 
                         20060307.00

                     Cosi fan tutte (1)

     Last night I listened to Cosi fan tutte for the third
time.  It took 3 hours.  I had in front of me the libretto in
French, Italian, English and German.  In spots, the
electronic reproduction seemed distorted.  I couldn't be sure
whether it was the amplifier or the CDs.  In the end, I
decided it was neither.  Throughout I had difficulty in
understanding the words, notwithstanding the libretto lying
open in front of me under a bright reading lamp.  The
difficulty seemed quite similar to trying to understand
Klemens when we are driving together to Manchester, and he is
speaking to me in his customary subdued voice while air is
rushing over and around the car at 65 m.p.h., or when I am
trying to listen to a conversation to which several persons are
contributing. I realized then, it wasn't the amplifier, it wasn't
the CD, it wasn't the rapidity of the recitatives, it wasn't
even the Italian, it was my hearing, unable in old age to
winnow the meaningful sounds of words from the encradling
melody and harmony of the music. I thought, however, that if
I listened often enough, certain sound patterns would become
familiar; when I learned to ignore them, the meaning of the
hitherto unintelligible words might emerge.  There are some
projects that one ought not take up in old age.  Listening to
opera, however, would seem to be a reasonable and edifying
recapitulation of youth.

     I ask myself what proportion of Cosi fan tutte audiences
could understand the Italian. A suspicion, as yet wholly
uncorroborated, is that the reliance on the Italian language
shielded the relatively plebeian portion of the audience from
the text, while the more enlightened intelligentsia and
aristocracy were far more likely to be able to understand it.
Such a distinction would explain the difference in the
plateau of sophistication between the DaPonte Italian operas
and those written in German, specifically the Magic Flute and
the Abduction.

     It will be obvious to any listener that the librettist
and the composer are both separated and united by the opera
itself: they approach the opera from different directions,
and meet in the opus.  For Mozart the opera, Cosi fan tutte,
specifically, was not a reflection of his personal experience,
was not an expression of his personal morality, nor was it a
statement of his vision of society and social relationships.
Rather the opera was for the composer an occasion for exercising
his creative imagination, just as for the singer it is the
occasion for applying his or her voice, and for the instrument-
alist for exercising his performing skills.  For the librettist,
however, it was, in addition to the exhibition of facility at
versifying, an occasion for poetry, the opportunity of translating
his own experience into literature. And precisely this, it seems
to me, is what DaPonte did in each of the three Mozart operas
for which he wrote the libretto. It was his own experience as
seducer, as betrayer, and as betrayed, that made it possible
for him to write about Don Giovanni, about Count Almaviva, and
about the other unfaithful lovers.

     "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil."  is the relevant stanza of the prayer. In Judeo-
Christian theology, subsequent to dismissing Abraham on the
summit of Moriah, God himself refrained from tempting.  That
spiritual function he relegated to the devil.  In Cosi fan
Tutte it is Don Alfonso who plays the devil's role, who
enlists Despina as his assistant, and who seduces Ferrando
and Guglielmo to complicity. His appeal to their masculine
vanity leads them and their women to the precipice of
catastrophe; it would have required a change in only a few
lines of text to turn Cosi fan tutte into the deepest of
tragedies.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
