Thamos

Under the title Gli impresari, The Impresarios – i.e. the directors of the theatre troupes that Nikolaus I, Prince Esterházy engaged to perform in his opera houses – this CD gathers together some of the orchestral works by Joseph Haydn linked by their origin and their reception; they were originally conceived as theatre music, before their metamorphosis into symphonies(…). The period from 1772 onwards, when Karl Wahr was responsible for for the summer theatre programme at Esterháza, saw the peak of the multidisciplinary collaboration taking place between the court music directed by Haydn and companies engaged from outside. (…) At the end of 1775 and the beginning of 1776, while Joseph Haydn was occupied in transforming his music for Collé’s comedy into a symphony for concert performance, Karl Wahr was enjoying enormous success with his theatrical entertainments in the ballroom at the theatre in Salzburg. It was there, on 3 January 1776, that Thamos, King of Egypt was staged, a heroic drama whose choruses, musicologists now believe, were composed by none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; for this Salzburg performance he also composed four instrumental entractes (recorded for this disc) as well as a melodrama and a Don Giovanni-esque descent into hell.

1773 was a key year for orchestral music. Mozart composed his “little G minor Symphony”, no.25, and began work on the music for the play Thamos, König in Ägypten. In Paris, Grétry perfected the opéra-comique, a genre combining the light and the serious, and completely renewed the musical drama. Is it a mere coincidence that their compositions of that year show the same intensity and dramatic efficacy?

Between Die Entführung aus dem Serail and the advent of the famous ‘Da Ponte trilogy’, Mozart threw himself frantically into the search for the right libretto, capable of taking the spectator to lands still unexplored where the drama and the psychology of the characters would be sublimated by the music. Hence, in the years between 1782 and 1786, he set up a veritable laboratory for dramatic music: a musical corpus of concert arias, sketches, and stylistic exercises like the canon – here brilliantly organised as an imaginary dramma giocoso in three scenes, each heralding in its own way one of the summits to come: Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così.

Mozart: The Weber Sisters - Sabine Devieilhe, Raphaël Pichon, Pygmalion (2015) {Erato-Warner Classics 0825646075843}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 344 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 171 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg+pdf) -> 27 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2015 Erato / Parlophone / Warner Classics | 0825646075843
Classical / Vocal Music

The story of how Mozart fell in love with the young singer Aloysia Weber, was dumped, and then married her younger sister Constanze is well known. The fact that a third sister, Josepha, figured in Mozart's career (and that the youngest sister, Sophia, remembered Mozart from her childhood) is less commonly appreciated. French soprano Sabine Devieilhe steps into the roles of Aloysia, Constanze, and Josepha here, making clear that all three must have been among the strongest sopranos of their time. She doesn't really try to differentiate among the voices of the three (which are at any rate unknowable), but all of them got powerhouse arias.