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Ascanio in Alba

Published Monday 1 August 2005 at 15:25 by David Blewitt

Commissioned to create an occasional piece for the wedding, in 1771, of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria to Princess Maria Beatrice of Modena, the 15-year-old Mozart came up with Ascanio in Alba. It is, to be frank, a crasher.

The librettist Parini lumbers the teenage composer with an oratorio, whose sole idea is that Venus delays her son Ascanio’s marriage to Silvia to test the latter’s fidelity. Fauno, a tutor, and Aceste, a priest, collude. At over two hours, that is one hell of a delay.

Despite instrumental felicities, Mozart’s score mostly comprises ternary arias in four-four time trundling along above churning accompaniments. The occasional digression into three-four brings blissful relief. Ritornellos dog every aria and there are swathes of accompanied recit.

Only Silvia’s music rises above the routine, provides intimations of Mozart’s later masterpieces, notably when she sings of “endless sorrow” in her Act II scene. Gillian Keith delivers it with an easeful grace, indeed sings throughout with a peerless musicality, spinning a limpid legato which ravishes the senses.

She is well matched by her fellow artists. Tom Randle’s Aceste is a likeable bumbler, Lynda Russell an endearingly blowsy, slightly slewed Venus. William Purefoy’s Ascanio graduates touchingly from gauche teenage scholar to impassioned lover, the while deploying a strikingly pure, finely projected countertenor.

Harry Christophers conducts a crisp reading characterised by well integrated tempos and textual clarity, while Stephen Lawless brings an imaginative flair to the staging, which only occasionally betrays the effort expended in filling a vacuum with drama.

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