Irony, deception, lies!
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Così fan tutte
From the very beginning we have to discard the beautiful illusion that Mozart’s compositions were always and for all time uncontroversial. Hugo von Hofmannsthal reported in the summer of 1916 “Occasionally I looked at the libretti of Figaro, Così fan tutte etc. I can well understand why the latter was never successful. Hardly a sentence in the whole piece is meant seriously, everything is irony, deception, lies. Music cannot express that (or only exceptionally) and the audience cannot tolerate it.” Of course the person who received these lines did not share the poet’s verdict in any way. Quite the contrary: Richard Strauss could hardly find sufficient words of praise for Così.
He felt that Mozart’s art of characterisation had reached its zenith in this joint work with Lorenzo Da Ponte: “It is still only a small group of people that takes delight in the charm of an intimate, psychological, consistently worked through and carefully fine-tuned story without major action and state affairs. They appreciate the artistic adaptation of a very specific area of expression as is Mozart’s style in Così fan tutte which he treats with the most refined irony, humour, pathos, parody and sentiment, something not found again until later in Die Meistersinger, Der Barbier von Bagdad and in Verdi’s Falstaff.”
Parody, humour, misleading unsuspecting audiences, ambiguity and turning the world upside down – none of this was ever alien to music, especially in the classical period. We only have to think of Haydn’s symphonies or Beethoven’s ‘Diabelli’ Variations. “But should music be able to express the comic element in all its nuances?”, asked E.T.A. Hoffmann. “I am fervently convinced of this and ingenious artists have proved it in hundreds of cases. For instance, music can contain the expression of the most delightful irony as prevails in Mozart’s wonderful opera Così fan tutte.”
The Spaniard Esteban de Arteaga was a highly intellectual contemporary of Mozart and in 1783, when he published his epoch-making history of Italian opera, he recognised the purpose of this unrealistic art in presenting human passions “by deception”. He said that opera unites poetry and music, drama and stage set in the one common aim of keeping audiences firmly in “error”, occupying their power of imagination with pleasure and outwitting them until they forget to think about what is true or false. This is absolutely true of Mozart’s Così: the art of the opera moves in the masquerades and intrigues of this cryptic comedy in its very own best element. Truth or a lie? The question remains unanswered on both sides of the orchestral pit.
And yet it is precisely the music in Così that annuls all deception and irony at that unfathomable moment, more real than reality when Fiordiligi and Dorabella, assisted by Don Alfonso, watch anxiously as their loved ones sail away. They express the wish, “Soave sia il vento, tranquilla sia l’onda – May gentle winds blow and tranquil waves carry you.” The writer Albrecht Goes, in his later years, used to claim that he was well able to leave a performance of Così after the first act, as it was “basically enough” for him to have heard this brief trio. “That is the Mozart of the final sphere, the uppermost rung of life, already half in farewell. There they are very close together: nameless gravity and weightless serenity,” avowed the sincere Mozartian. “The curtain is still open; Fiordiligi, Dorabella and Don Alfonso are singing. But we can hardly see the ship any more. For us there is barely anything left of the opera sky, hardly anything of Da Ponte and Watteau – only musica assoluta è celesta.” It will be hard to come across anything better in the opera house, at the end of all illusions.
Wolfgang Stähr
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
COSì FAN TUTTE
New production
Conductor Philippe Jordan • Stage directors Ursel und Karl-Ernst Herrmann • Stage and costume design Karl-Ernst Herrmann • Chorus master Rupert Huber • Fiordiligi Tamar Iveri • Dorabella El-na Garanca • Despina Helen Donath • Ferrando Ramón Vargas • Guglielmo Nicola Ulivieri • Don Alfonso Thomas Allen
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus • Vienna Philharmonic
Premiere 30 July, 7 p.m.
Further performances 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25 and 29 August, 7 p.m.
Grosses Festspielhaus
Telephone +43 (0) 662 8045-500
Telefax +43 (0) 662 8045-555
info@salzburgfestival.at
Titel and Salzburg-Impressions © Thomas Klinger, Munich