Mozart, You Drive Me Crazy!
Arias from Don Giovanni, Cosí fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro
Golda Schultz (soprano); Kammerakademie Potsdam/ Antonello Manacorda
Alpha Classics ALPHA1026 59:15 mins
It’s a brave young singer who tackles Mozart’s women from the three da Ponte operas, but then the South African soprano Golda Schultz showed herself fearless performing a new version of Jerusalem at the Last Night of the BBC Proms in 2020.
Schultz’s voice is large, secure and as sharp as a combat knife – indeed, in attack she takes no prisoners.
Her ‘Or sai chi l’onore’ reveals a no-nonsense Donna Anna, bright in tone with crystal clear diction, who wants Don Giovanni’s head on a plate – now. Then she sweetens the tone for Susannah’s ‘Deh vieni, non tardar’ for a young woman bewitched by love and the mischief of a summer’s night. Schultz’s Fiordiligi is as a firm as a tempeststruck rock in ‘Come scoglio’, with precipitous octave drops and a handsome chest register when she reaches the bottom.
Then the doubts begin. ‘Mi tradi’ is an express train about to jump the tracks, with a Donna Elvira who is not quite divided against herself – hellbent on revenge but obsessed with Giovanni. And the Countess Almaviva we meet in ‘Dove sono’ is almost self-pitying – scarcely the aristocrat who has painfully acquired an understanding of herself through her servants.
The balance between singers – including a supporting cast that includes an appealing Don Alfonso and a sharp-edged Despina – and the Kammerakademie Potsdam, playing on original instruments, is sometimes unsettling, with a wayward clarinet cutting across the proceedings and distant horns that have disappeared into the countryside. If Antonello Manacorda’s dynamics are awry, his tempos are sometimes rushed. It’s as if he couldn’t wait for the curtain to fall on the Finale of Figaro. Christopher Cook
PERFORMANCE
RECORDING