page_title: La clemenza di Tito (Colin Davis recording)
section_title: Reviews
hierarchical_section_title: La clemenza di Tito (Colin Davis recording) / Critical reception / Reviews
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Italian poet Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782)
context_page_description: La clemenza di Tito is a 127-minute studio album of the opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, performed by Dame Janet Baker, Stuart Burrows, Robert Lloyd. Yvonne Minton, Lucia Popp and Frederica von Stade with the Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, under the direction of Sir Colin Davis. It was released in 1977.
context_section_description: The musicologist Stanley Sadie reviewed the album on LP in Gramophone in November 1977. Philips's casting of Dame Janet Baker and Yvonne Minton had given the recording "immense strength and dramatic vitality at its centre", he wrote. As Vitellia, the bitter daughter of a deposed emperor trying to manipulate her lover into murdering her father's successor, Baker was by turns subtle or domineering as the moment required. She sang with a "marvellous firmness and evenness of tone and steadiness of line", falling into imperfection only when Mozart took her higher up the stave than she was comfortable with. In the castrato role of Sesto, the infatuated instrument of Vitellia's scheming, Yvonne Minton delivered a performance that was arguably more impressive still. She was equally successful at portraying both sides of Sesto's character: the youth besotted with his vengeful mistress, and the "Roman of the highest standards of honour, courage and resolve" torn by the competing claims of duty and desire. And as well as singing with "real dramatic power", Minton displayed "virtuosity of a high order". Pure, superb and magnificent were just some of the accolades that Sadie bestowed on her vocalism, although he acknowledged that sometimes. like Baker, she perpetrated an imperfect note which should have been mended by a retake. Stuart Burrows was scarcely less good as the third of the opera's principals, "a strong Tito, lyrical when he [was] being gentle and merciful, yet with a force ... in the more imperial music that [made] him a plausible figure as a Roman emperor." Frederica von Stade did splendidly in another Mozart en travesti role to set beside her Cherubino, singing Annio with force and true rhetorical power in the scene where the young man advised Sesto to throw himself on Tito's mercy. In the other secondary roles, Lucia Popp was affecting as an argent-bright Servilia and Robert Lloyd was "properly sturdy" as the Praetorian soldier, Publio. Covent Garden's orchestra played splendidly, with the opera's famous obbligato clarinet and basset-horn obbligatos both dispatched with distinction. Conducting, Davis infused the album with all the energy of a live performance, eliciting "taut rhythms, firm accents [and] a general urgency". It was obvious that Davis, his orchestra and several of his soloists had profited greatly having presented Tito at Covent Garden. Well recorded and well balanced, the album was certainly the best version of the opera yet committed to disc.
  Eric Salzman reviewed the album on LP in Stereo Review in May 1978. Janet Baker, he wrote, sang with "a good deal of passion - a quality not always associated with her beautiful and sometimes remote vocal sound - as Vitellia". Stuart Burrows's Tito was "strong", Lucia Popp's Servilia "stunning", Yvonne Minton's Sesto "ably interpreted" and Frederica von Stade's Annio "quite adorable" despite "a tight little vibrato". The orchestra's playing was "excellent", and Colin Davis's conducting "strong" too. This was not to say that the album had no weaknesses. Firstly, the presence of three mezzo-sopranos in its dramatis personae made for a degree of monotony. Secondly, none of the singers had interpolated appoggiaturas and other ornaments in the way that Mozart would have expected them to. Thirdly, the opera itself had its negatives. Although its music was brisk, concise, emphatic and full of feeling, its characters were cardboard and its story chilly and dull. But all in all, the album was "superb both in performance and recording", and one that certainly deserved to be heard.
  J. B. Steane reviewed the album on LP in Gramophone in January 1980, comparing it with a more recent version of the opera conducted by Karl Böhm. Both recordings had points in their favour, he thought. In one of Vitellia's arias, for example, Janet Baker's "noble anger" was preferable to the "shrewish huff" of Böhm's Julia Varady, while in another, Baker's superior technique was countered by Varady's greater delicacy and eloquence. In a duet for Annio and Sesto, Frederica von Stade and Yvonne Minto
caption: Pietro Metastasio, in a portrait attributed to Batoni
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