The sublime ending to Mozart's Marriage of Figaro usually comes at the end of a four-hour-plus journey that, in the final stretch, includes some tiresome arias for minor characters. But is that finale any less powerful when unearned — after a mere 90 minutes in The Illuminated Heart? The semi-staged evening of arias that opened the Mostly Mozart Festival on Monday had a bevy of star singers, video imagery by Netia Jones and Mozart opera moments when the characters reveal who they are — as opposed to just reacting to their current predicament. And yes, the Figaro finale was as heart melting as ever.
No worries, either, that the Mostly Mozart Festival is taking a trivial turn with shorter, tidier versions of its namesake's great operas. The festival will present fully unfurled versions of Così fan tutte and Idomeneo later this season. Though I can't say The Illuminated Heart delivered any grand revelations, the succession of vocal performances had a fun, healthy competitive edge that might not have been there with the story-telling responsibilities of a full production.
The stage setting sketched out just enough context for each aria: Costumes were often generic 18th-century garb to convey each character's social status. Video imagery, ranging from nautical maps for Idomeneo excerpts to lightly-clouded skies for Così fan tutte, was there if you wanted it but never imposed itself on music or audience. There were some staging ideas: Following the quartet from Idomeneo, Christine Goerke lurked around at the corner of the stage while Christopher Maltman sang Don Giovanni's Champagne Aria, but she then burst back into the foreground with Elettra's mad scene from Idomeneo — amid video imagery that tended to dissolve the stage doors and thus resemble a padded cell. Nice!
"How did they get all of these singers?" asked one friend walking into David Geffen Hall. Following The Marriage of Figaro overture, the lineup, in addition to Goerke and Maltman, included Kiera Duffy, Ana María Martínez, Nadine Sierra, Marianne Crebassa, Daniela Mack, Matthew Polenzani and Peter Mattei, who no doubt knew their arias already and could accommodate the project's short time commitment (just two performances, the second at 7:30 pm, Tuesday). Why wouldn't Maltman want to show off his range from Papageno in The Magic Flute to the title role of Don Giovanni? Though one assumes that Goerke has been lost to Wagner and Strauss in recent years, the role of Elettra is still very much in her wheel house.
The competitive quality didn't come from machine-gun coloratura so much as in extremes of sensitivity, often in da capo sections, reprising music with ever greater depth of feeling. Particularly winning was Sierra's heart-stopping cadenza in "Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben" from Zaide and the deeply felt middle section of Polenzani's reading of "Dalla sua pace" from Don Giovanni. You couldn't even be cross with the audience for applauding prematurely here and there. At the other end of the spectrum, Martínez's reading of "Mi tradi" from Don Giovanni was so emphatic as to seem like a forerunning to Beethoven's "Komm Hoffnung" in Fidelio.
Director and designer Jones gained a huge amount of good will from her Curlew River production presented two years back by Lincoln Center, and gained more with this piece. She arranged arias with a good sense for both building and contrasting emotional temperature, from Mozart at his most serene to crises in the extreme. It would be nice to report that a key signature scheme was also at work, but a spot check of the aria sequence didn't reveal one. But Mozart's characteristically circumscribed set of key choices meant that there was still an illusion of inner coherence.
Positioning the Mostly Mozart Orchestra in front, orchestra-pit style, had singers positioned deep into the stage — not an optimum arrangement that initially had singers delivering a kind of projection not well suited to the intimate nature of the arias. However, everybody seemed to settle into the situation within a few selections, aided by conductor Louis Langree's incredibly attentive accompaniment in which every stroke of orchestral characterization created a detailed frame for the voice. Maybe those frames had a few nicks and chips — a nice way of saying the orchestra was in somewhat rusty form — but the extra bite heard from the winds and brass meant that the players never lapsed into generic Mozartean mellifluousness.