About the Production
Unaware of the threats surrounding him, the Roman emperor Tito tries to live up to his office as well as his own standards.
Tito exercises magnanimity: he forgives his opponents and donates the money intended for the construction of a temple in his honor to the victims of the last eruption of Vesuvius. He also releases Servilia, whom he wanted to marry for reasons of raison d'état, when her lover Annio asks him to do so. But he is not armed against the secret wrath of Vitellia, who claims him and the co-regency for herself and incites his friend Sesto to murder and riot. The Capitol is already in flames. When Sesto confesses to being the instigator of the uprising, Tito is faced with the decision of signing the Senate's death warrant or allowing the proverbial leniency to prevail.
In accordance with the composition commission and the original, a libretto by Pietro Metastasio, Mozart took a look back at opera seria with La clemenza di Tito . However, by working with a version by the Dresden court poet Caterino Mazzolà that was "reduced to a true opera" according to his catalog of works, the composer had a more compact version at his disposal that was more accommodating to the musical dynamics: only seven of the original 25 arias were retained, four with new text were added.
Even within the "strict form" praised at the time of composition, Mozart achieves moving moments such as the duet no. 7 (Annio and Servilia), while the quintet for the finale of the first act is an exciting action finale that goes beyond the older opera seria and is even reminiscent of the finales of Da Ponte's operas. Also noteworthy are the arias with obbligato clarinet and bass horn solo (No. 9, Sesto and No. 23, Vitellia), which Mozart wrote for his friend and lodge brother Anton Stadler, a virtuoso on both instruments.
The Bohemian Estates had commissioned the work as a coronation opera to mark the coronation of Emperor Leopold II - a coronation that Joseph II had still refused. La Clemenza di Tito was also intended by the Estates, dominated by the clergy and nobility, as an appeal to Leopold's leniency in the sense that they hoped Joseph II's centralist reforms would be reversed in favor of regional privileges. A hope that was disappointed.
In contrast to Metastasio's version, the opera by the freemason Mozart, which was premiered in the face of the French Revolution, is striking in that the ruler's clemency is no longer explained by his divine right, but by his own moral convictions.
