The manic maestro behind Mozart

Opera Siam last week presented two performances of “mozart & ME”, an extraordinary one-man show by the Australian bass Damian Whiteley. 

Whiteley works at the Zurich Opera and commutes between Europe and Sydney, and in transiting through Thailand recently he’s appeared in operas as varied as “The Magic Flute” and “Sakuntala” and three by Somtow Sucharitkul, “The Snow Dragon”, “Bhuridat” and “The Faithful Son”.

In “mozart & ME”, Whiteley is more than a smooth-tongued operatic bass. He plays the piano, sings, changes clothes, does wild accents and even “makes love” to a coat – all with maniacal intensity and verbal humour. The show flies by so quickly you could miss a lot if you blink.

This entertainment is the story of Lorenzo da Ponte, the Italian poet in the Viennese court who wrote the libretti of three of Mozart’s greatest operas – “Don Giovanni”, “The Marriage of Figaro” and “Cosi fan Tutte”. 

Da Ponte, of course, takes all the credit for revolutionising music, and much else besides. The conceit of the playwright, Melvyn Morrow, is that da Ponte, who emigrated to America and become professor of Italian at Columbia University, has somehow survived into modern times and is now in Hollywood writing commercial jingles. In this show, we have him telling his story.

And how he tells it! A greater genius than Mozart, a more passionate lover than Casanova, a more brilliant poet than Metastasio and a lustier priest than – well, nothing is left to the imagination. 

It is rare for a single artist to be able to act and sing and play the piano all at the same time (not to mention do his own wardrobe). Whiteley’s lightning transformations stunned the audience.

The small but rapt audience at the Siam Society was blown away and gave Whiteley a lengthy standing ovation on opening night. He returns to Bangkok again in June for the premiere of Somtow’s “The Chariot of Heaven”, the fifth opera in his “Lives of the Buddha” series.