Handout (flat)        Handout (folded)                Return to Index

 
8. When Farce Gets Real. Today, we consider Così fan Tutte, or “All Women Do It.” Two men boast of the fidelity of their fiancées. An older friend challenges them to a test. They are to pretend to be called away, but return in disguise to woo the other one’s sweetheart. The women hold out, but not for long. Then the men return in their own guise. There are recriminations and abject apologies, but everybody learns an important lesson. The plot is as farcical as any later comic opera by Rossini. And if Rossini had been writing the music, it would have been just that: farce. But Mozart was not content with fluff. He insisted on treating the characters as human beings, and giving them real emotions. And with his music, the comedy plays out in an entirely different key.

In the first hour, we will see how Mozart sets this up as a more or less typical opera buffa, though with a few hints of the seriousness to come. In the second hour, we look in more detail at the two seduction scenes and the finale, comparing several productions to get a sense of what is at stake.

 
The script, videos, and images will be posted immediately after class.

Handout (flat)        Handout (folded)        Class Script Return to Index

 
Q AND A

What is the production history of Così fan tutte?
Wikipedia says that the opera was peformed only 5 times during Mozart's lifetime. The first British production was in 1811, and it was not seen in America until 1922. The subject was considered rather risqué and the music was occasionally repurposed to accompany more wholesome scenarios. Wikipedia also says that the opera entered the general repertoire only in mid-century, which fits with my assertion that the resurgence in the popularity of Mozart operas in general had much to do with the foundation of the Glyndebourne Festival in 1934; Così was included in the first season.

How did the opera end in Mozart's day?
There is no absolute proof, but the 18th-century convention for theater in general would have involved a symmetrical return to the status quo ante. Furthermore, before the finale, Alfonso gets the men to admit that they still love their fiancées, and the moral at the end seems to imply a sadder-but-wiser restoration. Remember that if one takes the action literally, all the women have done is give away a portrait locket.

What endings can be found now?
The problem gets a lot more serious if you treat the exchange of lockets as the symbol of physical submission. I don't know for certain, but I think the first productions to imply that Dorabella and Guglielmo (and possibly Fiordiligi and Ferrando, though they do not really have time) actually have sex date from the late 1970s or early 1980s. Given the upping of the emotional ante, it becomes more difficult to make the status quo ending work. There is a page about the various endings here; they include returning to the old couples, sticking with the new ones, refusing to be paired with anybody, or various hybrid solutions whereby one pair ends as a couple while the other splits.

Is there anything at all in the score to suggest the rightness of the new pairings?
Surprisingly, there is. Listen to the music of the first duet between the sisters. Fiordiligi sings graceful phrases to describe what she sees in Guglielmo; Dorabella's description of Ferrando is all spiky energy and excitement. Yet when we hear the two men express themselves in arias, it is Ferrando who is the poet, Guglielmo the macho stud. It seems that each woman finds the qualities she was dreaming about in the beginning—but in the wrong man.

Given this, can any case be made for the status quo ante ending?
Other than the historical argument that the Eighteenth Century was more concerned with logic and symmetry than with naked emotion, I think a case can be made, though this is admittedly a highly personal answer. Ideally, emotional commitment and sexual satisfaction will be found in the same partner, but there are many cases where it isn't. You don't need to be adulterous to admit to the possibility of being attracted to someone other than your spouse, and it may even be true that a lasting commitment (for all the reasons that people do commit) may be strengthened not weakened by this assumption. You don't need to act on these attractions, of course—but even when people do, forgiveness and understanding may itself be a bond.

Should the title not be Così fan tutti, with a masculine reference?
You can argue all you like that the men were just following orders, but it is impossible in the "Me Too" era not to consider the men as much to blame as the women, or even more. But Lorenzo da Ponte's libretto plays out as an abstract fable or formal dance, where the chess pieces are moved one way then move back again. It is only Mozart's genius—or refusal to write music that is purely abstract—that gives real character and emotion to these pawns. And once you see that, symmetry is no longer an excuse.

So is Così fan tutte really a tragedy?
No. For all these reasons, it remains a comedy. But comedy is not the same as farce, although the opera begins like one. Comedy, in the deepest sense, is a recognition of the complexity of human behavior, and Mozart's opera has that in spades.

 
VIDEO LINKS

Most of my clips were taken from the 2006 production by Nicholas Hytner at Glyndebourne. This is available on DVD for about $39 new or $4 used. YouTube has only a bunch of short clips, though many of these come from scenes we watched in class; I have put all these in a section together.

There are actually many full productions of the opera on YouTube. I list only those with titles in English, with brief notes on each, but there are a lot more out there. Even though we only have the first act, I include the one from Drottningholm, Sweden, because it is a chamber production in the kind of theater Mozart himself would have known. The best traditional production is probably the one from Vienna, but it is marred by obtrusive bilingual titles (incidentally the Ferrando, Michael Schade, is a former student of mine).

The section after that consists of a bunch of trailers (all a minute or less), my compilation of different ways of ending the opera (now including the very end of an earlier production by Sven-Eric Bechtolf that is more radical than anything else I showed), and some interesting alternative versions of scenes watched in class. Two of these come from Phelim McDermott's current production for the Metropolitan Opera, set in Coney Island, and featuring a troupe of circus artistes. Good though the perfomances are, I find it grossly over-produced, lacking the essential trust in the music to carry the story on its own. Also over-produced, but a lot more interestingly so, is the 2018 production by Christophe Honoré at Aix-en-Provence. He sets the opera in some French Foreign Legion post in Africa, peopled with many more performers than the central six. so that the atmosphere is already sexually and racially charged from the start. The men return in blackface, and Guglielmo's seduction of Dorabella is not merely a matter of showing that she is attracted to him, but basically to any man, regardless of race. I did not show it because it is potentially offensive on so many fronts—but by the same token, it is the most original approach to the opera that I know. German titles only, unfortunately.

Listings are chronological within sections. *Asterisks indicate clips that were shown in class. rb.

MAIN PRODUCTION SHOWN IN CLASS
  Glyndebourne 2006   * Sisters' opening duet, second half (production by Nicholas Hytner)
* Farewell quintet
* Prayer trio
* Guglielmo's first aria
* Doctor scene
* Sisters' Act II duet (in which they chose partners)
* Fiordiligi's Act II aria (Miah Persson, complete)
* Fiordiligi/Ferrando duet
PRODUCTIONS WITH ENGLISH TITLES
  Drottningholm 1984   * Act I only (chamber production in C18 theater)
  Paris 1992   * Complete (clean period production, good acting)
  Salzburg 2006   * Act I (almost abstract sets)
* Act II (continuation of the above)
  Zurich 2009   * Complete (clean period production)
  Salzburg 2009   * Complete (modern-dress production by Claus Guth)
OTHER RELEVANT CLIPS
  Trailers   * Glyndebourne 2006 (Nicholas Hytner production shown in class)
* Salzburg 2014 (Sven-Eric Bechtolf)
* Royal Opera House 2016 (Jan Philip Gloger)
* Seattle 2018 (revival of Jonathan Miller production)
* Metropolitan Opera 2018 (Phelim McDermott; see note above)
* Salzburg 2021 (Christoph Loy)
* Irish National Opera 2023
* Vienna Volksoper 2024 (Maurice Lenhard; tennis-match trailer)
  Overture   * Metropolitan Opera (see note above)
  Sisters' opening duet   * Salzburg 2009 (Miah Persson, Isobel Leonard)
* Aix-en-Provence 2018 (see note above; German titles)
  Prayer trio   * Royal Opera House (Gloger production, set in a train station!)
* Aix-en-Provence 2018 (entire scene; see note above)
  Sextet   * Aix-en-Provence 2018 (extended scene; see note above)
  Doctor scene   * Metropolitan Opera 2018 (see note above)
  Guglielmo/Dorabella duet   * Paris 1992 (strange production, great acting!)
* Royal Opera House 2016 (as shown in class)
* Aix-en-Provence 2018 (see note above; German titles)
* Salzburg 2021 (ending of this was shown in class)
  Ferrando/Fiordiligi duet   * Paris 1992
  Ending of the opera   * My compilation (shown in class)
* — additional version (Sven-Eric Bechtolf, Zurich)
           
IMAGES
The thumbnails below cover the slides shown in class, though there may be a few small discrepancies. Click the thumbnail to see a larger image.
Click on the right or left of the larger picture to go forward or back, or outside it to close.
Class slides  Class slides  Class slides 
Class slides  Class slides  Class slides 
Class slides  Class slides  Class slides 
Class slides  Class slides  Class slides 
Class slides  Class slides  Class slides 

 
ARTISTS

Here are brief bios of the composers and writers considered in the class, listed in order of birth.

Lorenzo da Ponte, 1749–1838. Italian poet.
 
Da Ponte's lasting claim to fame is as librettist for Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. But he also wrote for numerous other composers, including Salieri. He spent the last years of his life in New York, trying to etablish an opera company.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1756–91. Austrian composer.
 
A child prodigy as both performer and composer, Mozart produced an extraordinary body of work in all genres over a relatively short life. He wrote the greatest of his many operas after moving to Vienna: three collaborations with Lorenzo da Ponte—The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790)—framed by two German Singspiels: The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782) and The Magic Flute (1791).

• Return to top        • Return to index