La Clemenza di Tito in the Helsinki Music House (Sonore), the 13th of April, 2018

The new opera class of Sibelius Academy performs traditionally as their first whole opera some opera by Mozart. This time they had ended up to La Clemenza di Tito, Mozart’s last opera. It is not his most performed opera and its arias are not the best known, but neither is it an opera that deserves to be forgotten. 

The director of the opera is Katariina Lahti. She has placed the opera in an undefined era with relatively androgynous people, which suited this work rather well. The costumes design by Anna Sinkkonen was almost neutral and the set design of Fabian Nyberg was based on doors and a few selected pieces of furniture. Good work!

The story of the opera tells about the emperor Tito of Rome, who is looking for a new wife. Vitella yearns to become that woman, but Tito chooses Servilia, who is the secret beloved of Annio. This angers Vitella and she persuades Sesto, who is in love with her, to kill Tito. When Tito finds out that Annio and Servilia love each other, he chooses Vitella as his bride-to-be instead. Meanwhile Sesto has already attacked Tito (of course, he stabs someone else by mistake) and feels deep guilt of his deed. Sesto is sentenced to death and Vitella confesses her part in the plot, but Titus decides to have mercy on them both.  

The orchestra of the evening was the Lohja Philharmonic Orchestra and the choir was Somnium Ensemble – earlier unknown to me, but a positive surprise.

This opera class seems to contain several interesting singers, who hopefully will develop in the years to come to even more mature soloists. One of the new interesting voices was Rachel McIntosh in the role of Sesto. Her aria “Parto, parti, ma tu, ben mio” (perhaps the best known aria of this opera) together with a clarinet was enjoyable. I also liked the voice of Henri Uusitalo in the role of Publio. His performance may not have been totally free of mistakes, but it was definitely promising. Ruut Mattila, who sang the role of Annio, also has a beautiful voice and her duet ”Ah, perdona al primo affetto” with Servilia (Elizaveta Rimketitch) was great. Minna-Leena Lahti as Vitellia was not yet at her best in the beginning of the opera, but she managed to open up her voice during the intermission and her aria in the second act sounded already very good.

The opera has still four performances during this week, so I definitely recommend buying tickets from Ticketmaster and going to the Helsinki Music House to listen to it. I am already looking forward to their next operas to see how the group will develop in the years to come.