Digging Deeper: Reading & Listening ideas for “Così Fan Tutte”

From the very plentiful expanse of books and CD recordings about COSI and Mozart, just  a few suggestions (and admittedly very personal favorites) for each:

Books:
MOZART the DRAMATIST by Brigid Brophy 
Written in 1964 and revised in 1980
Published in paperback by Libris in 1998
The subtitle of this important and influential  book,  "The value of his operas to him, to his age and to us" shows much of the intent of this study. An emphasis is placed on a Freudian view of the operas (she is the author of an excellent study of Freud and literature- BLACK SHIP TO HELL - 1962) as well as being, in part, a feminist critique. It is a very personal, rather idiosyncratic, sharply written and compelling view of Mozart. It thus reflects the  intriguing complexity of the author herself. Brophy is an acclaimed and somewhat controversial  novelist, a serious  literary critic, a political activist, and a crusader for the rights of authors. She died of multiple  sclerosis in 1995 having lived with - and movingly  written about - the disease for 14 years.

MOZART and the ENLIGHTENMENT by Nichols Till   
Published by  W W Norton and Co. paperback edition 1995
Again a subtitle "Truth, Virtue and Beauty  in Mozart's Operas"  tells much.  Till sets the operas in their social, political, biographical, psychological contexts, examines the dramatic emergence of a modern society in 18th century Europe and reappraises the history and meaning of the Enlightenment and Mozart's role within it. Erudite, illuminating and eminently readable, it is "A dazzling tapestry"  [London Times Literary Supplement].

CDS:
COSI FAN TUTTE   
Conducted by Rene Jacobs 
Concerto Koln, Harmonia Mundi recording  1998
Rene Jacobs' series of Mozart  opera recordings have stirred up controversy, extravagant praise, and serious  critical venom. At their best (and I think his FIGARO  heads the list) they are vital, theatrical, bold, risk taking  - and COSI is an excellent example of these qualities. Not populated  with stars in the sense of other COSIs  out there (Fleming, Ti Kawana, von Otter, Schwarzkopf, Ludwig - to mention only the ladies) his cast works with him and the period orchestra to bring to astonishing  life the incomparable score. The accompanying booklet is rich in essays and a fascinating interview with Jacobs.

COSI FAN TUTTE  
Conducted by Charles Mackerras 
Orchestra of the Enlightenment 
Recorded by Chandos
This recording stands out for several reasons. It is sung in English - and in the English version that BLO is using. (Although as I have been receiving notes from rehearsal I see  there have been many changes in words as the singers worked their way into the parts and made the text their own) Also the role of Don Alfonso is elegantly sung by Tom Allen (who of course is directing the BLO COSI  as well). In this recording, Mackerras is a fine Mozartian, the cast made up of top English singers in good form  (Janice Watson, Diane Montague,Toby Spence, Christopher Maltman) and the result is eminently enjoyable. Like the Jacobs  CD above there is an excellent introductory essay and a illuminating interview with the conductor. 


~Dr. Von Lyric

So Do We all: Sandra Eddy takes us on a photographic journey of her time at BLO

Ok... This makes up for the cold weather.

Bea (my daughter) doing the nasally dottore voice.

Guglielmo and Dorabella

Beautiful Boston under snow

Who, What, Where, When (a little background on COSI)

Premieres: 

January 26th Burgtheater Vienna

UK:   May 9, 1811 His Majesty’s Theater, London
US:   March 1922 Metropolitan Opera , New York

The premiere (conducted by the composer)  featured the librettist’s (Lorenzo da Ponte - frequent collaborator with  Mozart  - FIGARO and DON GIOVANNI) current mistress (as a cleric forbidden to marry, da Ponte had several), Adriana Ferraresi del Bene (whom da Ponte very ungallantly called “his misfortune”)  as Fiordiligi . The Don Alfonso was Mozart’s first Dr Bartolo and Commendatore, the Despina his first Cherubino and Guglielmo his first Figaro. It was a fair success.

The original libretto was called by Da  Ponte (recalling Moliere or Marivaux) “LA SCUOLA DEGLI AMANTI ( “The School for Lovers”); Mozart gave it its title of COSI FAN TUTTE (the words which had appeared  in the Act 1 trio from FIGARO). Its sources are varied. Legend has it that the plot idea  was given to Da Ponte by the Emperor, Joseph II  who had read of a similarly scandalous  situation in a newspaper article. But the theme of lovers testing fidelity by the use of a disguise and often incorporating a wager of some sort went back to Greek mythology, Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES, Shakespeare (CYMBELINE), Boccaccio and more importantly for Da Ponte Ariosto’s brilliant 1532 epic poem ORLANDO FURIOSO (incidentally the source for many of Handel’s most well-known pieces). Many of the names in the opera come from Ariosto. There is evidence that Da Ponte had first offered his libretto to Salieri who set a little bit of it before deciding that the text was “unworthy of musical invention.”

After its premiere and the revival in Vienna in 1794 and several subsequent  performances in opera houses in Germany, and in Prague and Amsterdam,  COSI seemed to drop out of favor. Beethoven considered it (particularly its libretto) “immoral and trivial” and totally unworthy of Mozart’s genius (He also deeply disapproved of GIOVANNI). It was drastically cut, mutilated, adapted, bowdlerized, changed wholesale- all in the interest of saving the piece from  its shockingly  indecent libretto and to salvage  Mozart’s “divine” music - or as one critic wrote “a mighty endeavor to save Mozart’s inspired score  which dragged behind it Da Ponte’s contemptible libretto like a convict’s iron  ball and chain.” Whole new librettos were introduced  - in Paris a new text  (by the librettists of FAUST ) based on Shakespeare’s LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST was attempted. As late as 1909 in Dresden the music was grafted onto an adaption from a play by Calderon

But from 1897 on a number of major conductors and productions tried to return to what Mozart and da Ponte had actually created. Richard Strauss in Munich, Gustav Mahler in Vienna , Thomas Beecham in London. Perhaps the most influential being the Fritz Busch - Carl Ebert 1934 staging at the newly opened Glyndebourne Festival (which led to the opera’s first recording) and now in many commentator’s or critic’s  view COSI emerged as Mozart’s supreme operatic achievement . The French composer Reynaldo Hahn wrote “I swear to you that GIOVANNI and FIGARO are the work of an amateur compared to COSI.”

 "This is Mozart’s most unreal opera - confined to a small space that might as well be Don Alfonso’s dreaming head. People behave in ways...that defy logic. Yet for the same reason COSI is Mozart’s most realistic opera, [it is also] his most mature, provocative and demanding. It is an astute study of human desires. The dreaming head may as well be a laboratory."

The US premiere of COSI took place at the Metropolitan Opera 132 years after the first performance at the Vienna Burgtheater. The conductor was Artur Bodansky, the design (which featured the novelty (at least at the Met) of a revolving stage was by Joseph Urban. It was a cautious success  - the New York Times called it “a notable event.” The cast was distinguished including Florence Easton as Fiordiligi, Lucrezia Bori as Despina, Giuseppi de Luca as Guglielmo and Adamo Didur as Alfonso. It had eleven performances in the course of the next three seasons. An important and highly successful revival occurred in the 1951-52 season directed by the noted American actor Alfred Lunt and starring Eleanor Steber, Blanche Thebom, Patrice Munsel and Richard Tucker with Fritz Stiedry conducting.  (A fascinating and quite compelling CD  recording remains as a testament to the theatrical vitality of this production) It was sung in an English translation by Ruth and Thomas Martin.

So Do We all: Phyllis Pancella gives us a first look in the COSI FAN TUTTE rehearsal room

Although I feel I’ve just gotten off the plane, a week has already passed in which I’ve  done my first load of laundry, gained 5 pounds from just looking at all the Dunkin’ Donuts around, and, most incredibly, zoomed through the staging of two thirds of the masterpiece that is Cosi Fan Tutte.  What a week!

First, I should let you know that I haven’t been doing a lot of opera lately. When my son, now 11, hit first grade five years ago, I decided to stop accepting opera engagements during the school year for awhile, and stick with shorter concert outings. I have no regrets about that decision, but I also had absolutely no hesitation about chucking it out the window when the Boston Lyric Opera called.  Would I be interested in trying my first Despina, under the direction and with the Don Alfonso of the magnificent Sir Thomas Allen?  Um, let-me-think-about-it-yes.  I won’t bore you with the tedious realities of getting a household and middle-schooler ready for Mom’s first solo five-week road trip since 2000---lots of more interesting people have done it before me and would describe it better.  All I’ll say is that it turns out you can, in fact, help with homework and three-day-field-trip nerves via instant message. Walking the dog, doing everyone’s laundry and grocery shopping---not so much.

The smart, silly cast and the open, welcoming production and administrative staff made my re-entry very smooth, and I love spending time in Boston, even in the winter.  Despina herself was a little less cordial, with high notes in all the wrong places, but I figured I’d compensate for any shortfalls in vocal beauty with whatever comic voices/accents I’d do for her Doctor and Lawyer disguises. What I didn’t expect was how I’d feel when I trotted those things out in front of my colleagues at our first musical rehearsal.  

My heart actually pounded a little in anticipation of the Doctor’s entrance, and I felt this odd, warm sensation begin in my face.  Good grief!  Was I blushing??  A middle-aged Midwestern lady, 25 year veteran of the opera biz, mother of an 11 year old boy fercryinoutloud, blushing?  Did I blush when our Peerless Leader compared one of Mozart’s Cosi duets to worm copulation? No. Did I blush the next day at my costume fitting when the stitcher asked me to please hoist my breasts up as high as possible so she could make the right markings on the corset mock-up? or when John Conklin pointed to my shoes, and, thinking they had been pulled from wardrobe stock, said, “Well those would be perfect, since they’re so unfashionable”?  No.  Man, you just never know where you might still have buttons.  I love comedy!  I work hard at comedy!  But trying to make people laugh can make you look really, really stupid, and there‘s no bigger anxiety-trigger than that for me. You know what? I’ll probably get nervous singing in front of the chorus for the first time, too.  Always have.

English as a second language.  The single task on which we’ve spent the most rehearsal time thus far is language.  Why all those hours?  This Cosi company comprises a conductor and director/Don Alfonso from the U.K., and five other cast members from the U.S.  We are performing an opera written in Italian, that takes place in Naples in 1790, in a translation written in 1922 by an Englishman, revised by another Englishman in 1970 and again in 1988, for a Boston audience in 2013.….I think you might be getting the picture.  Of course, the ultimate goal is to communicate to this particular audience in this particular time and place the power of this piece.  Honoring that goal requires us to honor the original creation above all else, and we share a common desire to do just that.  But we all come from different backgrounds and with different pet peeves.  

David Angus is the Diction Police, with a special affection for punctuation.  He intentionally avoided writing the translation into his orchestra score so that he could discover whether or not he could understand the singers, who all have different regional dialects and different preferences when it comes to sung English diction (wish I had audio to share from the great “tooter” vs. “tyewtah” debate) and who are, by the way, mostly from a different country than he is.  Paul Appleby and I are both inclined to be the Grammar Police (“Ah, the subjunctive!”  “It makes no sense to combine the mechanical with the abstract.” “How did they get away with a subject-free sentence?”) and quake whenever the translator finds the wrong spot to put a preposition in (sic).   Then there are the changes we’re all making in the interest of singability:  e.g. maybe a sweet young soprano could sing the suffix -ing on a high G, but this well-worn mezzo can’t!  

The timeframe is a puzzle for some. Yes, the production design places us in 1790 (sort of), but which archaic words enhance meaning and which obscure it?  (So far, chary is out, and trepidate is hanging by a thread.)  And then there are the Britishisms:  “takes the biscuit” instead of “takes the cake," "I’ll crease myself with laughter,“ instead of…what?…“I feel my sides are splitting?“  Ah, which ones to keep, which ones to jettison, and why.  It is a messy, imperfect process that is alternately galling and hilarious (I‘m happy to report that “You dirty basilisk” has entered our rehearsal lexicon), but which ultimately clarifies our intentions and priorities as actors.

Nicole Tongue, our assistant director, Karen Oberthal, our stage manager, and Brett Hodgdon, our coach/accompanist are madly scribbling the alterations we’re making in rehearsals, while making good suggestions of their own.  Mr. Allen will eventually have to pull the plug on all our, um, contributions, so that timing, diction, and surtitles (never mind memorization) may be finalized.  At that point, since we‘ve all grown rather precious about our language of origin, we’ll each have to swallow hard about some final text decision that makes us cringe or worry.  But for now, our job is to argue about every single tree, so that our audience will be able to see the lush and complex forest that results.

Why do it in English in the first place?  Ah, I’ll leave that to you to discuss.  I’m just the maid.

~Phyllis Pancella

Costume renderings by Così Fan Tutte Costume Designers

Here is a sneak peek of the costume renderings by Così Fan Tutte Costume Designers 

JOHN CONKLIN and GAIL BUCKLEY. 

Lorenzo Da Ponte: A Man of Many Words

Lorenzo who? Lorenzo Da Ponte, He was a frequent collaborator of Mozart, he also founded the first Opera house in New York City. 

Lorenzo was born originally a Jewish Emmanuelle Conegliano near Venice in 1749.  He was an Italian poet and librettist well known for his collaboration with Mozart. When his mother died his father remarried to a Catholic woman and the family was required to convert to Catholicism. He entered a seminary, learned some Hebrew, became a professor and ordained minister and also had several affairs. These affairs eventually led to him being banished from Venice and he fled to Vienna.

While in Vienna, he became a distinguished poet and librettist. He was named Poet to the court to the Emperor Joseph II. In 1738, Da Ponte and Motzart met and quickly created three works of art together, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così Fan Tutte. Unfortunately soon after these successful collaborations, Mozart and Joseph II passed away leaving Da Ponte jobless. He relocated to London where he wrote plays, librettos, and ran a bookshop. This time, instead of countless affairs, he was arrested for debt. He fled to the United States to escape trial.

He finally settled in New York City where he taught for years at Columbia University Italian language and literature. While there, he also founded the first Opera house in New York City. His death in 1838 was highly publicized and in a strange turn of events his actual remains whereabouts are still unknown. While there is a stone maker in the cemetery in Queens, there are sources that say he is actually buried in downtown Manhattan. Wherever he is, his contributions to music aren’t forgotten. 

"Clemency" - Tech Week

So we're finally opening CLEMENCY after an exciting tech week at the Artists for Humanity EpiCenter!  This has been a tech week like no other, particularly because we are in a unique performance venue and additionally because we are staging in the round (that means the stage is in the center of the room and the audience is set up in a circle or in sections all around it on every side).  

In a proscenium theater, the production team would set up camp in the orchestra section of the audience and use what we call a "God mic" to communicate with lightwalkers (volunteers who walk the path of the performers so we can see what the light will look like on the artists), stage management, crew, and artists onstage during rehearsals, but because we're staging in an intimate venue in the round, the director and I are constantly on the move, checking out sight-lines from every angle and running up onstage to adjust blocking here and there!  

There are so many factors that we take for granted in a traditional theater that we have to account for in a site specific performance.  Where will the assistant stage managers go to help get performers and their props onstage - there are no wings!  Our amazing stage management team has been creeping quietly around the building to all the vantage points we are using in this unique production, up and down the stairs, in the kitchen and the hallways!  Our Production Stage Manager and Light Board Operator are hidden away in a staff kitchen behind the performing space!  Where will the performers get ready -  there are no dressing rooms!  We have created curtained off private rooms for the artists in a big loft paint studio on the third floor of the building.  How will the singers see the conductor?  In a proscenium theater he would be right in front of them in the orchestra pit, but we're staging in the round.

This week we have been finding just the right placement and angles for little video monitors around the center platform of our stage to give the singers maximum visibility of David Angus's movements without distracting the audience who can actually see the monitors.  In a proscenium theater the lights point across, down at, or from the audience at the stage, but in the round we have to make sure the stage is lit beautifully without pointing instruments into the audience itself.

Clemency and "Hagar's Lament" only total one hour in length, so rather than gearing up all our energy for one big run, we've been running the whole production twice in each rehearsal block!  Although the stage time might be the same as doing a longer opera once, the energy level and concentration buildup, and release, from doing a full run of a production are intense, so everyone is working as efficiently as possible to get the most out of each rehearsal while conserving stamina for the second run!  It has been a fabulous and exhausting week, and I'm looking forward to seeing the fruits of all our labor from my seat in the audience very soon!
--
Eve Summer
Stage Director
www.EveSummer.net

TOMORROW: James MacMillan at Brandeis - FREE for the Public

James MacMillan at Brandeis University

Tuesday, February 5, 3:30pm

Slosberg Music Center

Brandeis University

415 South Street, Waltham, MA 02453. 

This event is free and open to the public!  

 “The story of Clemency comes from a strange episode in Genesis that many people have puzzled over for years. What is the significance of it? What is the meaning of it?” – James MacMillan

This Tuesday, February 5, Brandeis University will host a discussion exploring  the significance of Clemency’s story.  Dr. Jonathan P. Decter, Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic Studies at Brandeis University,  currently teaches a course Introduction to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam at the university.  Dr. Decter will open his class to the public for a special discussion of the significance the story of Abraham and Sarah holds for these three faiths. He will be joined by Clemency composer  James MacMillan, who often  finds inspiration from spiritual sources.   Clemency  is no exception.   MacMillan will speak about how these figures inspired an opera.   BLO’s Opera Annex production will be the US premier of Clemency. 

  

BLO’s critically-acclaimed Opera Annex continues with the US premiere of James MacMillan’s Clemency. The libretto, by poet Michael Symmons Roberts, is drawn from the book of Genesis. Abraham and Sarah are childless and nearing the end of their lives. They are approached by three travelers who share the unexpected and miraculous news that Sarah will have a child in old age. The mood darkens as it becomes clear that the travelers are on a mission of vengeance upon the neighboring towns, and Abraham pleads clemency for their inhabitants.  Falling before the moment when Abraham takes his son Isaac up the mountain to be sacrificed and after he has banished his handmaid Hagar and his son by her, Ishmael, the story of Abraham’s encounter with the three travelers makes a crucial and oft-puzzled over change in him.

 

For its US premier at the Artists for Humanity EpiCenter beginning February 6, Clemency will be preceded by a performance of Franz Schubert’s Hagar’s Lament. The song, its lyrics drawn from a moving poem by Clemens August Schücking, centers on Hagar—mother of Abraham’s firstborn child—who poignantly sings of her sadness and anger after being abandoned in the desert with her dying son. The pairing of the two works allows the audience to compare not only the musical styles of MacMillan (a living composer) and Schubert, but also draws attention to the histories of Ishmael and Isaac, the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham’s personal struggle with clemency.

 

For a synopsis of BLO’s Opera Annex production of Clemency , including Hagar’s Lament, visit http://blo.org/events/james-macmillans-clemency/