Respectful boredom

The new production of Mozart’s penultimate opera La Clemenza di Tito (why is the title not translated?) by ENO generates an atmosphere of resigned, dignified and respectful boredom. That is hardly at all the fault of anyone but Metastasio and Mozart, the latter of whom was pouring almost all his genius into The Magic Flute. As Tovey writes, ‘The score of Clemenza di Tito as a whole gives one a nightmare impression of the Zauberflöte having dried up and gone wrong.’ Actually, most of the score is amazingly remote from its sublime contemporary, sharing with it only harmonic simplicity. Metastasio’s ludicrously incredible characters, especially Tito himself, defy vivification. If we can ridicule the 19th century for regarding Cos