When women wear the trousers for Mozart
At the last minute, I gave a spare opera ticket to a friend who had little chance to understand what she was about to see.
During the interval, she said that she'd spent the whole of the first act trying to make sense of 'an operatic riot of lesbian passion'.
There is, of course, no lesbianism in Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito, but there are two central travesti roles, Sesto and Annio - a travesti role being a male role sung by a woman, sometimes referred to as a 'pants' or 'trouser' role.
The Sapphic impression was highlighted by the main female role, Vitellia, being played by a crop-haired Emma Bell in a billowing black dress. Her pragmatic seduction of Sarah Connolly's Sesto, as a way of encouraging him to assassinate the faithless emperor, crackled with the static of lust and revenge.
David McVicar's production for the English National Opera (ENO) at London's Coliseum highlights the personal and the erotic, and draws from Bell and Connolly performances of a lifetime.
If confirmation were ever needed that operatic artifice is an effective conveyor of high emotion, then Bell and Connolly provide it in their high-octane arias and duets.
Connolly's scene with the Emperor Titus in Act Two was another highlight, gloriously Shakespearian in its gender-bending with moments of homo-erotic tenderness between the two 'male' friends, before Titus - obliged by Sesto's confession as his would-be assassin - pronounces the death sentence on him.
La Clemenza di Tito is one of Mozart's less-performed operas, composed towards the end of his life. It was written in a hurry for the Prague coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia, and for the much-needed money that the commission brought with it. Much of the simpler recitative is thought to have been written by an associate.
Unlike the glittering Da Ponte librettos of Mozart's great comic operas, La Clemenza was an adaptation by Mazzola of a rather stolid, worthy libretto by Metastasio.
The opera's title gives away the denouement of the plot before a note is even sung - 'Tito's Clemency' is about a Roman emperor who forgives his closest friend for trying to assassinate him and allows his chosen bride to break off their engagement after she reveals that she loves another.
Paul Nilon as the emperor didn't convey the gravitas that should have given these acts of forgiveness an aura of strength rather than weakness. Surrounded by pole-wielding guards dressed like judo instructors, his movements were hampered in the final climactic scenes by a costume that trailed the length of the stage and rose up to wreath him in masses of matt gold material.
It was a night for the women, with Bell and Connolly giving unforgettable performances and a gloriously vibrant ENO debut by German conductor Roland Boer.
