FIRST NIGHT

Opera review: La clemenza di Tito at Glyndebourne

This profound and moving modern-dress production has a bumpy start, but is imaginatively conducted and winningly sung
Anna Stéphany, who is is a revelation as Sesto, and Michele Losier as Annio
Anna Stéphany, who is is a revelation as Sesto, and Michele Losier as Annio
MONIKA RITTERSHAUS

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★★★★☆
I can’t remember a production that started so badly leaving me so moved by the final curtain. So that’s a double-edged compliment for Claus Guth, the German who directs Mozart’s last opera in this modern-dress staging.

The fiasco happened during the overture. A projector shuddered to a halt as it began showing an artily filmed “backstory” contrived for the troubled Tito: a recurring lakeside idyll (it could have been shot at Glyndebourne) in which the emperor is back in childhood with his best friend, Sesto, symbolically shooting a magpie and indulging in other unlikely proto-Wagnerian rituals.

Even if the film had run smoothly, it would have seemed a pretentious distraction to an overture superbly played by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under