Misogynistic? Dramatically unconvincing? Not at all. The key to understanding the universal truths of Mozart’s opera lie in these very contrivances, writes the director of a new Covent Garden production
It was with The Marriage of Figaro, the first of Mozart’s three momentous Da Ponte operas, that I began my career as an opera director, six years ago at Augsburg theatre in southern Germany. And it’s to another of his Da Ponte operas that I turn for my first production for the Royal Opera House, Così fan Tutte.
For me, the great quality of the Da Ponte operas (Figaro, first performed in 1786, Don Giovanni in 1787, and Così in 1790) lies in their ability to show us how we really are – mercilessly and yet affectionately at the same time. In their characters we encounter our own human weaknesses and the challenges we face. They can make us freeze in horror, or collapse in laughter. “Piu docile sono” says the Countess at the close of Figaro – “I am wiser”. She has learned something about herself and about others – and we have learned with her.
Don Alfonso’s experiment succeeds, but at the opera’s close, the men are just as entangled as the women.
Despina, the maid, asks the central question in a recitative that is easy to overlook: “Amor cos’è?” – What is love?
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