La Finta Semplice, Bampton Classical Opera, St John's Smith Square, review

Seven talented young singers give lively performances but this modest piece lacks creative originality, says Rupert Christiansen.

Robert Anthony Gardiner and Aoife O'Sullivan in La Finta Semplice
Robert Anthony Gardiner and Aoife O'Sullivan in La Finta Semplice Credit: Photo: Anthony Hall

At the age of 12, Mozart was commissioned by the court theatre in Vienna to write a three-act comic opera. In-fighting meant that it only received its première two years later in Salzburg, by which time the composer had moved on to grander things and would have blushed at its naivete.

Yet La Finta Semplice (roughly translated as “the girl pretending to be a fool”) remains at one level a prodigious achievement – indeed, it seems barely credible that someone still pubescent could have written anything so technically assured and readily tuneful. (Unless the boy had a helping hand from his Tiger Dad Leopold?)

Unfortunately, if age and experience are discounted, the piece stands as little more than a formulaic exercise in the well-established genre of opera buffa, suggestive of a genius for imitation rather than creative originality.

The plot involves the same sort of frivolous amorous deceits as Così fan tutte, without any big surprises. The overall tone is rococo, pretty and perky, with a narrow emotional range which only darkens slightly in two arias in the second act. Both characterization and recitative are perfunctory. At the end, however, comes a tantalizing pre-echo of the reconciliatory music which eighteen years later would crown Le Nozze di Figaro. For a moment, it’s something more than competent.

Bampton Classical Opera – based in the summer in a Deanery garden in David Cameron’s Oxfordshire constituency – makes a speciality of rarely heard works of the eighteenth century, and the piece’s modest demands nicely fits its equally modest resources.

Transferred to St John’s Smith Square, Jeremy Gray’s staging does nothing to elucidate the comings and goings or differences of rank, age or personality type, preferring instead to set up a confusingly surreal background evoking the paintings of Magritte.

But seven talented young singers give lively performances: Aoife O’Sullivan sparkles as the lady feigning stupidity in order to get her way, and Caryl Hughes, Robert Anthony Gardiner and Gavan Ring (an Irish baritone clearly going places) also shine as brightly as their music permits. Andrew Griffiths conducts the Chroma ensemble, which played neatly. More of Gray’s amusing translation might have come across in an acoustic less resonant than St John’s.

This is something that any lover of Mozart might want to hear once. But my curiosity has been slaked, and I have no desire to hear a note of it ever again.

Further performance on 20 October at The Barn, Bury Court, near Farnham Tickets: 07771 663437; (burycourtbarn.com)