What a terrific performance! I hope you all enjoyed this as much as I did. the Met Opera is such a wonderful place. Did you realize that you were attending what is sometimes regarded as THE best opera in the repertoire at one of THE premiere opera houses in the WORLD!! The costumes and sets were great, the singing was splendid, the orchestra was fantastic and the pacing of the opera was, I thought, really wonderful. The action MOVED (as a comedy should) but there were some very tender moments when Mozart’s music was allowed to breathe. I will post some pictures later, but for right now, I wanted to share an email I received from a gentleman sitting just in front of me! We started talking and it turns out he was a language professor from Staten Island College (CUNY) and he had a particular theory about how the final moments of Cosi should be staged:
Dear Professor Smaldone,
It was a pleasure to meet you at the opera. Here is Chapter 12 of my THE BLESSED HUMAN RACE, which is about why I think Fiordiligi should wind up with Ferrando.
George Jochnowitz
Chapter 12
Reconsidering Così Fan Tutte
“This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel,” said Horace Walpole. Così fan tutte is certainly a comedy. Its librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, was a man who thought; its composer, Mozart, was without any question a man who felt. Da Ponte was a genius, but Così fan tutte is performed and loved today because the greatest of all geniuses, Mozart, gave us its music—music that at times is comic, at times light, but at other times passionate and profound.
Così fan tutte means “so do they all,” with tutte (all) in the feminine. What is it that they all do? Don Alfonso, the cynical baritone who organizes the practical joke that forms the plot of the opera, thinks he knows what all women do: they are fickle. To prove his point, he persuades the heroes of the opera, Ferrando and Guglielmo, to leave their fiancées, return in disguise, and steal the hearts of Dorabella and Fiordiligi away from the men they are engaged to marry.
This is the kind of nasty plot that is typical of the comedies of the 17th and 18th centuries, a plot involving disguise and deception, in which the reality of human emotion is denied and mocked. Contemporary audiences generally dislike comedies of this period—after all, there is more feeling as well as more humor in an I Love Lucy program.
The early scenes of Così fan tutte are standard 18th-century comedy. Guglielmo tells us his beloved is perfection, the phoenix: “La fenice è Fiordiligi.” Ferrando thinks it is his fiancée: “Dorabella è la fenice.” Neither the music nor the words suggest men in love; what we hear instead is fun and energy.
Ferrando and Guglielmo, who have been teased by Don Alfonso into going along with his gag, pretend to leave for war. They come back wearing ridiculous disguises and proceed to woo the ladies. It is not clear at this point which gentleman is after which lady, but the way they go about showing their love is by pretending to commit suicide. They are “saved” by the maid, Despina, who disguises herself as a doctor and cures them with a giant magnet. All in good fun.
In Act I, there are solo arias, duets, trios, sextets, and a chorus. One thing is missing: there are no love duets. Nowhere in the opera does Ferrando sing a love duet with Dorabella, nor does Fiordiligi ever sing a duet with Guglielmo. Why should they? They don’t love each other. If they did, it would break the mood. There is no place for love in 18th-century comedy.
Something significant happens in Act II. The young women do not recognize their disguised lovers, but there is a different thing they recognize. They know which of the two they prefer: neither prefers her finacé! Dorabella will take the dark one: “Prenderò quel brunettino.” Fiordiligi likes the blond one, “il biondino.” Dorabella, the mezzo, has chosen Guglielmo, the bass. Fiordiligi, the soprano, likes Ferrando, the tenor. The situation at the beginning was all wrong. Can a mezzo ever wind up with a tenor? Ridiculous.
Not too much further into the second act, Guglielmo and Dorabella sing a duet, “Il core vi dono” (I give you my heart). It is the first male-female duet in Così fan tutte. We can hear the hearts beating in the words and in the music: “Perche batte batte batte qui?” (Why is it beating beating beating here?). In literature, when we say two hearts are beating as one, it is merely a figure of speech. In music, we hear it; we feel it; we know it has to be true. This love duet is one of the most beautiful in all opera. But it is more than that. It is also the most convincing. The music has taken us from the coldness of comedy to the warmth of love.
When the women fall in love, they become real. Each has her own personality. Dorabella has given in to her passion. Fiordiligi cannot come to terms with her emotions. Her great second-act aria, “Per pieta,” is filled with doubt and turmoil. When Fiordiligi finally surrenders to Ferrando, it is not because she is fickle. She has found the great love of her life. She tried to be loyal to Guglielmo as long as possible, but she failed. Besides, Guglielmo never deserved her loyalty, nor did Ferrando merit devotion from Dorabella. Both men had casually agreed to play Don Alfonso’s game. The initial pairings were wrong from the start.
Don Alfonso has won his bet. He makes Guglielmo and Ferrando sing after him “Così fan tutte,” to the notes E F A D E. We heard almost the same theme in the overture: E F A D G E, a sequence of half notes, marked andante. It is neither a light nor a comic melody. Rather, it sounds solemn, almost ominous. Is that the appropriate music for asserting that women are fickle and love is a joke?
At the end of the opera, the disguises are taken off and the lovers are married. Who marries whom? The libretto does not say. The silence of the text suggests that we go back to the beginning: Ferrando with Dorabella, Guglielmo with Fiordiligi. That is the way the final scene is usually staged. It is in keeping with the comic mood of the opera, the traditions of the times, and probably the intentions of the composer and librettist.
Once in a great while, the final scene is done differently, and the women get to marry the men they have fallen in love with. That is the way it ought to be. We know, because the music has told us so, that Fiordiligi loves Ferrando and Dorabella loves Guglielmo. We know, because the music has told us so, that their love is real. We know that if they went back to their original fiancés, the men would forever resent the women for their betrayal, and the women would hate the men for the cruelty of their joke.
If women are indeed fickle, why should Fiordiligi and Dorabella show loyalty to their original fiancés? If women are capable of true lasting love, then why shouldn’t they stay with the men they love? The answer usually given is that the opera isn’t about real people, that it is a comedy not to be taken seriously. The problem is caused by Mozart’s greatness. He was too good a composer; his music has too much feeling to go with such a silly story. The title, Così fan tutte, says that women’s emotions are not real. Mozart’s music proves that the title is wrong.
What do you think?
See you soon. Have a great weekend.
ES
I loved Cosi fan Tutte! I loved the set, and how it kept changing (the part when Despina came out dragging the house behind her and sang, “It’s hard being a chambermaid” was so funny). I know we watched the first act in class, but you can’t even compare that to actually sitting inside the Met and watching it live (But I did think that watching the first act in class was very helpful because I already knew the story, and it was easier for me to follow along and I could actually watch the performers instead of just reading the subtitles).
I found Professor Jochnowitz’s theory of Cosi very interesting. I also thought that the women should have stayed with the men they fell in love with, because that was the point in the opera when they became two separate characters. In the first act, they were always singing together about the same things. It is only when they finally fell in love that they separated and revealed their own emotions and thoughts. Therefore, they should have remained with the men they fell in love with in the middle of the opera, instead of switching back at the end. Shouldn’t they have realized that their “original pairings were wrong from the start” if both women fell in love with the man who was not her betrothed? This was my only problem with the Cosi fan Tutte, but the rest I thought was amazing and I really enjoyed the whole experience.
I think Professor Jochnowitz made some fantastic points about the opera. Many times, theater and opera plots are dismissed as fantastic and too hard to believe. They often deal with extreme situations and hyperbole in order to make the story more funny and exciting. However, this does not mean that Cosi fan tutte has to conform to this stereotype. Yes the whole idea is rather ridiculous, but I think Jochnowitz brings up some very important things to be considered.
I would certainly like to believe that Mozart intended to show that love does indeed exist and that women’s emotions are in fact legitimate.
I enjoyed this opera immensely!
I thought that the opera was absolutely fantastic: the costumes were exquisite, the singing was really beautiful and the set was so realistic. What I was especially amazed by was how talented the performers were: imagine having to memorize that amount of music, while singing with feeling and proper technique (with the proper lyrics in a language that is not their own), and still having to stay in character the entire time! It really is miraculous multi-tasking which I admire all of them for.
I am glad that this topic about the ending and the nature of women was brought up. I have been thinking a lot about it since the opera because even though it was a comedy, there was something unsettling about the ending! How could you happily marry someone that has betrayed you in such a way, representative of the fact that you truly don’t love the other person? Also, I wanted there to be some sort of realization that women aren’t as flimsy with their hearts as is portrayed, and the idea that they were simply paired with the wrong man for them would be a good fix for this. I thought something similar to Professor Jochnowitz in that the couples shown at the beginning were merely infatuated with each other, shown clearly by their playfulness and dramatic raving of how much they love each other, reminding me of silly teenagers with their first boyfriend or girlfriend. I also agree with him in that the powerful love duet of Guglielmo and Dorabella clearly suggests a love that only music can describe. However, I wonder how they’ve figured out they love each other any more than they loved their original partners if they barely know each other? Maybe it is just part of accepting what is part of the opera; regardless, it is interesting to think about!
I’m definitely another fan of the Cosi fan Tutte set pieces! Ditto to Katherine about the bit with Despina lugging in the house being hilarious, and using nothing more than revolving doors and a subtle change of lighting to switch the setting from inside to outside the cabin was brilliantly clever.
In response to Prof. Jonchnowitz, I think it’s worth mentioning that the supposed “true loves” that the women fall for in place of their fiances don’t actually exist. The men are only playing dress-up, and the so-called “love duet” that Jonchnowitz dramatically cites as evidence for why the couple-swap should be made permanent is, at least halfway, certainly a lie.
That being said, I’m wholeheartedly in favor the traditional staging, which I find to be an altogether truer fit to the “cosi fan tutte” philosophy of Don Alfonso that is the tongue-in-cheek moral of the opera.
Excellent Alexa! Jonchnowitz makes a compelling argument for NOT switching back to the original arrangement, but you make an equally compelling argument FOR switching. Jochnowitz does say that DaPonte leaves it unclear, so perhaps he intended it to be left unclear (and it should NOT be staged clearly)?
Good response!