Introduction
Mozart and Da Ponte’s only original libretto features two couples who take a crash course in the School for Lovers. The cast consists of only six characters: two sisters, engaged to two best friends; and two philosophes, who lead the lovers through their 24-hour education. The cast is interconnected by similarities of gender, relationship status, occupation, and age. Mozart’s score and Da Ponte’s libretto delineate further
connections: the two philosophes echo each other’s distrust and low opinion of the opposite sex in similar language; the original couples have similar temperaments and emotional reactions. The eventual recombination of the lovers results in more typically paired couples of higher and lower voice parts. This paper will explore the emotional content which Mozart gives us in the score and libretto, through which we can gain a better understanding of the character’s motives and actions.
Each realization of Cosi, in performance and recording, chooses different aspects of the printed document to emphasize, and contributes a different facet to the overall picture of the opera. The interpretations of every new director, conductor, and cast offer contrasting and often contradictory readings of the characters. Therefore, analyzing any particular realization will reflect those contrasts and contradictions against the original document; the interpretation is a filter which can obscure the reader’s access to the original. My paper will analyze primarily the score and libretto, informed only secondarily through performance, in order to most accurately assess the intentions of Da Ponte and Mozart.
Analysis
Mozart has many colors in his musical toolbox with which to paint the story of the Scuola degli Amanti. The orchestration, mode, rhythm, and melodic character of the lines sung by the lovers all contribute to a highly nuanced characterization of complex people. For instance, the traditional conceit of recitativo accompagnato (accompanied by orchestra, rather than by harpsichord in recitativo secco) is reserved for moments of heightened drama. Often, this technique is used for solo scenes when a character is at a great crossroads in his/her life; the introduction of orchestra into these dramatically important scenes enlarges the sound world of the character at that crucial moment, and raises the tension and dramatic expression of the scene. In Cosi, this conceit is exploited to bring out the duality of the scene’s drama: using accompanied recitative shows the inner drama the characters are experiencing, but this emotion has an ironic quality (to us). Cosi is a comic opera, dealing with interpersonal relationships (rather like an excellent situation-comedy); the larger-than-life emotion of accompagnato is ironic to us at the same time as it is life-and-death serious to the characters.
One of the hallmarks of Mozart’s excellent writing for operatic drama is his ability to delineate nuances in personality and character. As the characters are examined at a general level, the sisters seem alike (both protest wildly of their fidelity, and then they “doth protest too much”) and the soldiers seem alike (their music is often sung in harmony or unison with the same text, expressing a unity of opinion). At the specific level, however, Mozart’s careful attention to detail offers much more information regarding each individual of the cast. Dorabella is impetuous and often more dramatic than her sister, and with Prendero’ quel brunettino actively voices her selection of a new suitor. Her sister, Fiordiligi, is seen as more reserved though no less dramatic; her dramatic side is more expressed as heroic in comparison to Dorabella’s grandiose “feminine” drama of flirtation and passion. Fiordiligi’s dramatic side is expressed not only through her heroic and steadfast virtue (Mozart, and dare I say Fiordiligi, may have had the Roman heroine Lucretia in mind), but also in her eventual 180 degree turn to embrace her new lover, “Sempronio” (Ferrando in disguise). This is not to say that one sister is virtuous or feminine where the other lacks these qualities; moreover, Mozart chooses to show both sisters as three-dimensional people who resemble each other as much as they are independent of one another. Fiordiligi does, in the same duet, select her own new suitor; her preference has also already been solidified but not verbalized until her sister provides the impetus. She may seem more sympathetic than her sister in the beginning of the opera because she champions (loudly) traditional values of honesty and fidelity; or perhaps we find her change of heart more sympathetic, as it makes her clearly human rather than heroic. The latter view contradicts but in some ways also reinforces the “misogynistic” message of the opera: women are fickle, yes, but they are but human, so we forgive (and still love) them.
As the disguised men begin their courtly assault on the virtue of their fiancées, Mozart shows us that Fiordiligi and Ferrando have more in common than they themselves are aware of. For one example, both have higher voices, and in a more conventional opera would be destined to love one another. This is Mozart, however, and the original pairings are of high and low voices mixed. The apparent mismatch of voice types is “solved” when the sisters take new lovers, and tenor and soprano sing an emotional duet. Their music is as genuinely passionate as any love-scene Mozart writes, and there is more than a hint of “true” passion being released at last, though the lovers themselves are unaware of the other’s true identity and perhaps their original subconscious desire for their friend/sister’s partner.
Significantly, both Ferrando and Fiordiligi sing vulnerable yet resolved arias, shortly after the entrance of the false Albanians. Come scoglio, Fiordiligi’s aria, is both an impassioned defense of her honor, and also a testament to the moral struggle she endures in upholding her principles. The wide ranging melodic lines that characterize this aria first appear as Fiordiligi’s recitative begins to bend into a wider and more acrobatic contour. Her rapid shifts of register and disjunct melodic motion create an effect of separate voices, as in a monophonic fugue; this gives a unanimity of purpose to the solo voice. On the other hand, these characteristics can also be seen as nervousness and perhaps less conviction than Fiordiligi asserts. Her apparent bravery contradicts the obvious vulnerability she feels at this moment. At this moment Fiordiligi could be singing to the entire cast, as written, or soliloquizing in her room; the presence or absence of others changes some of the subtext of her words, but not the dramatic affect; she believes (and to some extent, convinces herself of) her constancy is the right choice, and hopes it will be rewarded.
Ferrando also sings a resolve aria, Un’aura amorosa. He is every bit as vulnerable here as Fiordiligi in Come scoglio, but is forced to hide his emotions from the sisters so as not to betray his actual presence near them, or his masked identity. Regardless of his ultimate choices and feelings at the end of the opera, Ferrando is still honestly convinced of his love for Dorabella and her faith – and more importantly, he believes naively in the power of love to resolve all these dangerous plots. He does not seem to entertain any doubt that the experiment could change everyone’s heart and open their eyes to unwanted realities. It is important that Mozart and Da Ponte placed these resolve arias so early in the conflict – a relatively later placement would indicate more constancy than we actually can count on. Placing these arias earlier in the opera both helps to establish the characters and an emotional starting point for them, but is also consistent with my personal view of the characters’ grasp on the situation. Like all lovers, they believe, and trust blindly; thinking the best of the loved one, they not only hope for the best, but expect it. Mozart shows us with Cosi what happens when we take information and “truths” for granted – perhaps the foremost prohibition of the Enlightenment.
Response
Cosi fan tutte/i is the last of the Da Ponte operas I have come to know. As arguably the most “difficult” of the set, it shares the ambiguity and uneasy ending of Figaro – which is one of the features which makes this opera both an excellent drama, with realistic characters (albeit in dramatically operatic situations), and very uncomfortable to watch.
I feel sympathetic to all the characters in varying degrees throughout the play, and perhaps less characteristically of my sex, feel as much if not more sympathy for the male lovers than for the sisters. This is not to say that I would agree or sympathize with a truly misogynistic reading of Cosi (that is to say, one that ignores Mozart and Da Ponte’s careful subtext and irony), but that I identify more closely with the emotional response of the men. They are only partly in control of their own actions, having agreed to take Alfonso’s advice in honor, and therefore must balance their own emotions against the parts they assume and the actions of the other characters. As one of my male peers noted in class, people are susceptible to internalizing the mask they perform (as a mask, such as Giovanni’s, is more the sum of actions and words than simply a costume). I can extrapolate my own emotions and reaction to such a situation and fully sympathize with Guglielmo and Ferrando’s many conflicts; they contradict themselves in words and actions, which is unfortunately not that uncommon an experience in my own moments of conflict.
Mozart’s use of ironic musical references has a great emotional impact when the referenced context is understood. When “Bella vita militar” is heard again in Act II scene IV, the unraveling of the plot nearly made me cry. Fiordiligi and Dorabella are suddenly jerked out of their perplexing day into a nightmare and we, the viewers/readers, understand the full drama where they are supplied with limited information. Seeing their moment of confusion contrasted with the reality we are privileged to understand “hits home” emotionally, as we cannot step into the scene and provide a solution to their problems. This scene reverberates even on the first viewing, as we know (to some extent) that the lovers must return and confront the sisters; other ironies became clearer to me after several viewings/readings. One good example is the “Cosi fan tutte” motive which appears first as an instrumental melody in the overture, and only in the second act is presented with the words of the title. Upon hearing the overture after seeing this crucial scene, I gained a greater appreciation of Mozart’s ability to create unity and irony within the world of the libretto and score.
One aspect of Cosi which will stay with me is the host of unwritten, unexplored possibilities of the cast and drama. A specific example from class discussion is the fact that the lovers could have wooed the same girls when in disguise; this would change the drama significantly. Other examples of the road not taken are more easily transposed to a host of situations: the characters of Cosi learn the lesson that to love one is to not have loved another, and that the choices you make affect your future options. In the words of a popular country song, “loving might be a mistake, but it’s worth making.” I don’t necessarily believe that the lovers’ mistakes were worth making, but regardless of their choice to stay faithful or not, they had to take chances without knowing what the results would be. To live is to take chances and make choices, and leave the other options in the realm of nostalgia and regret.
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