 
                         20060318.00

                     Cosi fan tutte (5)

     This comedy, and perhaps comedy in general, reverses the
emotional response. Despina boasts that she laughs where
others cry, "E dove piangon esse io riderei."  The final
ensemble has the same message:

       TUTTI
       Fortunato l'uom che prende
       Ogni cosa pel buon verso,
       E tra i casi e le vicende
       Da ragion guidar si fa.

       Quel che suole altrui far piangere
       Fia per lui cagion di riso,
       E del mondo in mezzo ai turbini
       Bella calma provera.


     The converse, that laughter is but a cover for tears, is
demonstrated with remarkable forcefulness in the response of
both Guglielmo and Ferrando to the unfaithfulness of their
betrothed.  Thus, far from trivializing human experience, the
comedy serves to illuminate it, to reveal hitherto unimagined
abysses that human beings traverse, and, in the end, to provide 
them with a more accurate map and a more reliable compass.
Am I incorrect when I hear in the inversion of laughter and
weeping, a faint echo, however distorted, of the Biblical teaching
(Luke 13:30):

     And, behold, there are last which shall be first;
     and there are first which shall be last.

     Concomitant to the emotional inversion is an ethical
one.  Ferrando and Guglielmo set out at Don Alfonso's
instigation to test the fidelity of Dorabella and Fiordiligi.
If, in the end, the fidelity of the women is found wanting,
the same is true to an even greater degree of their suitors.
Not only is the very enterprise of leading the the women into
temptation for testing purposes a severe breach of fidelity,
but it appears that the men's feigned wooing is real,
passionate wooing, and it is very significant that the opera
ends with the marriage of each suitor to a woman other than
his betrothed.

     When Ferrando and Guglielmo comply with Don Alfonso's
directive to test the fidelity of their betrothed, they
exhibit an erotic passion inconsistent with the purported
diagnosticity of their efforts.  The satisfaction derived
from wooing not his own, but his friend's beloved, or of
wooing his friend's beloved as if it were his own, receives
at least passing recognition in Ferrando's aria:

       FERRANDO
       Un'aura amorosa
       Del nostro tesoro
       Un dolce ristoro
       Al cor porgera;

       Al cor che, nudrito
       Da speme, da amore,
       Di un'esca migliore
       Bisogno non ha.

and in his Cavatina

       FERRANDO
       Tradito, schernito
       Dal perfido cor,
       Io sento che ancora
       Quest'alma l'adora,
       Io sento per essa
       Le voci d'amor.

     It appears to me that their pretence falters for both suitors. 
Each of them woos in earnest. Each of them ends with a passionate
appeal to a woman other than the one to whom he is betrothed.  Thus
the conclusion: "Cosi fan tutte," is just as appropriate to Ferrando
and Guglielmo as it is to Dorabella and Fiordiligi, if not more so.

                      * * * * *
Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
