‘Mozart in Turkey’
TV Preview, BBC4 on 30/9/24 at 10 pm
TV Preview: Scottish Chamber Orchestra: Elijah Moshinsky’s film, ‘Mozart in Turkey’
This film is somewhat of a rarity. It promises:
‘A performance of Mozart's opera ‘Die Entführung aus dem Serail’ from the spectacular setting of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Sir Charles Mackerras. The film also documents the creative process involved in staging this production, provides fresh insight into the history of the opera and Mozart's life, and includes a conversation with the director, Elijah Moshinsky.’
The intriguing detail here is the participation of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Charles Mackerras. Was this perhaps a millennial working holiday for the orchestra, chorus, conductor and soloists in sun-kissed Istanbul? On the basis of online evidence, I don’t think that was the case, but I believe that the film should prove a musical treat, well worth an hour and a half of your time. The Edinburgh Festival concert performances of Mozart operas in the 1990s and 2000, with Mackerras conducting international casts in the Usher Hall were justifiably popular. Unusually for the time, they featured semi-staged elements – singers entering and exiting from various levels and interacting with each other. Although ‘Cosi fan Tutte’ ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ ‘Don Giovanni’, ‘Idomeneo’ and ‘La Clemenza di Tito’ were given this treatment, I don’t think Mackerras conducted ‘Die Entführung aus dem Serail’ at the Festival. I suspect there may have been an Usher Hall concert performance as part of an SCO season around 2000, which led to this film, but the names of the cast don’t ring any bells.
Most of the online content about ‘Mozart in Turkey’ refers to a well-reviewed recording of the opera, which was released by Telarc in 2000, with a cover image from the Moshinsky film. Stanley Sadie in the ‘Gramophone’ commends “Mackerras’s manner of articulation and the lightness of the phrasing he draws from the strings” and is enthusiastic about the talents of the young cast, Paul Groves’ “heroic timbre” as Belmonte, Lynton Atkinson’s “directness and wit” as Pedrillo, Peter Rose for a “direct, strongly sung performance” as Osmin, Desiree Rancatore’s “naturally stylish” Blonde and Yelda Kodalli as Konstanze, with a “splendidly bold ‘Martern aller Alten’”.
I think it’s likely that the Moshinsky film was shot in the Topkapi Palace and other Istanbul locations with the soloists from the recording miming to the pre-recorded sound track. There have been other hybrid opera films, notably the 1984 ‘Carmen,’ shot on location on Andalucia with Placido Domingo and Julia Migenes singing along to a sound track performed by the Orchestre National de France. So we’ll miss the excitement of a streamed live performance in a historic setting. However the short film trailer shows off the SCO’s exciting orchestration with the full Janissary percussion -see Mozart in Turkey (Opus Arte) (youtube.com) - although the Turkish vibes on this occasion come from a performance which took place in the less glamorous, but acoustically superior, Caird Hall in Dundee.
I would be interested in comments on ‘Mozart in Turkey’, especially if you have any information about the SCO’s recording, and whether there were live performances of the production in Scotland at that time. The SCO shop no longer stocks the CD but there are copies available online.
