High art, low motives
Mozart's Così fan tutte - a musicological sob story
It has taken over 150 years to silence or at least subdue discussions, which in some cases developed into real artistic and cultural feuds, about Mozart's Così fan tutte. Weak, useless, contradictory, implausible texts with stereotype characterisations are not rare in opera history. Quite the contrary: they are largely tolerated as an accompanying phenomenon, whereby one of the main arguments is that it is primarily a matter of providing a foundation for the musical expression, a kind of actionistic background against whose randomly arranged set the actual operatic message can be powerfully proclaimed. Consequently music and singing are considered to be the language of the soul, an echo of what is generally valid - more or less freed from the actors whose play of forces does nothing other than spark off the artistic fine tuning.
Mozart's and Da Ponte's contemporaries were baffled
In the case of Mozart's Così, the interest of the musical world was not so willing to be lenient. The melodic and compositional achievements of the still young master appeared to be too miraculous and sublime beyond any shadow of doubt and far nobler than compositions produced by his contemporaries. A further problem was that the confusing (and bearing in mind the customs of the 19th century) morally questionable entanglements of the text were the work of a highly esteemed librettist, who had acquired a position of high status with his sophisticated, and on a cultural and political level immensely explosive, adaptation of Figaro by Beaumarchais. Mozart's and Da Ponte's contemporaries and also their musical and literary descendants were baffled. The rigid standards of aesthetic right and wrong seemed to be wavering: some condemned Mozart for having gone off the rails and using his precious talent for a low job, others scourged the poet for having squandered his great gifts on a slapstick story that had already been squeezed out to excess.
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| Hans Neuenfels is to direct the new 'Cosi' at the Salzburg Festival 2000, set design and costumes will be designed by Reinhard von der Thannen. (Photo: Erika Fernschild) |
Harsh criticism and melancholy opinions
In the booklet accompanying the recording of the Salzburg Festival production of Così under Riccardo Muti, musicologist and Mozart specialist Rudolph Angermüller meticulously examines a matted network of Così-predecessors, contemporaries and imitations on various theatrical and compositional levels. He quotes attempts to link beautiful passages from the criticised opera with passages from Idomeneo. He recalls reviews, which range from melancholy to harsh criticism, and opinions by Eduard Hanslick, Richard Wagner, and also by Friedrich Ludwig Schröder, for instance, after he had read the first German translation of the Da Ponte libretto by Heinrich Gottlieb Schmieder and Carl David Stegmann entitled Liebe und Versuchung oder So machen's die Mädchen (Love and Temptation or This is How the Girls do it) In April 1791 Schröder noted contemptuously in his diary, " 'This is how they all do it', singspiel composed by Mozart, is dreadful and degrades all women and cannot possibly please a female audience and therefore will not be successful!"
A bubbling alliance of lightness and wit
Of course the "simplicity of the object", perhaps even the degradation of the female characters - not too credible in a male-dominated society - had led to largely reserved reactions. Sensitive reviewers and chroniclers of what was going on in the arts world differentiated between Mozart's spirited, gracious, tremendously varied theatre music and the crass improbability of the characters. As a theatrical totality Così seemed to be either behind its time or a work of a future yet to come. Nowadays we have a different perceptual range for the playful interchange of human subjects and for their experimental joys in the rigid corset of a betting agreement.
Television stations present psychological "games" and competitions en masse to explore the boundaries of emotional values. Consequently Così is modern and fashionable - a predecessor embedded in luxurious music of the show Wetten daß (I bet you I can do this ... popular entertainment show on Austrian and German TV), ennobled by Mozart's unbelievable ease in modulating characters and situations, given the human touch by the sharp wit of Da Ponte.
The bubbling alliance of the two together combine to make an operatic and dramatic intelligence test, which is essentially carried out by the heart. There can be nothing more fascinating, but nothing more difficult either than to establish credibly on stage what is all too human as a transition study of humanity. And thus Così could even be accused of having a little of the philosophy of The Magic Flute.
| Peter Cossé | top |