Mozart 22 Irrfahrten I: La finta semplice (2006– ) Online

I love opera, and my Mozart marathon gave me an opportunity to not only revisit the old favourites but also to make some discoveries. La Finta Semplice was one of those discoveries, Il Re Pastore was another, and La Finta Giardiniera I am looking forward to later today. Of the early operas, I find Il Re Pastore the more believable in story and the more beautiful in music, but La Finta Semplice has some pleasant comedy and shows some wonderful, lyrical music written when Mozart was very young(12 I believe?)

This 2007 production I couldn't help be disappointed by. It is not bad by all means, in fact it is interesting, but I was wondering whether it would have been more effective if done more traditionally. Now I am not one of those to immediately hate on a production with modern touches, some actually have worked, it is only when it is done in bad taste when I mind. This La Finta Semplice doesn't fall into the latter trap like 2005's Don Carlos, 2009's Tosca, 2007's Hansel and Gretel, 2003's Rigoletto and 1985's Faust did, but some things came across as somewhat questionable.

What I didn't like very much here were the costumes and some of the directorial touches. Starting with the costumes, the men aren't so bad, even if their costumes are somewhat reminiscent of karate suits, but the women in white tennis suits were terrible. The colour itself was fine, it was almost as if it was trying to signify purity and chastity, but the costumes just look very unflattering and this touch falls into danger of being on the misogynistic side of things.

The sets are not as bad, I did like the minimalist touch in a way, but they aren't exceptional either. Of the directorial touches, the only ones I didn't mind were the female narrator(minus the yellow tracksuit which didn't add anything) because the performance itself was so good and the love duet because it was so funny and beautifully performed. However, I found the red gooey paint touch very simplistic and unsubtle, the contorted arms and the aimless running and down the wings a little too silly and the nude dancer shadowing Hartelius incredibly distracting and almost inappropriate.

However, the DVD is technically great, with sharp picture quality, clear sound and interesting camera work. Mozart's music is beautiful, and rhythmically performed by the orchestra and enthusiastically conducted. I loved the cast, every single one of them are superb vocally, have a good sense of the bawdy comedy presented in the opera and have so much energy on stage, the best being Malin Hartelius and Josef Wagner, especially in their duet and in Hartelius's aria to the cupids. Hartelius has a beautiful voice and is a very committed actress, while Wagner's vocal production is rich and rhythmic.

Marianne Hamre is fantastic, she recites the German dialogue-replacing the cut recitatives which people find either characterful or dull, I tend to lean towards the former actually- perfectly with such life and she is striking on stage. Matthias Klink is dashing, with an agility and beautiful tone to his voice and good energy. Overall, not one of the best productions of any of Mozart's operas I've seen, but interesting enough. 6.5/10 Bethany Cox

Salzburg is currently doing all of Mozart's operas and opera fragments so, inevitably, the time came when they had to do La Finta Semplice written by Mozart when he was 12 years old. I have never seen this opera before but, being an opera seria, it presumably has acres of boring recitative between the solo arias. Salzburg choose to remove the recitatives altogether and replace them with a women in a yellow ski suit who tells you the story and moves the singers around the stage. This does not really work and the audience never really gets to grips with the complicated plot, based on a comedy by Carlo Goldoni. Apart from Ski Lady, the rest of the cast wear white, judo suits for the four men and unbecoming tulip-shaped dresses for the women. This makes the plot even more impenetrable since the characters seem more or less interchangeable. Modern sopranos and mezzos tend to be slim and attractive but the tulip dresses do them no favours in this production since it looks as though their buttocks have separate postcodes.

The overall effect is very alienating, as though we are watching a production of Così Fan Tutte rewritten by Bertold Brecht. The alienation is probably quite deliberate: short dumpy dark-haired Rosina stands before us as Ski Lady describes her as tall, slim and blonde. In fact there are two Rosinas, echoing Brecht and Weill's Seven Deadly Sins with a singing Rosina and a dancing Rosina.

It is difficult to judge the quality of Mozart's music given this setting. It is pleasantly tuneful but it does not seem to have any of the brilliance of his mature operatic works. There are occasional hints of what was to come, particularly in the arias of Rosina, the Finta Semplice. The best of these is Amoretti, a song to cupid's messengers. Sadly, while singing Rosina is performing this aria, dancing Rosina is getting her kit off so it is difficult to concentrate on the music.

Director Joachim Schlömer leaves no cliché unturned. All the characters carry around suitcases to indicate emotional baggage. I haven't seen that done since, oh, last week at a production of Ionesco's Macbett in Stratford and before that in a production of Das Rheingold at Bayreuth. As the action progresses, the white costumes start to turn red, a shoe here a glove there. I first saw this effect in a Martha Graham ballet and more recently in a production of Le Nozze di Figaro.

Singing Rosina is excellently sung by Malin Hartelius. I shall not mention the names of any of the other performers; I fear that they have suffered enough.