Mozart: La Finta Giardiniera

In Spring 2014 Emanuelle Haïm conducted her orchestra Le Concert d'Astrée and a carefully-chosen cast in La finta giardiniera, staged by the French director David Lescot, in the cities of Lille and Dijon; the production was described by the French newspaper La Croix as “three hours of pure happiness”. This video recording from Lille joins Haïm’s Erato DVDs of operas by Monteverdi (L’incoronazione di Poppea) Rameau (Hippolyte et Aricie) and Handel (Giulio Cesare). Lescot’s striking staging provides a contemporary take on the 18th century and the designs (by Alwyne de Dardel) evoke a garden by means of plants and shrubs in large pots – notably, Arminda is symbolised by a ferociously oversized Venus Flytrap. Later, as the plot thickens, the stage is spectacularly transformed into a forest. As the French music magazine Diapason wrote: “A director who is skilled at marrying word and music, David Lescot took ownership of the score, sensing its pulse, its respiration, its nuances and its schisms.”