Mozart's comic opera blooms in this botanical-based production from the Salzburg Festival

Director
Doris Dörrie

Cast
Don Anchise: John Graham-Hall
Violante Onesti: Alexandra Reinprecht
Belfiore: John Mark Ainsley
Arminda: Véronique Gens
Ramiro: Ruxandra Donose
Serpetta: Adriana Kucerová
Roberto: Markus Werba

The Mozarteum Orchestra, Salzburg
Ivor Bolton (conductor)


'My opera was such a success it was impossible for me to describe the applause to Mamma,' wrote Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from Munich in January 1775, the day after his new comic opera La finta giardiniera (which translates as The Make-Believe Gardener) was first performed. Written for the Munich carnival season, it's the first example of comic and serious roles in Mozart's music, but it also carries its plot of pretence, disguise and surprising revelations to the brink of catastrophe.

Belfiore believes he has killed his fiancée, Violante, in a fit of jealousy. He flees in panic, but this does not prevent him from falling for Arminda, who then spurns her own lover, Ramiro, in favour of Belfiore. Violante meanwhile, searches for Belfiore, in the company of her servant, Roberto. Under a false name, she takes a position as a gardener on the estate of Don Anchise, while Roberto passes himself off as her cousin. While Anchise pursues Violante, Roberto romances the maid. And the labyrinth of pursuit and deception becomes ever further entangled when Belfiore and his new conquest Arminda turn up

This imaginative, irreverent production of Mozart's early opera is the work of film-maker and opera director Doris Dörrie, who set the work in a garden centre. When asked why, she replied,' It's a market of emotions. The plants represent feelings, the garden is our little paradise. We all have the same dream, which is why we buy so much equipment, chemical and weapons to keep our gardens under control. It must be kept in its boundaries for just as an uncontrolled garden can mutate into a wild jungle, so can uncontrolled emotions, proliferating like wild plants, become dangerous to us.'