Luisa, Fiordiligi and Dorabella in New York City.

I spent ten days in the Big Apple at the beginning of April.  It was my cultural Spring Break in the city.  As usual, I met my friends and we visited museums, art galleries, concert halls and restaurants.  We also went to the Metropolitan Opera where we met Luisa Miller and reconnected with the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella.  Luisa Miller is the heroine of a Verdi opera by the same name.  Fiordiligi and Dorabella are the much-vilified sisters of Così fan tutte, a Mozart opera which premiered in Vienna in 1790, one year before the composer’s death. 

Rest assured, this is not another blog on misogynist operas, although both operas treat women poorly, but on the decisions taken by the two sisters and their boyfriends.  I was keen to discover Luisa Miller, about a doomed romantic heroine from a Schiller drama.  The innocent Luisa is the victim of a loving but selfish father and of a jealous lover, himself tricked by an unscrupulous father.  Though the intrigue is set in mid-19^th century England, it is very contemporary and could have benefited from a more modern setting by the Met.

On the other hand, the Met went overboard with the Così fan tutte production.  It moved the plot from 18^th century Naples to Coney Island in the mid-50s.  Incongruous situation for any Italian speakers as the subtitles no longer translated the Italian lyrics.  For me, it was an unnecessary distraction whose purpose was possibly to attract a Broadway musical audience.  The stage was so busy and crowd that I had to close my eyes to fully enjoy the beautiful music and arias.  Mozart deserves better!  Anyway, this is not my purpose here.

The sisters and their beaux in Coney Island

Così fan tutte is an odd title to translate into English.  “So do they all”, meaning all women do it or act like that since tutte is feminine plural in Italian. What do they do? Flirt and change their minds in the matter of love; in straight talk they are all prone to cheat and be unfaithful.  There is a clear hint of misogyny in the title.  It was Mozart’s last partnership with his free-spirited librettist Lorenzo da Ponte[1].  Both Mozart and da Ponte were notorious philanderers, if Mozart was opportunistic in his pursuits, da Ponte was an unashamed ladies’ man all his life.  Mozart’s misogyny is well documented and several references in his last opera, The Magic Flute make women cringe.

At first Così fan tutte looks silly and farfetched, a hardly believable story of disguise and deception.  Così starts with the cynic and scheming Don Alfonso, an older gentleman, hinting that the respective fiancées of his young soldier friends Ferrando and Guglielmo may not be as faithful as they believe.  Testing women’s fidelity is a theme as old as the theater itself.  Having planted this seed of doubt, Don Alfonso develops a ploy to prove his point.  He suggests that the two gullible but over-confident dudes change into exotic disguises to launch an all-out swap seduction scheme.  They take the bet, and Don Alfonso informs the sisters that their fiancés are being dispatched to war.  Heartbroken and bordering on hysteria the sisters wish their lovers a safe crossing.  In the Naples version, Ferrando and Guglielmo come back disguised as Albanians.  After some hesitation and misgivings, the duped sisters let themselves be seduced by the exotic but attractive newcomers; interestingly neither selects her original boyfriend.  At the end, with their self-confidence in tatters, distraught and irate by their unexpected romantic pairing, the two young men agree to a double-wedding arrangement. 

Coup de theatre, the initial fiancés come back from war and the sisters’ fickleness is led bare.  Having won the case, the old rascal of Don Alfonso declares the game over; the foursome feels cheated, downhearted and ashamed.  He asks the distraught youths to forgive, forget and get on with their lives.  At the end of the opera, the six characters (including Despina, the sisters’ maid and Don Alfonso’s partner in crime) sing their heart’s content to life’s realities, the good as well as the bad times.  This is where the plot gets really interesting: da Ponte and Mozart didn’t indicate who stays with whom!  Opera companies usually make a conventional decision, and the lovers re-form the first act’s conventional partnership[2].  

Because Così lends itself to many contradictory interpretations, I really enjoy this opera.  In my opinion, trickster Don Alfonso is da Ponte himself, and Così reminds me of the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses which was published a decade earlier, a model of deceit, duplicity and cynicism.  Too many directors produce Così as a silly divertissement, although the plot is concerned with four people who mature through humiliation and deceit.  By accepting Don Alfonso’s bet, the self-confident but immature soldiers exposed themselves to disillusion, and a bruised ego was the price to pay.  The traditional take on the opera has a strong misogynous cultural element: So, women all do it! Women are devious, deceitful, superficial and fickle because the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.  On the contrary, men are fair-minded and straight arrows, and if they want love, they have to make do with imperfect mates.  In other words, women are irresponsible and have to be treated like children.  Dorabella and Fiordiligi are avatars of women’s wiles.  

                                                     

Twenty first century’s feminists may come to the opposite interpretation.  Mozart gave the men robust music but the sisters’ arias are full of emotion and possibly double entendre.  When the Albanians are flirting, the music is more intimate and inspiring.  A beautiful love duet takes place after Dorabella swaps Ferrando for Guglielmo.  The sisters are fair game for the Albanians whose seduction pursuit looks a lot like a testosterone-charged rivalry.  Guglielmo’s ego only gets hurt when Ferrando finally wins his fiancée Fiordiligi’s heart.  Clearly, the two dudes don’t deserve the love of the sisters.  The Albanians try hard to be attractive and de facto are far more charming than their real strait-laced selves.

Another possibility is that Dorabella and Fiordiligi unmasked their fiancés in disguise and made them pay for their cruelty.  At the same time, they are intoxicated by their new and exotic passion.

Apparently, da Ponte wanted to call the opera The School for Lovers, a much more neutral title which better reflects the relationship dynamic of the foursome.  The opera makes obvious that the sisters’ infidelity is the results of Ferrando and Guglielmo’s own unfaithful behavior.  The opera should be renamed Così fan tutti.  They all do it, men and women.

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[1] Born a Jew in Venice, converted to Catholicism and ordained priest, da Ponte had many interesting lives.  I recommend his lively biography by Rodney Bolt: The Librettist of Venice: The Remarkable Life of Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart’s Poet, Casanova’s Friend and Opera Impresario in America. 2006.

[2] Fiordiligi with Guglielmo, and Dorabella with Ferrando.