 
                         20060418.02

     I am very much aware that I have not (entirely) avoided
the pitfall of lapsing what we used to call, in the early
exchanges of our correspondence as screed, i.e. verbose,
pretentious and transparently meaningless disquisitions.  I
consider them a real danger, but I also know that it is
necessary for me to take some risks in this regard, if I am
to write anything meaningful.

     I don't think I entirely avoided this pitfall in my last
letter when I purported to confirm the validity of the operas
theme, Cosi fan tutte.  To do justice to this important and
difficult question requires more talent than I have at my
disposal.  Yet I believe I should address it as well as I am
able.

     By this time you must be getting fed up with my Cosi fan
tutte obsession.  One reason I don't get over it, is because
I'm trying to use the libretto and Mozart's music to which it
is set, as an instrument for learning Italian.  I never tire
of the words that are put to music; and repetition, seemingly
endless repetition, is the only way I know to assimilate the
language, especially in the light of my senile memory loss.
Each time I re-read it I think of something else; each time I
re-hear it, I hear something different.  If I had the voice
and the skills to sing it on stage, - which I obviously don't
and never have had, then I would obviously have to spend even
more time on it to learn it by heart.  The suggestion is so
remote from reality that it is pathetic.

     I need to correct and complete my account of Cosi fan
tutte as being an ultimately valid and conclusive description
of human behavior.  It is an error to assume that it is in
the individual's power to choose to be faithful or
unfaithful.  Everyone has a need to love and to be loved.
Everyone has a need to be faithful and everyone has a need to
be the beneficiary of another's faithfulness.  These needs
are variable and dynamic.  They compete and conflict.  The
resolution of their respective needs determines how
individuals ultimately conduct themselves.  It is relatively
unpredictable in any given case what that resolution will be.

     The need for fidelty reflects the circumstance that
loving or being loved has such a profound effect on an
individual's existence, and that the withdrawal or denial of
such love, once it has obtained is a dire threat to the
integrity of the individual who sustains the loss.
====================

     Cosi may also be interpreted as an historical document:
as a program of social-sexual revolution.  Consider the
following exchange, which struck me as I struggled with the
translation:

DESPINA Sicuro! E, quel ch'e meglio, Far all'amor come
assassine, e come Faranno al campo i vostri cari amanti.

DORABELLA Non offender cos`i quell'alme belle, Di fedelt`a,
d'intatto amore esempi.

DESPINA Via, via! Passaro i tempi Da spacciar queste favole
ai bambini.

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

DESPINA Certainly! And what's more, Making love furiously, as
your Dear gentlemen will be doing on active service!

DORABELLA Don't insult those pure souls like this, Those
models of fidelity and perfect love.

DESPINA Go on with you! The times are past For spinning such
tales even to babies!


     Passaro i tempi: the times are past.  That, of course is
the message of Figaro, Beaumarchais play had been barred from
Viennese performances, for years; it required special
dispensations for the Mozart-DaPonte opera to be performed.

     Perhaps Cosi should be treated as a document of the
revolution in social-sexual behavior, standards that occurred
concomitantly with the French Revolution.  That there was a
back-lash lasting almost a century should not obscure the
importance of the development.

                      * * * * *
Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
