Mark Thomsen performed as Podeste, the Mayor, in the July 2019 Portland Opera production of Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera.
Violante goes into hiding as “the disguised gardener” at the local Mayor’s country estate after escaping her abusive lover, Count Belfiore. As she chooses forgiveness and to love again, a dizzying cast of characters in disguise, enamored, and in chaos come together in this seriocomic account of the very complex nature of the human heart.
La Finta Giardiniera was Mozart’s 5th opera, written when he was only 18 years old. The piece includes one of opera’s many mad scenes, a convention dating back to the 17th century—the most famous of which may be in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.
from pdx.live, Portland, Oregon.