M22

All the Salzburg M22 productions were outrageous. "Over the top!" Intended, of course, to be fresh and challenging as theater, while maintaining the highest musical standards. Many of them failed, to my eyes/ears anyway, at one goal or the other, and several failed at both. I believe American audiences had more objections to them than European, and I know why: many European opera lovers, with far more opportunities to attend productions, would have seen and heard more conventional stagings. They would have a stock of memories of the action, the scene, etc. For them, this staging of "La Finta Gardiniera" and even more so the stagings of the later Mozart masterpieces would have seemed a fresh variation on the familiar, an extension of the possibilities of the opera… By Giordano Bruno

What is performed on stage is Mozart's opera "La Finta Semplice", taped in Salzburg in 2006 and composed when young Wolfgang was only 12. The DVD is part of the "M22" collection of all Mozart operas on DVD.
By Autonome