina role she essayed back in 1992 and makes it her own, while baritones Curtis Sullivan and Vasil Garvanliev, tenor Patrick Jang and soprano Cavell Wood tackle other supporting roles with equal success.

In the end, all that’s really missing in this version of the Marriage of Figaro is, sadly, a memorable Figaro. And although bass-baritone Olivier Laquerre gives it a game and often musical try, he ultimately proves to arch by half in the role of the conniving servant — who’s simply not smart enough to figure out he’s not as smart as he thinks he is.

For those who saw OA’s 1992 edition of the work, it’s a familiar problem — indicating, if nothing else, that Pynkoski is probably so busy having fun with the other characters, he doesn’t notice that his Figaro simply isn’t firing on all cylinders.

And you know, in this production, that just might happen to you too.


Tags: wolfgang amadeus mozart, mozart, chopin, handel, bitwa pod grunwaldem, i wojna światowa