What looks at first glance to be a conventional showcase for the outstanding German baritone Christian Gerhaher, built around arias from Mozart’s three Da Ponte operas, turns out to be rather more ambitious and harder to fathom. Gerhaher has devised the running order of the 19 tracks himself – the recordings were evidently made at concerts in Freiburg in January, though applause and audience noise have been eliminated to produce what the sleeve notes suggest is a kind of Mozart pasticcio, which makes connections between material from different operas, as well as finding a dramatic shape and purpose for the whole sequence.
A group from Don Giovanni starts things off – Leporello’s Catalogue Aria, followed by Giovanni’s Serenade and Champagne Aria; then extracts from Figaro, Così fan Tutte and Don Giovanni again, before the emphasis changes completely for Papageno’s three numbers from Die Zauberflöte. There’s a more substantial Figaro group, and finally two more of Guglielmo’s arias from Così. Interwoven with those vocal items are the four movements from Mozart’s C major Linz Symphony K425, played with stylish energy by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under Gottfried von der Goltz, beginning with the presto finale, which follows after the Champagne Aria, and ending with the opening allegro, which separates the final pair of Così extracts.
While I’m not convinced that I grasp the dramatic integrity of Gerhaher’s concept, he is too fine and intelligent an artist for the whole idea to be dismissed as a whim, and whatever the rationale behind the album, there’s no denying that much of his singing here is very fine. With Avi Avital drafted in as mandolinist for the Don’s Serenade, and Kristian Bezuidenhout playing the keyboard glockenspiel in Papageno’s Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen, no expense has been spared. Gerhaher is more convincing as a patrician in these arias than as a servant, more suavely believable as Don Giovanni than Leporello, more comfortable as Count Almaviva than as a slightly hectoring Figaro, but he makes an endearing Papageno, without too much trace of caricature. However it all came about, it’s a thoroughly rewarding collection.
