Prom 6: Mozart, ‘Cosi Fan Tutte”, Fiordiligi, Miah Persson (soprano), Dorabella, Anke Vondung (mezzo), Despina, Ainhoa Garmendia (soprano), Ferrando, Topi Lehtipuu (tenor), Guglielmo, Luca Pisaroni (bass), Don Alfonso, Nicolas Rivenq (bass).   Glyndebourne Chorus, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conductor Ivan Fischer. Royal Albert Hall, London 18. 07.2006 (GD)

We know very little about the origins of ‘Cosi’, its first performances and reception, except that in Vienna, in 1790, it was received rather coolly. We do know from a letter of Mozart that he invited both Puchberg and Haydn to the initial rehearsals at his Vienna apartment and at the Burgtheater in Janurary 1790. No record has survived of these meetings, but I would love to know what Haydn (who Mozart greatly admired) thought of the libretto and the music. Today we often congratulate ourselves on being far more receptive and understanding of Mozart’s opera on the philosophy of love (‘ossia la Scuola delgi amanti’). And in a post-Freudian context we certainly know more about the irony and parody of sexuality. However that does not stop producers and commentators from injecting a dollop of 19^th Century romantic love into the plot, especially around Fiordiligi and Ferrando. One of the reasons Mozart/ Da Ponte’s ‘Cosi’ is so strangely compelling is the way in which the singers (characters) are projected in myriad forms of artifice …something we, in the modern West, do all the time, but don’t always want to be reminded of.

'Cosi,' even more than ‘Figaro’and Don Giovanni, puts incredibly exacting demands on singers, orchestra and particularly the conductor who has to balance what initially appears to be two quite different operatic acts (the first mostly of ensembles, trios, sextets etc, the second mostly of solo arias) into the hugely complex palindrome form where Mozart balances every aspect of the opera, narrative, instrumentation, tonal structure etc into its opposite and then into complete (well almost) symmetrical harmony. So how did Fischer and his forces (taken from recent Glyndebourne productions) cope? After a direct, crisply played overture (which augured well on a particularly hot July evening) Fischer launched into the key of the plot between Don Alfonso (the real puppet-master), Fernando and Guglielmo. This was all swiftly paced and well characterized, particularly Pisaroni’s Don Alfonso. As the evening progressed I had the distinct impression that the male vocal parts were generally better balanced, both vocally (in ensemble), and in dialogue with the orchestra, than their female counter-parts. By the time we got to the duet between Fiordiligi and Dorabella ‘Ah, guarda, sorella’ Fischer was introducing quite a lot of rubato, to emphasise the sisters’ perception of the portraits of their lovers, as compared with the ‘real’ thing? Although such tempo variation can work it is not marked, and here seemed a little over-done. Also, in the terzetto ‘Una bella serenata’ I wanted more fluent woodwind phrasing, since occasionally woodwind textures became inaudible through lack of balance with strings.

Persson and Vondung, as the two sisters, sang quite well on their own, although Persson, in Fiordiligi’s great aria of mock artifice ‘Come scoglio’ (all the more compelling as Fiordiligi totally believes in her situation of mock denial) came unstuck in some of the high C’s and D flats. In this great aria (scena) Mozart, in  his fusion of rococo charm and baroque mix perfectly delineates Fiordiligi’s mock integrity as a paradox of sexual determination and imagined constancy, the epitome of the Sadean ‘La femme machine’. Dorabella’s exquisite aria of sexual anxiety ‘Smanie implacabili’, was beautifully delineated by Vondung, well paced and deftly accompanied. However the two ladies together particularly in ‘Ah guarda, sorella, and in ‘Soave sia Il vento’ (with Don Alfonso) were less convincing; not really a matter of diminished vocal quality, but more to do with a lack of interchange and vocal balance between the two. At times one felt they were in competition (vocally) with each other: how different from the perfect vocal blend one hears between Seefried and Merriman in the Eugen Jochum recording!

Any performance of ‘Cosi’ stands or falls in the way it articulates the sextet ‘Alla bella Despinetta’, and the final sextet beginning ‘Ah, che tutte in un momento.’ In these two great scenes Despina, the maid, comes into her own as a plot marker, who will stop at nothing in her very   ‘enlightenment’ pursuit of hedonism and the way such hedonistic ventures deploy strategies of deception and disguise, as in the final to Act one where she appears in the guise of a doctor with magnets and a patois language, to ‘cure’ Ferrando and Guglielmo of their pretence of fatal illness to test the girls’ fidelity. It was in the development of ‘Ah, che tutte’ that problems with ensemble developed. In part this was due to the cavernous acoustic of the Albert Hall where concerted passages became lost in a wash of sound. But at Despina’s ‘Abbandonar I miseri’ the vocal ensemble nearly fell apart, with quite a few muddled, or late entries, and this was not helped by a certain rhythmic slackness in the orchestra. All this thankfully improved in the lovely (very Italian) ‘Dove son? Che loco e questo’, where Fischer delineated the ultra-subtle divided string part writing in quasi canon, with consummate skill. At this point one would have thought a Bohm, Rosbaud or Harnoncourt was on the rostrum. The concluding Act one ‘Dalla voglia’ brought the act to an exuberant conclusion with well delineated trumpets and ‘period’ timpani.

It has often been suggested that at the beginning of Act II it is the ladies who are seen in a more culpable light, although some have implied the reverse; the men, prolonging the deception. But Mozart/Da Ponte’s opera is far more complex than this either/or logic would suggest. After a fairly good ‘Una Donna a quindici anni’ from Vondung (Dorabella) the same problems of vocal blend persisted in the sisters duetto ‘Prendero quel brunettino. ’Guglielmo’s great bravura aria on all women ‘Donne mie, la fate a tanti’ was delivered with great verve and wit, as was Ferrando’s Cavatina, ‘Tradito, schernito dal perfido cor’. Act two was only seriously let down by a ‘Per pieta, ben mio, perdona’ (Fiordiligi’s longest aria, in fact the longest solo aria in the entire opera) . This great ‘rondo’ aria is Fiordigili’s Act two opposite to her Act one ‘Come scoglio’, where she makes a more ‘sincere’ pledge to resist the temptation of infidelity. But as Slavok Zizek has recently noted, when Mozart/Da Ponte are projecting ‘honesty’, ‘sincerity’, we have good cause to be especially suspicious!

In this aria, Perrson really distorted Mozart’s very careful vocal markings, applying excruciating rallentandos, and indulging in all manner of vocal mannerisms, her rolled r’s at every ‘Che vergogna’ approaching the ludicrously grotesque. I am no fan of Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, but here, in the Bohm recording, her pronunciation is exemplary. To make matters worse Fischer dragged the tempo with Persson! Fischer is obviously an exceptionally accomplished conductor, but here he should have asserted (a la Don Alfonso) some discipline on the lady. This one big let down for Act two was a pity. More than any other set piece in the act ‘Per pieta’ is crucial to the overall balance of the act in a way that Dorabella’s ‘E amor un ladroncello,’ for instance, is not.

Some commentators have found Mozart’s finale ambiguous, even disappointing. And it is true, it does not have the almost symphonic stuctural inevitability of the great Act one finale. But I think these misunderstandings come from a basic inability to read the complex irony of Mozart/Da Ponte’s ‘school of love’. On the surface the two men come back and reveal their deceptions and make-up with the girls to achieve a kind of reconciliation, but what kind of reconciliation? One shot through with guilt , suspicion, revenge…?  The finale is deliberately discontinuous; mock pastoral choruses, abrubt changes in tempo between begun(not finished) arias, ‘Stelle,che veggo’, ‘ Io non se veglio o sogno’, echoes of the triumphant march tune, and  a final which proclaims that in love everything will turn out O K. Of course this is the ultimate twist of irony.  The real message (still difficult to swallow for some) is that love, far from finally overcoming all, is itself easily defeated, easily given to fragmentation and delusion. And it is this sense of delusion, ambiguity that Mozart/ Da Ponte so understand which makes ‘Cosi’ far more than a comic opera.

On the whole the finale was well delivered, Fischer understanding the specific mood of irony and break-up, playing it all with an absolute straight face with marvellous rhythmic articulation in the final proclamation of mock feel-good. It is a pity that a potentially excellent ‘Cosi’ was compromised by various deficiencies, mostly vocal. I should imagine that with the right cast and conditions (the unbearable heat in the Albert Hall, exacerbated by the antics of a ‘semi-staged’ production, must have been gruelling for the performers) Fischer would deliver a very fine ‘Cosi’ indeed.

Geoff Diggines