Così fan tutte: Ensemble

Among the collaborations of Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte, the most problematic is Così fan tutte. It was shunned in the Victorian century because it depicted premarital sex, and it outrages people in our time because of its disdain for women.

On top of that, it strains credulity that two women cannot recognize their own fiancés when they put on flimsy disguises. As you will recall, Guglielmo and Ferrando pretend they have been called up to war, and return later the same day to successfully seduce each other’s girlfriends. 

The music is gorgeous, ranging from tender to dramatic, and Da Ponte’s words are revelations about human weakness, but how can we accept the misogynistic and preposterous story line? I’ve seen only two productions that plausibly handled the issue.

In one, the lovers were depicted as adolescents who had only met a few days earlier, therefore didn’t really know each other. The other — by Nic Muni for the Academy of Vocal Arts in 2013 — was set in the 1960s and the lovers were on mindbending hallucinogenics. The girls were so stoned that they couldn’t recognize their own lovers. I had low expectations when I heard that this new production by Dorothy Danner was set in the opera’s original period.

Yet this originalist interpretation makes us confront the creators’ intentions. She shows an actor miming Da Ponte during the overture, and then he morphs into the aristocratic Don Alfonso who sets the plot in motion and pulls all the strings. This prompts the question: What were Mozart and Da Ponte thinking?

They wrote Così fan tutte the year of the French Revolution. It is a product of the Age of Reason that praised rational thought. Immanuel Kant, contemporary of Mozart and Da Ponte, proclaimed “Dare to know.” Basically, go into relationships with your eyes open. That is the moral of this story.

The young lovers are shown as hopelessly blind to their own weaknesses. The invocation of reason at the end of the opera leads to forgiveness. The philosophical Don Alfonso, a stand-in for Da Ponte, says that  the ideal human life depends on self-knowledge and on the stripping away of self-deceit.

Christofer Macatsoris led the AVA orchestra in an insightful exploration of Mozart’s subtleties, including dulcet woodwinds, skittish violins indicating turmoil, and mournful violas to suggest distress about the consequences of the characters’ actions.

Alice Chung was strong as Despina, eschewing traditional chirpiness. Chung has a rare gift for comic acting. Kara Mulder was the Fiordiligi in the performance I attended, and was especially impressive in her “Per pietà” with sincerity, tender lyricism and rich low notes plus wide leaps. (“Per pietà” has a jump  of over an octave between syllables of a single word, and the end of the aria ascends two octaves in less than four beats.)

Gabriela Flores was a graceful Dorabella, intertwining her mezzo voice nicely with Mulder’s soprano. Ethan Simpson was a macho Guglielmo, Brent Michael Smith an avuncular Don Alfonso, and Oliver Sewell a harried Ferrando. Richard Raub made valuable contributions at the harpsichord.  

By coincidence, Philadelphia’s other famous music academy, the Curtis Institute, performed Don Giovanni as part of Opera Philadelphia’s subscription season the same week as the AVA’s Così fan tutte. In stark contrast to the Così, the Don Giovanni was a radical production by the trend-setting 32-year-old director R. B. Schlather.

He opened silently with a child alone at the keyboard of an upright piano, his back to the audience. The hulking figure of a gray-haired man appears upstage, and he walks menacingly towards the child. When he reaches the boy he slams the keyboard lid closed with a bang. Then the overture begins.

The man could be a prototypical predator and the child a representation of all victims. Or the man could be Mozart’s domineering father and the child is the composer. Keep in mind the fact that Leopold Mozart died in 1787, five months before the premiere of Don Giovanni. Or the child could be Don Giovanni suffering the trauma that turns him into the sexual aggressor that he is in the opera.

That opening scene illustrates the strength — and the weakness — of Schlather’s conception. I greatly admired his work in Opera Philadelphia’s The Wake World in 2018 and liked his Doctor Atomic and Impressions of Pelleas for Curtis. There’s a vast number of visual ideas in this production. An escalating number of upright pianos fill the stage. They might represent the number of people whom Giovanni harms, or the sites of abuse and trauma, and at the opera’s denouement one piano, draped with roses, suggests the grave of the Commendatore. When Giovanni is dragged to hell, Schlather has him climb into the piano and its lid closes upon him.

Another innovation which I like is Leporello’s showing of glossy photos during his Catalog aria. They are examples of women whom Giovanni has bedded. When the lyric is “young beginner” he shows the picture of an adolescent girl. It’s shocking — and appropriate in this story about a sexual abuser.

Schlather designed the costumes too. Some are traditional, as Donna Anna is aristocratic finery. But Donna Elvira is in Kabuki garb (hiding herself behind layers?), carrying two large shopping bags (baggage of her previous relationship with Giovanni?). In the second act Elvira is dressed like a stripper, as she throws herself at the Don. Zerlina has wild hair stylings which she, as a peasant girl, could not afford. And even though it’s her wedding day, she wears clunky white platform sneakers.

There’s a lot going on, requiring thought and contemplation. While this piques my intellectual curiosity, ultimately it distracts from the story that Da Ponte and Mozart told.

Young conductor Karina Canellakis chose brisk tempi, lilting and propulsive. The cast was so well trained that they (almost always) handled the tempi skillfully, and the ensemble work was meticulous. Mozart’s antiphonal writing was served nicely by placing small groups of instrumentalists in the side boxes to the left and right of the stage.

Zerlina’s “Batti batti, bel Masetto” may have shocked some listeners with its rapid pace but, after all, it’s not supposed to be a lullaby; she’s inviting him to beat her up. The finale to Act I was especially exciting because of Canellakis’s pace. The finest singing at the performance I attended was by Ashley Marie Robillard as an exciting Elvira and Vartan Gabrielian as a strong-voiced, charismatic Leporello. The Giovanni, Jorge Espino, has a lighter, smoother voice, not as threatening as I’d like.

Schlather, by the way, presents his take on Così fan tutte this summer at Santa Fe.