A Biased and Ignorant Dawkins of a Review of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, as Performed by the Santa Fe Opera Company
I enjoyed it.
There's not much more to say. It was...nice. Ineffectual, pleasant, with lovely music and a competent cast. Nice. The plot places in squarely in the camp of Whiffle-ball opera, in which nothing serious ever happens. Even when Ferrando learns that Dorabella has betrayed him, and sings of his wretchedness, or when Fiordiligi despairs of her weakness, one is never worried that something bad might happen. The music won't allow it; it's too accomplished to make one consider that the lives of our actors might be less strictly organized.
The scenery consisted mainly of mirrored surfaces, playing on the obvious symmetries (and brief, shallow, assymmetries) of the two couples. Costumes were lovely, with Dorabella's skirt seemed to be designed to fly up at the slightest torque. My main complaint is not with the performance, but the opera.
In the hands of a Shakespeare, the uncertainty of love and fidelity becomes both comic and deeply disturbing. Midsummer Night's Dream has lovers declare their feelings undying, drink a potion, and promptly switch teams. While it's amusing, the idea that our loves and hates can be so easily constructed and destroyed is uncomfortable. What credence can the lovers give the declarations of their beloveds, when they've seen how little it takes for them to alter? Mozart, instead, and some blame probably rests with da Ponte, gives us fluff in which feelings are never shown to be strong in the first place. The boys take the bet far too quickly; one suspects they have their own doubts. Instead of a world in which deep feeling exist, but are terribly mutable, such feelings are ruled out from the first.
The idea of symmetry, and its failure, is also left unexplored. In the hands of a Chaucer, in the Knight's Tale, we get a glimpse at the differences between the two heroes, and their motives in struggling for Emily. Different reasons have led them to the same actions. Peculiar wrote a prize paper on much this subject. In Cosi, the couples differ only slightly. Dorabella is more easily won than Fiordiligi...or is it that Ferrando is less winning than Guglielmo? It doesn't matter; in the end, both women give in, and both men forgive them (more or less).
Properly told, the plot could have been the source of a great deal of creepiness. For Mozart and da Ponte, it was just an excuse for amazing music and some hours' entertainment, easily told and easily forgotten.
As an example, I've spent a lot more time recently listening to the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and thinking about it than I can bring myself to spend on Cosi. In fact, I've just reached the title track now....
