qui la voce so soave

The image of the original 1979 poster is a reworking of Henry Fuseli’s 1774 pen-and-ink drawing Dante and Virgil on the Ice of Cocytus.

The film poster, by contrast, was designed by Peter Sis at the request of Milos Forman, taking as its model Robert von Nutt’s poster for the Broadway production (1980). It depicts black hooded figure with outstretched arms and barely visible eyes. Despite its graphic stylization, the composition appears to reproduce the features of a typical Venetian mask, the bauta, consisting of a tricorne hat, a domino cloak, and the mask known as the larva.

My hypothesis is that this aesthetic shift was also influenced by another major Mozart-related event of 1979: Joseph Losey’s cinematic adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In this distinctive opera-film, set in an imaginary Venice, masks play a central role, particularly in the finale of the first act, when Donna Anna, Don Ottavio, and Donna Elvira—having identified Don Giovanni as the murderer of the Commendatore—enter his house in disguise during the ball. In Losey’s film, the masks retain the domino cloak (or tabarro) and tricorne hat, but the traditional larva of the bauta is replaced by a white face with distinctly feminine features. Since the film was released in the United States almost simultaneously with the stage production of Amadeus (Amadeus premiered in September 1979, and Don Giovanni was released inNovember 1979) it is not implausible that it helped shape the visual imagination that would later become iconic.

In Forman’s film, the black carnivalesque figure remains, but the larva is replaced by an original bifront mask depicting the faces of Comedy and Tragedy. This choice appears to invoke the theatre explicitly, not only as the original medium of the narrative (Peter Shaffer’s play), but also as a stylistic principle underlying the entire film, whose events and modes of representation are marked by a pronounced theatricality. In an article published in The New York Times ( “Paying Homage to Mozart”, 1984. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/02/magazine/paying-homage-to-mozart.html.) Shaffer himself stated that the use of masks constitutes a tribute to Mozart, who frequently employed disguises in his comic operas.

I couldn’t help but notice, anyway, that the recent blue ray posters have started to introduce the double faced mask as an iconography: meaning that, in fact, now it is this specific icon mostly associated with Amadeus!

One thing I'd like to add while reblogging is that the figure's beckoning pose is almost definitely Salieri, beckoning to Mozart in his costume during this scene in the play:

It seems obvious to me... but I've seen people say it specifically depicts the commendatore or Leopold Mozart. They could be right, and I could be wrong, but seeing the recording, this is the exact pose Salieri makes in this scene (while in the identical costume), and it just makes more sense thematically for it to be him.

1st: Mozart's La Finta Giardiniera from Opéra de Paris. Featuring artists of the Paris Opera Academy. Subscription.

5th: Wagner's Götterdämmerung from Atlanta Opera. Featuring Stefan Vinke, Lisa Lindstrom, and David Leigh. Free with registration.

5th: Rossini's The Barber of Seville from San Francisco Opera. Featuring Joshua Hopkins, Maria Kataeva, and Levy Sekgapane. Rental.

9th: Bembo's Ercole Amante from Opéra National de Paris. Rediscovered baroque opera, written by a woman, in its third-ever production. Featuring Julie Fuchs, Andreas Wolf, Ana Vieira Leite, Deepa Johnny, Sandrine Piau, and Alex Rosen. Free!

12th: Gounod's Roméo et Juliette from Opera di Roma. Featuring Nino Machaidze, Vittorio Grigolo, and Mihai Damian. Free!

14th: Strauss's Elektra from San Francisco Opera. Featuring Elena Pankratova, Elza van den Heever, Michaela Schuster, and Kyle Ketelsen. Rental.

14th: Giordano's Andrea Chénier from the Metropolitan Opera. Featuring Piotr Beczała, Sonya Yoncheva, and Igor Golovatenko. Geolocked to US IPs. Will also air on PBS member stations (dates vary). Free!

Ooppera Baletti Finland added their very recent double production of Sibelius's Luonnotar & Tchaikovsky's Iolanta to stream for free with registration until August 24th.

Happy Opera Pride! 🌈🌈🌈 Der Rosenkavalier (Robert Carsen, 2017) Don Carlo (Emilio Sagi, 2016) L'incoronazione di Poppea (Jan Lauwers, 2018) Adelaide di Borgogna (Arnaud Bernard, 2023) Platée (Jetske Mijnssen, 2023) Benamor (Christof Loy, 2026) Alcina (Robert Carsen, 2021) Champion (James Robinson, 2023) Ariodante (Robert Carsen, 2023) Les Pêcheurs de perles (Timothy Nelson, 2015) Der Rosenkavalier (Josef Ernst Köpplinger, 2021) Arabella (Tobias Kratzer, 2021)

+ bonus Les Brigands (Barrie Kosky, 2024):

1st: Mozart's La Finta Giardiniera from Opéra de Paris. Featuring artists of the Paris Opera Academy. Subscription.

5th: Wagner's Götterdämmerung from Atlanta Opera. Featuring Stefan Vinke, Lisa Lindstrom, and David Leigh. Free with registration.

5th: Rossini's The Barber of Seville from San Francisco Opera. Featuring Joshua Hopkins, Maria Kataeva, and Levy Sekgapane. Rental.

9th: Bembo's Ercole Amante from Opéra National de Paris. Rediscovered baroque opera, written by a woman, in its third-ever production. Featuring Julie Fuchs, Andreas Wolf, Ana Vieira Leite, Deepa Johnny, Sandrine Piau, and Alex Rosen. Free!

12th: Gounod's Roméo et Juliette from Opera di Roma. Featuring Nino Machaidze, Vittorio Grigolo, and Mihai Damian. Free!

14th: Strauss's Elektra from San Francisco Opera. Featuring Elena Pankratova, Elza van den Heever, Michaela Schuster, and Kyle Ketelsen. Rental.

14th: Giordano's Andrea Chénier from the Metropolitan Opera. Featuring Piotr Beczała, Sonya Yoncheva, and Igor Golovatenko. Geolocked to US IPs. Will also air on PBS member stations (dates vary). Free!

Ooppera Baletti Finland added their very recent double production of Sibelius's Luonnotar & Tchaikovsky's Iolanta to stream for free with registration until August 24th.

15th: Bell's Medusa from La Monnaie/De Munt. World premiere. Featuring Claudia Boyle, Paula Murrihy, and Josh Lovell. Free!

17th: Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier from the Baden-Baden Whitsun Festival. Concert presentation. Featuring Julia Kleiter, Emily D'Angelo, and Katharina Konradi. Free!

17th: Strauss's Arabella from the Metropolitan Opera. Geolocked to US IPs. Featuring Rachel Willis-Sørensen, Tomasz Konieczny, Louise Alder, and Pavol Breslik. Will also air on PBS member stations - dates vary. Free!

23rd: Mozart's Così fan tutte from the Hungarian State Opera. Featuring Ildikó Megyimórecz, Zsófia Kálnay, Botond Pál, and Attila Dobák. Free!

28th: Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin from Wiener Staatsoper. Featuring Asmik Grigorian, Boris Pinkhasovich, and Bogdan Volkov. Free!

29th: Ponchielli's I Lituani from Lithuanian National Opera & Ballet. Featuring Viktorija Miškūnaitė, Gaston Rivero, and Tadas Girininkas. Free!

29th: Verdi's Nabucco from Teatro alla Scala. Featuring Luca Salsi, Anna Netrebko, and Francesco Meli. Rental.

LATE ADDITION - 29th: Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles from Wiener Staatsoper. Featuring Juan Diego Florez, Ludovic Tézier, and Kristina Mkhitaryan. Subscription.

In cinemas, the Met's premiere production of El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego will be broadcast worldwide on the 30th, with encores in some locations. The composer is Gabriela Lena Frank, this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for music. Find your local theatre here.

Archive notes: Dallas Opera's summer archive streams are back. Elektra with Marjorie Owens and Angela Meade and La Traviata with Yaritza Véliz and Javier Camarena stream for free through the end of the month. Medici recently added the 2023 Rusalka from the Royal Opera, starring Asmik Grigorian, and on the 21st will add a 2023 Arabella from Deutsche Oper Berlin and a 2009 Aci, Galatea e Polifemo.

Garth Brooks winning video of the year at the ACMs for a song about how none of us are free as long as there's racism and homophobia

Reba McEntire charting with a gothic horror song about an innocent man being executed by an incompetent judge and a corrupt sheriff

Willie Nelson being, well, his entire self tbh

Dolly Parton recording the hating capitalism banger of all time

listen. Alan Jackson, the archetypal mister big hat man sitting on a tractor singing about a pickup truck, wrote a shockingly normal song about 9/11 that was like "yeah I don't know jack shit about politics but my copy of the bible says we're supposed to love everyone" and then went on the radio and explained how he specifically wanted to write a song about that day that "wasn't vengeful". Miranda Lambert took the southern leftist slogan "y'all means all" and made it the title of a corny ass pop-country song for the Queer Eye soundtrack. Kenny Chesney stole a horse from a cop and Tim McGraw put the cop in a chokehold defending him, and I know that's not about their music but it is, and this is very important, fucking sick as hell

Luke Combs covering Fast Car and keeping the line "I work in the market as a checkout girl" and doing an interview about how he couldn't change a single word because it's not his story. king shit

Morgan Wallen doing I Had Some Help, literally the first song that spoke to me as a male survivor of domestic abuse. also shoutout to the guy for getting caught saying a racial slur and responding by specifically telling his fans not to defend him and raising a bunch of money for the Black Music Action Coalition. bro had an engraved invitation to the culture war and said "nah I'd rather be normal"

Shaboozey just absolutely obliterating the drunk roadhouse anthem glass ceiling

Maren Morris and Brothers Osborne with a song that okay, released in 2019 but I didn't hear until recently, about how good friends mind their own business and let you love whoever you want and also get high with you when you're broke

Kimberley Perry! If I Die Young Part 2!! "actually I'm glad I lived, bitch" ass song that I bet is gonna mean a LOT to kids fighting depression