Così fan tutte: Some Miscellaneous Observations

Rudolph H. Weingartner

   While I am working at getting a longer text with a lot of pictures into my blog—not as simple as one might think—here are some comments prompted by hearing and seeing yesterday’s (April 25, 2014) Met HD performance in Mexico City’s Auditorio.

   To begin with, it was a splendid performance in every way: sung exceedingly well by singers who looked their parts, masterfully conducted by James Levine; the performance was briskly staged on serviceable, handsome sets.  A great pleasure from beginning to end.  I had seen Così only once before—at the Met about thirty years ago.  I had never listened to a cd or watched a DVD of the opera, nor, until rummaging around on the internet during the last hour or so, have I read much of anything about it.  While I know Don Giovanni well and the Nozze di Figaro very well (though neither as well as the Zauberflöte), I was quite ignorant about what I was about to see—given only a vague memory of that long-ago experience—except for knowing a broad outline of the plot.  So herewith some observations, most of them quite mundane and surely none of them original—except subjectively.

   It’s quite a long opera, close to 3 ½ hours, not counting the intermission.  While itself that’s not so remarkable for an opera, it adds up to a lot of singing for the performers.  There are only six singers a very minimal part for a chorus and no passages at all  for the orchestra alone.  All six of them have large parts, though my impression (and that’s all it is) is that the biggest roles are that of the two sisters who wind up doing as all women do.  This compares with a bit shorter Figaro, with a cast of  five principals, plus three or four non-trivial secondary roles and another sprinkle of minor parts, with also more work given to the chorus.  (I might add, parenthetically, that without advancing the story most efficiently by means of recitatives—rather than arias--these operas would have to be much longer,)

   There are of course numerous solo arias for each of the six members of the cast, but I was particularly struck by the prevalence of ensembles—from duets to sextets—maybe a higher ratio than in Figaro or Don Giovanni.  And about those ensembles, I particularly noted that—not surprisingly—Mozart didn’t shy away from “unmixed” groupings, so to speak: duets or trios for just men or ditto for women.  Given his remarkable skill, you come to think that Mozart could write a sextet for six sopranos and have each individual voice noted as a character.

   Now for a couple of “higher” things. When you look at the outline of the libretto, the plot of Così is pretty mechanical.  I was nor surprised that I could find no equivalent of Beaumarchais, the eminence grise of Figaro, when I looked for a pre-history of Così.  It seems that Da Ponte was on his own.  Well, I think that Da Ponte was genius librettist (and ultimately a professor at my alma mata, Columbia) but he was not an experienced “author,” in the sense of originating tales of his own concoction.  Nevertheless, he seems to have devised one with Così, if a somewhat sparse, mechanical one.

   Enter Mozart.  The only term I can think of: he humanized the cartoon figures that Da Ponte provided.  The women are not just sexual creatures; the men are not just predators.  It is primarily Mozart’s music that converts stick figures into human beings.  No doubt, the dubious history of Così is partially rooted in the “risqué” character of the libretto: it didn’t become widely performed until well into the 20^th century.  But now, that we have gotten over that prudishness, it still isn’t in the class of the Marriage­­­ or the Don.  Why not?  The thinness of the plot—herewith a simplistic explanation—does not give Mozart an opportunity to write more Hits of the Mozartian Canon.  There is no La cidarem la mano; no Se vuol ballare—a particular favorite of mine; just a lot of beautiful music, but nothing that you can easily hum after one hearing or two.

   A final comment.  I got tears in my eyes (a general weakness of mine), when at just the right moment near the end, eight or so of the bars are played of the march theme that accompanied the two suitors when they were off on their fake trip to the army.  They were coming back!  That brief theme signaled that the emotional level would be deepened for the opera’s dénouement, until it would lighten up  again for the brief de rigueur cheerful finale.