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February 09, 2005
Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte means, roughly, "That's what women do." But we should not let period sexism get in our way. The opera attached to this title demonstrates how men and women alike behave when their romantic lives begin, as often happens, in a love affair with love itself. Legions of spectators have denounced the fickleness of the two sisters, Fiordiligi ("Fleur-de-lys") and Dorabella, who, in the space of an afternoon, shift their affections from departing soldiers to visiting Albanians. But the girls are faithful almost to the end to their true love, which is romantic passion. The opera is an exposition, veritable catalogue, of romantic passion's many faces, from suicidal despair to tender embrace. And each face (with one exception) is presented in a witty orchestral setting, as if decked out in one of a series of funny hats.
The first thing to be said about Così fan tutte is that its two pairs of lovers are very young. They may even be teenagers. Their unmarried status fairly proclaims this fact, but so does their silliness - each man's conviction that his girlfriend is utterly unlike other women, the sisters' credulous palm-reading. There is a phase of adolescence that few young people get through without making fools of themselves: the age of beginning to take things seriously. The first thing that gets taken seriously, of course, is oneself. With breathtaking agility, Mozart presents the lovers at their own estimation, but sends them up with nonstop mockery from the pit.
The second thing to be said is that nobody gets married in this opera. At any time. How the lovers distribute themselves is not difficult to imagine: with adieux all round. (Mozart had already composed such an ending, for Don Giovanni.) I for one don't see the sisters keeping house together much longer; whatever lessons either has learned about love, each has discovered that the other is not altogether simpatico. The plot that has entertained us has humiliated them, and like most human beings they will prefer to distance themselves from reminders. The opera ends with brave faces, but I should think that Don Alfonso has lost four friends. Then, too, he may have taken on the probably-unemployed Despina.
Don Alfonso and Despina belong together in more ways than one. They represent, with a comprehensiveness not seen in Le Nozze di Figaro, the range of forces that was bringing down the ancien régime as the opera was being written. Don Alfonso is a rationalist, impatient with pretensions, while Despina is too clever and versatile to be cleaning up after spoiled brats. That the lovers represent the aristocratic world couldn't be clearer: the men are military officers and the ladies are rich enough to have acquired titles (and one of them is named after the symbol of Royal France). The lovers are idle, and have nothing to do but conduct their amours; Despina and Don Alfonso are busy bees.
The third thing to be said about Così fan tutte is that it will repay all the attention that you can give it. First you must get yourself a recording; if you can read music, you will derive great pleasure from the score, which is (as of this writing) widely available. I won't recommend recordings, because availability is more unreliable than anybody in this opera. But I will say that I'm not, at the moment, as crazy about the Schwarzkopf-Böhm recording as I used to be. Although I'm not a fan of the late Sir Georg Solti, the recording of a 1994 concert performance under his baton captures the excitement of singing before a large audience, and its cast is at least as good as any other's.
Resist the oft-made observation that Così fan tutte is an "artificial" opera. The plot is beautifully symmetrical, all manner of outrageously unrealistic commedia dell'arte conventions are on offer, and the lovers can be seen as shallow. But they're not shallow characters. They're kids.
Posted by pourover at February 9, 2005 04:53 PM
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Comments
Thank you, RJ, for finally making some sense of the plot of 'Cosi.' It is an opera that I have always enjoyed listening to, but the two productions I have seen have been incomprehensible muddles that destroyed any desire on my part ever to see another staged production of the opera. I have long strugged to reconcile the sentiments of 'Smanie implabili' and 'Come scoglio' with what transpires in Act II. How I wish some director would adopt your interpretation. Do you perhaps know of a video that at least approximates your vision?
Posted by: jkm at February 10, 2005 12:36 AM
Absolutely, and I'm glad that you ask. Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducted a production at the Opernhaus Zürich in 2000 that, in my opinion, does full justice to Così. That it stars Cecilia Bartoli will make it more attractive to you still, but this is by no means a Bartoli vehicle. I have never actually seen the opera performend this intelligently.
Posted by: R J Keefe at February 10, 2005 12:59 AM
First, I must apologize for misspelling 'Smanie implacabili' (particularly since I know that it is one of your favorite arias)--and I even checked the spelling in my score whilst writing the earlier comment! The fact that the characters in 'Cosi' are 'kids' leads me to another thought about the difficulties of the opera, prompted by the recollection of a review I once read of Wagner's 'Siegfried;' the critic commented that one of the problems with that particular opera is that although the character Siegfried is a teenager, the music Wagner wrote for him can only be sung by someone far more mature, leaving audiences perplexed by the spectacle of a 30- (or 40-) something man cavorting around the stage like the village idiot (and here I am paraphrasing wildly, but that is what I recall of the critic's point). The same, it seems to me, can be said for 'Cosi'--I defy any teenager to do vocal justice to the music Fiordiligi and Dorabella have to sing; yet the sight of 30- or 40-something women behaving as those characters do is difficult to understand. (I cannot with any authority comment on the possibility that the roles of Guglielmo or Ferrando could be sung credibly by a teenager, as I am neither a tenor nor a baritone and have never studied the music, but I suspect that both roles are as difficult, vocally, as the women's parts.) In other words, perhaps the difficulties directors and audiences have with 'Cosi' stem from an inability to suspend belief sufficiently to reconcile the physical appearance of the singers with the motivations of the much younger characters they are portraying without attempting to superimpose some interpretation other than youth. And I thank you for the video recommendation--I look forward to the prospect of finally seeing a coherent production of the opera.
Posted by: jkm at February 10, 2005 09:16 PM