The audience treated the vocal recital of Adam Plachetka as a major event. They were led to it immediately by the care provided by the organisers who kindly attended to the concert-goers right in the doorway of the Besední dům concert hall. Adam Plachetka has a reputation as an outstanding singer and he lived up to it in many respects, even though it took him the entire first half of the concert to relax.
The concert repertoire consisted of a mixture of arias from operas by two alleged rivals and arch-enemies– Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. The title of the concert Molieri merged both composers into one person, and reminded of their existence during the same time and in the same cultural space. Perhaps it may seem trivial to argue for the thousandth time against the legend that Salieri poisoned Mozart, or had any interest or participated in his death. However, romantic tales blended with folk tales have a tough life and it does not hurt to remind ourselves sometimes that Forman's Amadeus is basically fiction (like most movies anyway, it is not a problem). We will come back to the way how the legend was refuted and the spoken word during the concert.
When selecting individual arias, Mozart had an advantage compared to Salieri from the very beginning. When the dramaturgy deliberately did not reach for his neglected work, it always placed if not well-known, then at least overheard pieces or pieces from an opera against each other, the title of which can be seen somewhere now and then. To the contrary, Salieri is not played much at all anywhere and his operas are introduced more as festival curiosities which is the fate of most of his peers. Mozart's most successful, and one might even say, visionary works outlived their time and without artificial support they stayed in the repertoire until today. However, the concert pointed out at least one remarkable thing. Mozart's opera genius was not so much in the individual arias, but mainly in the unschematical dramaturgy and psychological descriptions of figures. This is actually not too clear from the individual pieces torn out of context and the entire program sounded very balanced.
Finally, it might seem that Salieri was as good an opera composer, and in terms of that, the program gave him very good satisfaction. It is likely, however, that after viewing two full opera pieces of both composers– let's say Don Giovanni and Falstaff, to continue with the top works of the authors – the audience would lean towards Mozart. The name of the composer, which is perceived by the listeners as sanctification for any little simple composition, would play a role in it as well, of course. However, the ingenious musical dramaturgical characterisation of the characters and their emotional motivations would certainly also have a considerable share in it in this case. Salieri was, in short, an excellent composer but he was also a man of presence and success lived, while Mozart was looking ahead. It is always difficult for the audience to accept and the prematurely deceased composer did not live to see the time when this started happening.
Adam Plachetka is thirty years this year which is a very young age for a singer, so we are still talking about a starting and developing career. However, Adam Plachetka's career has been developing very successfully, he works in the Vienna State Opera where he worked his way from ensemble and supporting roles up to more visible roles of Malatesta in Don Pasqual, Announcer in Lohengrin, Hercules in Gluck's Alceste, Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro and the head role in Don Giovanni. From this list it is clear that he is being led in baritone in Vienna, without the frequently added prefix "bass-" that does not belong to Plachetka's voice at least for now. This season, he is signing in the Metropolitan Opera as Belcore in The Elixir of Love, he debuted as Masetto in Don Giovanni– that is the only role from the list that can be classified as bass. Although Plachetka's range extends to the depths of bass, its colour and character seems to be more of a baritone, and it is, of course, up to the singer and his teacher how positive the descent into the depths seems to them in the long term. For now, it is a firmly set and aggressive voice suitable specifically for Mozart type pieces. His safely used voice, dramatic without apparent pressure and effort, his character still needs to mature.
This showed mainly in the first half of the concert when Adam Plachetka seemed to have been stuck in one expressive position leading to serious drama. There was practically no difference between the angry Almaviva from The Marriage of Figaro, the bragging Falstaff by Salieri and the ironic Figaro and individual pieces began to melt together somewhat, although the singer's performance by itself is very pleasant to listen to. In the second half, Salieri's angry Axur stayed in the same position which suited it as much as it suited Almaviva, change came with the aria Guglielmo from Mozart's comedy Così fan tutte. Adam Plachetka switched to the position of seductive bragging and unlike Falstaff he sang Guglielmo completely relaxed, really convincingly and very entertainingly. In terms of expressive richness, Adam Plachetka managed to keep it up, every aria was different, it had its personality, the singer created a little, original world for each piece thanks to the changing and well-elected expression.
The Czech Ensemble Baroque Orchestra was accompanying him reliably, they gave the singer priority in everything and it was most visible in somewhat bombastic finishes. Roman Válek, the head of the orchestra, is perhaps too fond of such things, his love of cymbals and drums always surfaces somewhere. It is no disaster if not repeated too often. The spoken parts of two figures representing Bach and Mozart were worse – the two badly made cartoons do not deserve a better name than figures. Before each aria, they introduced the audience to the story and read a piece of text sung later. This in itself is not entirely bad but the risk that the frequent talks may tear the concert into pieces must be carefully considered. However, when you add a terrible amount of tasteless jokes, of which the spoken parts are composed, the concert drops to the level of television shows. The final aria followed by two bonuses, which were not introduced by the two jabbering actors, clearly supported the version without any talking. The finish therefore crowned the performance, suddenly there was just music and singing, Adam Plachetka was absolutely convincing. And it should have been like that from the beginning.
Molieri. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (arias from operas The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, La Finta Giardiniera, Così fan tutte), Antonio Salieri (Falstaff, La Scuola de' Gelosi, La Grotta di Trofonio, Axur, re d'Ormus). Adam Plachetka, musical direction – Roman Válek, Czech Ensemble Baroque Orchestra. 16 November 2015, Besední dům, Brno.
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