LA CLEMENZA DI TITO

Wiener Festwochen 2024

Tue 21., Wed 22., Fri 24. & Sat 25.05., 19.30h, opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Audience discussion: Wed 22.05., after the performance

Introduction to the music: with Thomas Hengelbrock, Fri 24.05., 18.30h

In Milo Rau’s first opera treatment, Emperor Tito’s well-wishing commitment degenerates into a strategy of sheer self-preservation, an empty revolutionary platitude. Together with eighteen people who live in Vienna and have partly themselves experienced repressive regimes, the Camerata Salzburg and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir, Rau undertakes an actualisation of Mozart’s last opera. While crowds of displaced persons are eking out their existence in a trailer park ghetto outside of the palace walls, the social elite are celebrating their own benevolence. Is it possible for political art to change the world? Or does it, in fact, only reinforce the status quo? The Festwochen artistic director’s controversial Mozart interpretation calls convenient social commitment into question while at the same time paying homage to the people of Vienna.

Age recommendation: Recommended from 16 years. The performance contains depictions of violence.