I was looking at Mozart 225: The New Complete Edition [200 CD Box Set] and wondering if I had $346.49 to spare for it (I don't), then wondered how much it would cost just to get the complete operas of Mozart, and found, strangely enough, that you could get them on dvd cheaper than you can get them on cd. Quite a bit cheaper, actually: $140 for the cds, $79 for the dvds. What's up with that, I wonder?
I wanted to hit that buy button, but then I thought, "Am I really going to watch / listen to 23 operas, or is this just another example of me obsessing over something and then moving on to something else a couple of days later? So I decided to give myself a little test. I went to the LFPL home page and clicked on the Streaming Music button and so on until I was listening to Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots, Mozart's first opera (which some classify as an oratorio, but Charles Osborne says it's an opera, and that's good enough for me)--which WAM wrote when he was eleven years old. It's also available on The You Tub if you prefer that venue, but it's not a video, unfortunately.
Now I'm going to go listen to it.
1) 1767 Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebots, Part I The Obligation of the First and Foremost Commandment
available @ https://youtu.be/Zp-fHmuYJdo
This was such a lovely li'l opera (a mere 1:27:34 long) that it's hard to believe that an eleven year old kid wrote it. It also sounds very Mozart-y to me, though I don't know enough about music to tell you what that means. I listened to this through three times and it really made me want to see the characters acting out their parts. So that's one vote for the dvd package purchase. Onward!
ADDENDUM: Just learned that the reason it's referred to as Part I is because there were two other parts written by other composers-- Michael Haydn and Anton Cajan Adlgasser--which didn't survive. So I guess it wasn't a li'l opera after all. And in case you're wondering, Michael was the younger brother of Joseph Haydn, and Anton was the Organist at Salzburg Cathedral until Mozart succeeded him in 1777. And why did Mozart succeed his friend at this position? Because Anton had a stroke and died whilst playing the organ. Anton was also married three times, and the witness at his third wedding was Mozart's dad. There should be a movie about this guy!
2) 1767 Apollo et Hyacinthus
available @ https://youtu.be/-g7-7zPZDr0 -- but "all recitatives omitted," which is pretty fucking stupid. Fortunately the LFPL website lets you stream the whole thing, which is 1:24:29
And another opera from the eleven year old Mozart. According to Wikipedia, this is Mozart's first "true" opera, since Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots is a sacred drama. Fuuuuck. Anyway, I thought it was interesting that the libretto was written (by Refines Widl, who seems to be one of history's forgotten men judging by my brief attempts to find information on him on the internet) in Latin. Also interesting that the libretto is based on Metamorphoses by Ovid . . . which I think was the first published work by William Shake-speare. (Long story. Short version: Edward de Vere was the real writer, William Shake-speare was his pen name. A translation of Metamorphoses was published in 1567 by Arthur Golding, who was Edward de Vere's uncle. This translation is considered to be (1) Golding's greatest achievement, (2) unlike Golding's other works in style and tone, and (3) a huge influence upon the works of William Shake-speare . . . so huge that he often plagiarized it. Unless he didn't, of course.) By the way . . . whilst listening I was Googling around a bit (since I didn't have any opera characters to look at) and found several glowing reviews of the Complete Operas package . . . and also found it listed on another website for $179.99. And Amazon says it only has 4 left in stock. And I don't mean to panic you, but I'm pretty sure that it said 7 left in stock yesterday. And I just did the math on the running time, and it's a total of 47 hours. So that's $1.68 per hour if you watch it once. And that doesn't count the extra features. So basically Redbox prices even if you're a one time viewer. Hmmmm.
UPDATE: I couldn't take it anymore. After I finished listening to (and not watching) Apollo et Hyacinthus I went back to Amazon and did the deed. Used my gift certificate and my Amazon points and it ended up costing me less than $13. Anybody want to come over for a Mozart Opera Party?
UPDATE AND REBOOT: NOW IN BLUE.
What can I say? I have an addictive personality and I have serious problems with delaying my gratification. So when the Mozart: Complete Operas DVD | Box Set arrived yesterday I told myself that I would (1) first finish listening to the operas without visual accompaniment, and (2) wait until Jacqueline could sit down and watch with me. Well that lasted for less than 24 hours before I was sliding in Apollo et Hyacinthus--disc 1 of 33 ('cause some of the operas take up more than one disc).
I don't know what I was expecting, but at an average cost of $2.39 per disc / $3.43 per opera, I have to admit that I was not expecting anything lavish. But if this first opera is any indication, that's just what I am going to get. Erste, the costumes are pretty amazing . . . and I am not one to make a lot of fuss over costuming, regarding it as the lowest priority in opera stagings. But these were so outstanding that I couldn't help but notice. Very colorful, very elegant, and not at all simple. Zweite, I know this is not a particularly polite thing to point out, but . . . some of the women in this production were knockouts. If your image of an opera singer is an enormously fat woman with a horned helmet on her head, you are going to get a few shockers in this package. (And btw, there were so many good looking women in the orchestra that I really was not anxious for the overture to end. Seriously.) Dritte, the setting was quite striking. Not complicated and not too busy, but attractive and serviceable. And vividly colorful. Vierte, the voices were extraordinarily beautiful. Definitely not freshman students from the local opera class at the university. And fünfte, the orchestra was just amazing. The sound was so clean and so full . . . exactly the right balance with the voices, which I have seldom found to be true in the local operas, alas, wherein the orchestra is downright puny sounding at times.
So the verdict on Mozart's Apollo et Hyacinthus: Top notch stuff here. I would have been happy if I'd paid $20 for this opera alone, to be honest with you. And I will most definitely be watching it multiple times . . . and hopefully showing it to friends if they're willing and able.
And I enjoyed that so much that after I'd watched all the extra stuff I put the second disc in, and got a surprise: it was Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebots, which I thought that they had skipped. Since they didn't, I guess my chronology is screwed up and Apollo et Hyacinthus was actually Mozart's first opera. But no, both Wikipedia (meh) and the Köchel numbers (ah) say differently. So there it is.
Anyway . . . right out of the chute I was pretty sure that Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebots would live up to the high bar set by Apollo et Hyacinthus. For one thing, after the overture the curtains opened to reveal a set with huge commandment stones flanking a center picture of animals in a field. And venisoon after character began to appear in costumes that were truly hoot worthy. Not that they were irreverent or anything like that . . . in fact, just the opposite. But, for instance, a Moses-y looking character was played by a woman who I believe was of Asian heritage (it was a little hard to tell with the bushy white eyebrows and beard and mustache). The scenery was changed by characters dragging canvases across the middle portion of the set, which I though worked quite well.
3) 1768 Bastien und Bastienne
4) 1768 La finta semplice The Feigned Simpleton
5) 1770 Mitridate, re di Ponto Mithridates, King of Pontus
6) 1771 Ascanio in Alba Ascanius in Alba
7) 1772 Il sogno di Scipione Scipio's Dream
8) 1772 Lucio Silla Lucius Sulla
9) 1774 La finite giardiniera The Pretend Garden-Maid
10) 1775 Il re pastors The Shepherd King
11) 1773 and 1779 Thamos, König in Ägypten Thamos, King of
Egypt
12) 1779 Zaide Zaire
13) 1780–81 Idomeneo, re di Creta Idomeneus, King of Crete
14) 1782 Die Entführung aus dem Serail The Abduction from the
Seraglio
15) 1784 L'oca del Cairo The Goose of Cairo
16) 1784 Lo sops deluso The Deluded Bridegroom
17) 1786 Der Schauspieldirektor The Impresario
18) 1786 Le nozze di Figaro The Marriage of Figaro
19) 1787 Don Giovanni
20) 1790 Così fan tutti Women are Like That or All Women Do
That
21) 1790 Der Stein der Weisen The Philosopher's Stone
22) 1791 La clemenza di Tito The Clemency of Titus
23) 1791 Die Zauberflöte The Magic Flute
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