Desultory Diary, Episode 21: Così Fan Tutte

This is the third and final part of my desultory diary regarding the operas we have been streaming from the Met. The dual purpose of this is 1) to document how some of us are passing time during the lockdown due to the  coronavirus pandemic; and 2) to provide an analysis of one of the standards in the operatic repertoire, Così Fan Tutte.

The opera, since its premiere in January of 1790, has had a mixed reception. During Mozart’s time, no one objected to the content of the opera, which deals with a cruel trick played on two women by their fiancés in order to ascertain whether they are faithful or not. The title, which can be roughly translated as “Women Are Like That,” says it all.

A few years after its premiere, mores changed. Beethoven thought the opera was immoral, and he was not alone in this assessment. It was subsequently rarely performed. It did not come to the Met until 1922. After World War ll, however, the opera became quite popular; it is now number 11 of the 20 most frequently performed operas, although the other two Da Ponte/Mozart collaborations have a higher rank.

Da Ponte wrote a farce. Mozart, whose characterizations are among the most sophisticated in all opera, went deeper. (Similarly, Emmanuel Schikaneder, the librettist for The Magic Flute, wrote a Baroque fairy tale that was meant as entertainment only. Mozart went deeper. (George Bernard Shaw said that if God were to come down from heaven to sing, he would probably choose Sarastro’s arias from that opera.)

I am including the opera among nineteenth century works, since it was written a mere ten years before the turn of the century. During that period, during which most of the operas in the standard repertory were written, it was  the role of the women, usually sopranos, to convey emotion deeply. It was thought that the female voice is more agile and expressive, a view that is certainly not unreasonable. It is also reasonable to assume that the deeper feelings one had, the more human she (or, perhaps, he) is.

If the female singers of the operas are thus the true human beings, we can approach the title of Mozart’s opera differently. Così Fan Tutte contains the feminine plural of “all,” “tutto.” If we are dealing with the women as representing humanity, the title can be thus viewed as Così Fan Tutti—Not 'women are like that', but 'humans are like that'. The opera, under Mozart’s subtle undermining of Da Ponte’s sexist text, thus becomes an opera about the inevitability of change.

Yes, the text has glaring deficiencies, which Mozart left mostly alone. The play follows the three unities of classic French drama; the action takes place in one day, far too short for inner change to take place. The convention is that if a woman changes, it is her affection for a man that we are dealing with. But what if we’re talking about changes over a larger sweep of time? What if, say, one were a devout Catholic in youth, and have become a lapsed Catholic years later? A major change like this is what Fiordiligi’s first great aria suggests, not a mere change of heart when separated from her lover for only a few hours.

Let us examine that aria, Come Scoglio. The words begin with “As a rock remains immobile against winds and storms, so too shall my soul remain strong in faith and in love.” Fiordiligi sings this with a passion well beyond the emotional range of the other characters. As I played the opening of the aria by ear on the piano, I was amazed at the octave leaps, which indicate her anger. No, this noble music indicates a noble person who imagines herself incapable of change, and is enraged by the very suggestion that she could.

It reminds me of a poem I wrote years ago, entitled "Stone and River”

STONE AND RIVER

Metaphors that help us live here
are chiefly two: stone and river.
Aware of change, afraid to be alone,
most opt for the permanence of stone.

"A boulder at the center reigns;
however fast the current, it remains;
countless unique pebbles at each side
retain their shapes, even if dislodged."

I, I, this is the language of rock.
But everything is swirl and flux:
despite appearance all is sea;
no Me. Fluid all reality.

Nothing to transcend our going?
Everything is water flowing?
Nothing but fate, nothing but chance,
nothing but change? And ecstasy: dance!

Fiordiligi’s conflict is that she thinks she’s a rock when she’s really a river. Most of us have to learn this lesson. When we’re young, we think our personalities are immortal. We will always be this or that, forever. But just as time changes our bodies, it changes our inner lives as well. Fiordiligi imagines that she will always remain faithful to a certain person; time, however, might be using a different playbook.

Fiordiligi’s second great aria, one of the best Mozart ever composed, is entitled Per Pietà, Ben Mio, Perdona, "Forgive, my love, for pity's sake." She realizes she has changed; she is broken, not merely 'heart-broken', but broken. She feels terribly guilty.

After this aria, the plot  of the men is revealed; having taken to heart what she has learned, she quickly, perhaps too quickly, accepts life the way it is, and joins in the rousing finale, once the lovers are reunited. Note that the male lovers express no guilt for the dirty trick they played on their finances, as one might expect from the sexist farce Da Ponte wrote.

If you listen to the music carefully, you can’t help but realize that Fiordiligi’s music is a multicolored Oz in comparison with the black-and-white Kansas of the other characters. Mozart showed little interest in the others. A critic, with some justification, once wrote that many of the arias in Così are quite boring. Certainly this doesn’t apply to Fiordiligi’s soaring music!

The subtitle of the opera is “La Scuola degli amanti”—"the School of Lovers." Mozart, with great humanity and subtlety, gave that title a new and profound meaning.

The production we saw was uneven. Simply put, the director, Phelim McDermott, followed the text and not the music. It was set in  1950s Coney Island; his view of the opera was that it is merely fluff. For instance, during the overture, so much was going on on stage, that one found it quite difficult to listen to the music. Fiordiligi, sung by Amanda Majeski, did, however, a fine job. Too bad we had to listen to her second great aria while she was floating above the stage on a balloon! It was like directing Hamlet to recite a famous monologue while riding a bicycle.

An uneven production of a very profound, albeit uneven, opera--if one has ears to hear!

                                      *

Today we listened to Renée Fleming in her 2017 farewell performance of Der Rosenkavalier. It was spectacular, but, as promised, this is my farewell performance at writing about the performances we streamed from the Met.

May glorious music enter your mind, while (by remaining indoors) keeping that dreadful virus from entering your body!