The Clemency of Titus by Mozart, hAo 23 Samh 2018, Ó (2018/2018), Faoi stiúir Marco Štorman, Seoltóir Nicholas Carter, Stadttheater Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria

In Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's penultimate opera, a typical plot of a baroque opera seria, rich in complicated intrigues, unfolds. Marco Štorman returns to Klagenfurt for his production of La clemenza di Tito , with chief conductor Nicholas Carter taking over the musical direction. The tenor Attilio Glaser, who introduced himself to the Klagenfurt audience last season with Massenet's Werther , can be heard in the title role. The reason for Mozart's composition was the Prague coronation of Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia in 1791 - reason enough for the Bohemian estates to choose an opera subject that praised the goodness and wisdom of a ruler. For although Tito is betrayed by his closest confidants in the course of the story, in the end he shows clemency, pardons them and thus saves them from death in the arena. But the emperor's selfless clemency is ambiguous. A look at his history reveals a picture of a brutal general building all his goodness on the foundation of his previous wars and atrocities. This is how the portrait of a man who stands between a shiny facade and the suppression of his dark past becomes clear.