The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Alpha extend their series of recordings of the Mozart operas conducted by Jérémie Rhorer. After Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which received excellent international reviews (including FFFF in Télérama), here now is La clemenza di Tito.

Gilles Macassar wrote in Télérama late in 2014 of ‘divinatory conducting, a cast close to the ideal . . . The last opera Mozart composed, long undervalued, closes the chapter of the Baroque and looks into the future, blazing a new trail that looks forward to the nineteenth century.’

That outstanding interpretation is now available in this two-CD set, featuring a high-powered cast – Kurt Streit (Tito), Karina Gauvin (Vitellia), Julie Fuchs (Servilia), Julie Boulianne (Annio), Robert Gleadow (Publio) and, in the role of Sextus, a singer who enjoyed triumphal acclaim from the audience at each performance: Kate Lindsey.

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Kurt Streit convincingly embodies both the Emperor’s innate goodness and his agonies over the conflicting duties of office. Julie Fuchs's exquisite shaping of Servilia’s ‘S’altro che lagrime’ — music poised between Zerlina’s ‘Vedrai carino’ and the Adagio of the Clarinet Concerto — makes this aria the true Mozartian moment of redemptive grace. While Rene Jacobs’s thrilling performance — too eccentric for some, I know — would still be my first choice, Rhorer’s is a vivid, dramatically compelling addition to the impressive Tito discography.

– Gramophone