Mitridate, re di Ponto, Garsington Opera review ★★★★★

Wolfgang Amadeus's answer was a six-hour extravaganza, albeit with ballet and some borrowed music. Despite its length, it ran for an impressive 21 performances. At Garsington Opera there are only six more chances to see Tim Albery’s new production of this revealing early work, trimmed to a more manageable two hours.

In Mitridate lie the seeds of the great operas to come. Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro did not spring fully formed from Mozart’s side. They came up the hard way, the composition of those complex arias and intricate ensembles learned from experience, albeit at a speed and to a level that none of us could achieve. Mitridate is a piece in the Mozart jigsaw, and as such belongs on any opera lovers to-do list.

Aspasia (Elizabeth Watts), in love with Sifare (Louise Kemény). Photo: Julian Guidera

The warrior king Mitridate of the title is believed dead at the start of the opera, his Pontus people at war with the Romans. He leaves adult sons, Farnace and Sifare, and was to marry again, with a younger bride, Aspasia. Both young men desire her, Farnace the more explicitly. Mitridate’s surprise return prompts a rapid reset, but the prospects of happy reunions all round aren’t good…

Mozart wrote the brothers’ parts for male castrati, one a soprano. In this golden age for counter-tenors, Iestyn Davies sings deliciously dastardly and petulant Farnace, with soprano Louise Kemény steady and noble as Sifare. Davies, consistently musical, expressive and characterful, turns louche Farnace from villain to hero, while Kemény’s high-minded Sifare is sung with purity.

Mitridate, sung by tenor Robert Murray, is a part that leaps through the emotions and the octaves in a way that Mozart would demand of other, better-known characters later in his short career. In Elizabeth Watts's heart-felt Aspasia we can listen ahead to disappointed women from the later works, notably the Countess in Figaro.

Iestyn Davies is feckless Farnace. Photo: Julian Guidera

Clemens Schuldt conducts The English Concert, among their number French horn player Ursula Paludan Monberg, who accompanies a Sifare aria. Mozart is composing in the shadow of his compatriot and operatic forebear Handel, like him using castrati (later dropped) and writing strings of arias. But in a passionate duet bétween Sifare and Aspasia is a glimpse of the Mozartian ensemble numbers that will ultimately dazzle in their inventiveness and complex expression of character.

Some operas are so perfect they don’t need a lot of directorial intervention. Others need a leg up, and this early work is one. So Albery’s simultaneously confused and stripped back staging is a little disappointing.

Hannah Clark's set is essentially a wooden back wall, which moves imperceptibly downstage, rather too subtly emphasising the implosion of a claustrophobic family. An eye-popping sofa, which Davies skips over with impressive ease, a bust, a cabinet of weapons, a zebra… you get the picture.

Robert Murray, the thwarted king Mitridate, and friend. Photo: Craig Fuller

Costume is everything everywhere all at once. Aspasia is done up as a Victorian governess. Farnace is in Jason King purple. Sober-sided Sifare is top-to-toe in black.

And spare a thought for Soraya Mafi’s sweet-natured Ismene, beautifully sung but trussed up like a French poodle and loyal to appalling Farnace. Hey ho, you can’t help who you fall in love with. That's opera, that’s life.