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                     Cosi fan tutte (8)

     One must be fair to Don Alfonso.  The ordeal that he
designed for Dorabella and Fiordigili, and by extension for
Ferrando and Guglielmo was originally not Don Alfonso's
proposition.  His concern as a disciple of 18th century
rationalism merely insisted that truth is correspondence to
reality.  He championed reason and he wanted truth.  He
thought what we believe to be true should correspond to our
experience.  He asserted that all women are alike in their
unfaithfulness.  That far-reaching statement might be worth
examining in another context.  In Cosi fan tutte, it was
Ferrando and Guglielmo, two soldiers who like most of their
comrades must often have reflected and worried about the
loyalty of the women they left behind; who consoled
themselves with the belief that their particular girls were
utterly faithful to them; but somewhat insecure in their
beliefs, so that when Alfonso proclaimed himself a sceptic,
they challenged him for the proof.  It was Ferrando and
Guglielmo who demanded proof of Alfonso's assertion that all
women are alike; and that none are faithful.  And that is how
the opera took its shape.

     Don Alfonso adjudged all women to be unfaithful and to
be, in this respect, alike.  Ferrando and Guglielmo claimed
that their beloved, Dorabella and Fiordiligi, were different.
The implication that the lovers of these unusual women were
also different, i.e. unusual, etwas besonderes, was not made
explicit.  Ferrando and Guglielmo were so offended, - the
modern psychologist would say, felt so threatened, that they
insisted he prove his assertions; they threatened him with
duels, unless he substantiated his claims.

     Alfonso in turn protested the folly of the men in
demanding a proofs of something that would only make them
unhappy, but they insisted, and in consequence, Alfonso gave
them literally and figuratively what they asked for.  Why
then should one assign responsibility for the temptation to
him?  Can he not plausibly defend himself by saying, that he
acted only under duress?

     In this context, it is of interest to compare Don
Alfonso with Sarastro.  Both are "leaders" on whose actions,
on whose characters, the lives of others depend.  Sarastro is
a high priest of a (Masonic) religion that teaches tolerance
and love.  Alfonso is a seer, a philosopher, a wise man, who
sees through the folly of the ideals of his pupils and
friends.  Neither of them is young, as indeed age is deemed
requisite to wisdom.  Sarastro is not old enough, however,
not to be beneficiary of some sort of droit du seigneur.  In
any event, he proves his generosity, when he sings: Zur Liebe
will ich dich nicht zwingen, etc.  Don Alfonso manifests no
amatory interest whatever in the women whose lives he
manipulates.  He is too old; presumably, it is on account of
his age that he is out of the running.

     Each of them, Sarastro and Don Alfonso, is
representative of an ideology.  Sarastro's is summarized in
his aria, In diesen heilgen Hallen.  Don Alfonso's ideology
is the dominance of reason, is 18th century enlightenment.

     The quality of DaPonte's Cosi fan tutte libretto
relative to Die Zauberfloete, is dramatically demonstrated by
a comparison of Fiordigili and Dorabella with the girls of
the Magic Flute, Pamina and Papagena.  The story about Pamina
is that she was promised by her evil mother, the Queen of the
Night to Monostatos, Sarastros servant as a reward for
Monostatos, who is black, assassinating his master.  All very
childish crude and embarrassing, and politically terribly
incorrect; saved only by Mozarts music.

     The girls in both operas are put to the test, though
granted, Papagena very lightly, or not at all.  But so far as
the travails of Pamina are concerned, "Ach ich fuehl's es ist
verschwunden, ewig hin mein ganzes Glueck."  her cause is
astoundingly similar to the sorrows of Dorabella and
Fiordigili.  Pamina, just as Fiordiligi and Dorabella, is put
to the test of being separated from her lover; and Pamina,
just as the Cosi fan tutte girls, threatens suicide.  Pamina,
apparently more serious, is saved from her threat of self-
destruction by intervention ex machina, whereas the suicide
threats of Dorabella and Fiordigili seem little more than
rhetoric and have no lasting echo in the opera.

     The psyches of the Cosi fan tutte women are far more
meticulously, and I think, lovingly described.  To my ears
the most eloquent complaints are the searching questions of
Fiordigili: "io burlo? io burlo?"  These words express the
pathos of the comedian who is in no mood to make fun of
anyone.  Her protest, ghostlike, as if from another world, as
if she knew (subconsciously) that it was _she_ who was being
made fun of.

     "Cruel man", is Fiordiligi's cry of anguish because of
the conflict, turmoil, torment into which Ferrando's
entreaties have thrust her, an intimation of a (subconscious)
perception of the calculated cruelty of his scheme, and an
expression of the fact that she cannot trust him.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
