Page 97 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book

12 November 2019

La Fedeltà Premiata (Fidelity

Rewarded)

Tim Hochstrasser

Guildhall School, Silk Street Theatre

4.0REVIEWER'S RATING
Haydn’s operas rarely get the outings they deserve, and the responsibility for that lies
(unintentionally) with Mozart. So much that we take for granted in the four Da Ponte operas
is already visible in Haydn’s work; but because these earlier inspirations for the younger
composer do not reach the same level of sustained creative intensity and structural
innovation they are often passed over. For a better understanding of both composers this
neglect really should be put right and this particular production makes the best case possible
for a work that was first performed only four years before ‘Figaro’.

Part of the problem was that Haydn wrote these works without expecting to hear them again
– they were part of his endeavours on behalf of the Esterházy family and not commercial
ventures. Therefore, though they are teeming with orchestral and vocal invention they were
never subject to the refining process of revision that tempered other contemporary operatic
composers such as Gluck and Mozart himself. This means that while there is one enchanting
episode after another, rarely are they more than the sum of their glittering parts.