Gardeners’ world

For the past few weeks I have been working my way through Decca’s gigantic set of every note Mozart wrote and quite a few that he probably didn’t — 220 CDs in a monumental hernia-inducing box. Chronological listening is not recommended. Mozart was technically a phenomenon, of course, but he didn’t reach maturity of expression, with one or two extraordinary exceptions, until he was in his early twenties. La finta giardiniera (or Die Gärtnerin aus Liebe, in the composer’s singspiel version — both are included in the Decca set) was written when he was 18, by which time he was exceptionally fluent in composition. Uncut it lasts three and a half hours — why do people always go on about how long Wagner’s operas are?

The plot is characteristic of the Italianate opera of its time: Don Anchise, mayor of Lagonero, is in love with the Marchioness Violante Onesti, who is disguised as Sandrina, the gardener of the title, who in turn is in love with Count Belfiore, who was in love with Violante but is now in love with Arminda, who was formerly in love with Cavaliere Ramiro, and who he formerly loved, while Serpetta, Anchise’s servant, and in love with him, is the object of the unrequited passion of Roberto, who pretends to be her servant under the name of Nardo.