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     Over the years, the sequence of experiences on arriving
in Konnarock has fallen into a predictable pattern.  First
the exhilaration of coming home, then the relief that the
house is still there and has not been destroyed by fire,
water, wind or vandals (Feuer, Wasser Luft und Erde) the
elements by which they who want to live in Sarastro's realm
required to be purified.  Next the unpacking.  As a matter of
protocol, we unpack initially into the empty two car garage,
taking items upstairs only as we need them.  That saves a lot
of work, considering that we invariably bring so much more
than we need or ever use.  Then I turn on the water, checking
all the bathrooms for leaking faucets and drains, establish
telephone call-forwarding, so that my Cambridge patients can
reach me by dialing a local number, and attend to the
inevitable repairs.  Something is always wrong.  Last fall it
was a fragment of rust which stuck in a faucet and prevented
its being turned off.  This year it was the washing machine
which balked; turned out to be suffering from simple
mechnical arthritis: it hadn't had any exercise all winter,
and its joints were frozen.  A whiff of WD-40 lubricant
solved that problem.  Then, when the repairs have been made,
I begin to feel tired and very old, lonely for my parents and
for my sister, for my long lost childhood, and a little bit
depressed.  I attribute my mood and my lethargy then, to the
three thousand feet altitude change, which isn't really very
much by Rocky Mountain standards, and shouldn't cause
symptoms; but then it's not surprising that I should over-
estimate environmental effects in as much as my very
existence is premised on the over-estimation of my own
importance.

     Usually I begin my days in Konnarock by skimming over
some of my parents' books, many of which are badly damaged
from the brine of New York harbor into which when unloading
them, the Nazis dipped our possessions as a fare-well
gesture.  I don't remember whether I ever told that story.
My mother's favorite books were Rilke, of course, the
Scandanavian authors Hermann Bang and Knut Hamsun. My
father's books included non-fiction such as Schweitzer's
volume on Bach; there are editions of Lessing and Heine, and
the gilded volumes of Schiller that were a Bar Mitzvah
present to my uncle Ernst Joachim Meyer, killed in Normandy
in 1914, after whom I was named. (Those three, Schiller,
Lessing and Heine, in fact, are the only three politically
correct pro-Jewish German classical authors.)

     Possibly it is a sign of my getting older or more
mature, that Cosi fan tutte rather than the St Matthew
Passion turned out to be this year's Good Friday spell.  I
was still too preoccupied with DaPonte-Mozart and Cosi fan
tutte, trying to familiarize myself with the Italian by
reading the libretto over and over again, and listening to
the CDs with earphones so as not to disturb.  If the authors
had spent as much time as I, reflecting on what they were
doing, they might never have completed, perhaps not even have
gotten started with their opera. A considertaion which leads
me to conclude that this opera, and perhaps the same may be
said of all (literary) art, is like a photograph of an
intricate landscape; in that the photographer does not and
cannot possibly have a comprehensive inventory of the items
that his picture will show.  It is his skill, his art, which
account for composing, framing and focusing the image, but
beyond that it is for the viewer, the reader, the listener to
interpret and to ascertain what the picture, the opera, shows
and means.

     To my previous comments on Cosi, I would add the
following:

Don Alfonso is the quintessentially old man, who like the
grandfather to whom Plato introduces us in the first book of
the Republic is beyond erotic desire. Note his exchange with
Despina:

DON ALFONSO
Despina mia, di te
Bisogno avrei.

DESPINA
Ed io niente di lei.

DON ALFONSO
Ti vo' fare del ben.

DESPINA
A una fanciulla
Un vecchio come lei non pu`o far nulla.

==============================

DON ALFONSO
Despina my dear,
I have need of you.

DESPINA
Well, I haven't of you.

DON ALFONSO
I mean you well.

DESPINA
An old man like you
Can do nothing for a girl.


     Clearly his detachment is essential to Alfonso's role as
the objective, dispassionate judge of human nature.

=========================

     As strenuous to credulity as any other facet of the
story is the willingness of Ferrando and Guglielmo to proceed
with an enterprise which proves much less tractable and more
burdensome than they had anticipated. It is in this context
that military honor and discipline as the basis of their
gambling contract with Alfonso become significant.  Military
honor is alluded to several times in the course of the opera.

FERRANDO
Giuriamo.

DON ALFONSO
Da soldati d'onore?

GUGLIELMO
Da soldati d'onore.

DON ALFONSO
E tutto quel farete
Ch'io vi dir`o di far?

FERRANDO
Tutto.

=====================

FERRANDO
We swear.

DON ALFONSO
On your honour as soldiers?

GUGLIELMO
On our honour as soldiers.

DON ALFONSO
And you'll do
Everything I tell you to?

FERRANDO
Everything!

=====================

DON ALFONSO
Intanto,
Silenzio e ubbidienza
Fino a doman mattina.

GUGLIELMO
Siam soldati, e amiam la disciplina

DON ALFONSO
Meanwhile
Silence and obedience.
Until tomorrow morning.

GUGLIELMO
We are soldiers
And accept discipline.

===========================

DORABELLA
Crudele!
Di sedur non tentate un cor fedele.

GUGLIELMO /(fra s'e)/
La montagna vacilla.
Mi spiace; ma impegnato
`E l'onor di soldato.
/(a Dorabella)/
V'adoro!

===========================

DORABELLA
Cruel man,
Do not seek to tempt a faithful heart.

GUGLIELMO
(to himself)
The mountain is weakening.
I don't like this, but I've pledged
My honour as a soldier.
(to Dorabella)
I adore you!

     The cruelty and destructiveness of their gambling
contract with Alfonso, of the contrived calculated
temptation, is made plausible by Fernando's and Guglielmo's
understanding of themselves as soldiers, whose duty it is to
be unfeeling and inconsiderate in pursuing their
reconnaisance mission, however painful and damaging it may
prove to themselves and to their victims.

     My final, and to my mind, the most startling
observation, is that Don Alfonso is absolutely correct: Cosi
fan tutte. That's what they all do, because that's how they
all are.  What is is revealed here is a law, reality of
nature, a discovery of the enlightenment, to be taken as
seriously as Lavoisier's discovery of oxygen.

     Passions are not specific, but generic.  A woman's love
for a man is fundamentally not for this or that particular
person, but potentially for each and every one of them.
Despina's description of the disguised "Albanian" suitors is
significant:

DON ALFONSO /(sottovoce a Despina)/
Che ti par di quell'aspetto?

DESPINA /(sottovoce a Don Alfonso)/
Per parlarvi schietto schietto,
Hanno un muso fuor dell'uso,
Vero antidoto d'amor.

DON ALFONSO
(aside, to Despina)
What do you think of their appearance?

DESPINA
Frankly, frankly, speaking frankly,
They've got snouts beyond belief,
The very antidotes of love.


     Remarkably, it's these two very ugly characters who are
able to seduce Dorabella and Fiordiligi, with whom Dorabella
and Fiordiligi are able to fall in love.

     My interpretation: The need to love, on all levels and
in all dimensions is integral and fundamental to human
nature; is comparable to the need for food and drink, for
clothing and shelter; and is ultimately as little under
control of the "will", whatever that may be, as these.  To be
sure, one may choose what one eats and drinks, to the extent
that choices are available, but ultimately, except in
extremis, one has no choice but to eat and drink something,
and thus, except when in extremis, one also has no choice but
to love someone, and this primeval need to love is what
Mozart-DaPonte celebrate in Cosi fan tutte.

     Finally there is the ironic fact that we need the work
of art, in this case, this opera, to demonstrate to us what
should be obvious from our own experience. Strange that it is
not.  Concealed, I think by convention of logic and language,
of feeling and custom. To shatter these conventions is the
function of art. Yet it is remarkable to me, to what extent
even art is subject to conventional constraints, the severity
of which is dramatized for me by the fact that it was only in
1922, one hundred thirty-two years after the initial
Burgtheater production that Cosi fan tutte appeared on the
American stage.

                      * * * * *
Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
