100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (15 page)

EPILOGUE

Once more the Astrologer appears before the curtain. Don’t let the tragic ending bother you too much, he tells us. After all, only the Queen and he were real people; the others were figures in a fairy tale.

COSÌ FAN TUTTE

Opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
with libretto in Italian by Lorenzo Da
Ponte, possibly inspired by a court incident

Time: about 1790

Place: Naples

First performance at Vienna, January 26, 1790

    Mozart’s score for
Così fan tutte
has been sung under more names than any other opera in history. For example, the Metropolitan Opera has called it
Women Are Like That
. In England it was once called
Tit for Tat
. In Germany it has had a dozen different names, including such unlikely ones as
Who Won the Bet?, The Girls’ Revenge
, and even
The Guerrillas
. In Denmark it appeared as
Flight from the Convent
, and in France—believe it or not—as
The Chinese Laborer
and, fifty years later,
Love’s Labour’s Lost
. This last version was produced by the firm of Barbier et Carré, libretto manufacturers who specialized in transforming the literary works of the great into musical shows. They discarded the original libretto completely and adapted Mozart’s music to their own mutation of Shakespeare’s early comedy.

There was reason for so much tampering.
Così fan tutte
has
never been so popular as
Figaro
and
Don Giovanni
, yet its music, most critics agree, is just as fine. Therefore, it was thought, the trouble must be with the libretto. It was alternately criticized as too immoral, too slight, too artificial. Maybe so, maybe so. The fact is that none of the alterations has ever been more popular than the original. So let us be satisfied with that. I, personally, think it a very fine libretto. As for its meaning, we can take a hint from the original subtitle, which was
The School for Lovers
.

The story goes that the plot is modeled on something that had recently happened among the courtiers of the Emperor Joseph II. Be that as it may, the commission did come from the Emperor to Da Ponte and Mozart to write a comedy, possibly because a revival of
The Marriage of Figaro
had proved highly successful.
Così fan tutte
was the delightful fulfillment of the commission.

OVERTURE

The overture is short and unpretentious, and it is specifically related to the story only in so far as it quotes the tune to which the three male principals, in Act II, Scene 3, announce that
così fan tutte
(“all women act like that”).

ACT I

Scene 1
The comedy itself begins at a Neapolitan café at the end of the eighteenth century. Two young officers are arguing with a cynical old man of the world named Don Alfonso. He says that their fiancées will never prove faithful—no women ever do. They insist the idea is unthinkable. Finally Don Alfonso offers to prove his point for a bet of one hundred sequins. (That comes to about $225—as much as a young officer would earn in a year.) The terms are simply these: for twenty-four hours the young men must faithfully act out whatever Don Alfonso tells them to do. And the scene ends in the third of three trios, as the officers decide what they will do with their money when they win it
(if
they do!).

Scene 2
introduces us to the two young heroines—Fiordiligi and Dorabella. The two sisters are in a garden overlooking the Bay of Naples, and together they sing about the beauty of their fiancés, the officers Guglielmo and Ferrando. They are expecting the young men, but instead old Alfonso arrives to tell them dreadful news. Their fiancés, says he, have suddenly been ordered away, to active duty. A moment later these gentlemen enter, already in traveling clothes. Naturally, a fine quintet develops out of this, the four affianced youngsters expressing their sorrow over parting, while Don Alfonso assures the boys that it’s too early in the game to collect their bets. Scarcely is the quintet over when soldiers and townfolk arrive to sing the joys of a soldier’s life. For now it is
really
time for the young men to go—though not so fast that they cannot take part in one final quintet of farewell. A repetition of the soldiers’ chorus, and off they do go, leaving their girls with Alfonso to wish them
bon voyage
in a tuneful little trio. The scene closes with some cynical remarks delivered to the audience by Don Alfonso. You may as well, he says in effect, plow the sea or sow the sand as put your faith in women.

Scene 3
brings on at once the sixth and most engaging member of the cast. She is the maid Despina, a coloratura soprano. In a recitative she complains about how bad it is to have to be a maid, and, while complaining, she tastes her mistresses’ chocolate. The sisters now enter their drawing room, and Dorabella has a tremendous mock-heroic aria,
Smanie implacabili
. She cannot bear, she says, having fresh air. Shut the windows! She cannot live through her grief! When Despina learns what all the grief is about—that is, the girls’ lovers have gone to war—she gives some real Don Alfonso advice: have a good time while they are gone, for
they
won’t prove faithful. Soldiers never do. Indignantly the girls storm from the room.

Enter now Don Alfonso. With a half-dollar bribe he persuades the maid to help in his plan, which is to get the girls to look with favor on two new suitors. Ferrando and Guglielmo appear almost at once, disguised in beards and dressed like Albanians. When the girls return, Alfonso makes believe that the Albanians are old friends, and the two young men
try making love to their own fiancées. But the girls will have none of it. In an aria
(Come scoglio)
Fiordiligi violently declares her eternal faithfulness. Maybe, like the lady in Hamlet, she protests too much. At any rate, her aria has the most astounding range and huge skips—peculiar, exaggerated difficulties especially composed by Mozart for Da Ponten’s talented mistress, who was the first to sing it. Guglielmo tries to plead his suit with a fine tune—but again without any luck. The girls walk out on him—much to the delight of their fiancés. These (in the ensuing trio) try to get Don Alfonso to settle up, but he says it’s still too early. Ferrando, the tenor of the team, then sings of his happiness in his love, and the scene ends with Don Alfonso and Despina making further plans to win the girls over.

Scene 4
takes us back to the garden. The two girls have another sweet duet about how sad they are, when there is noise off-stage. Their two lovers, still disguised as Albanians, totter in with Don Alfonso. It seems that they have taken arsenic because of their hopeless passion. (Of course, they have really done no such thing.) Don Alfonso and Despina assure the sisters that the men will die without help—and off they rush for a doctor. While they are gone, the two girls are in delightful confusion, taking their men’s pulses and giving other pointless first aid. Then Despina returns, disguised with huge spectacles as a doctor and speaking the most extraordinary jargon. Finally (and this is a bit of satire on Mesmer’s theory of animal magnetism), she brings out a huge magnet; she applies it to the prostrate bodies; and—miracle of miracles!—they begin to come to. Their first words are words of love; and though (in the final sextet) the girls continue to protest, it is clear that Don Alfonso’s scheme is beginning to work.

ACT II

Scene 1
Despina, the maid, offers some very worldly advice to her mistresses at the beginning of this act. In a typical soubrette aria, she says that by fifteen any girl should be a champion flirt. She must encourage
every
man, lie expertly—
and she will rule the world. Talking it over, Fiordiligi and Dorabella decide that this makes some sense: no harm in a little flirtation. They thereupon proceed to divide up, between themselves, the two love-struck Albanians. Dorabella chooses the dark one (who is really Guglielmo, engaged to Fiordiligi); and Fiordiligi will take the blond (that is, Ferrando, engaged to Dorabella). And the scene ends as Don Alfonso invites them down into the garden to see something really worth seeing.

Scene 2
begins with a duet sung by the two lovers to their mistresses. They are in a boat near the seaside garden, and they have a band of professional serenaders to help them. When the men land, all four lovers are very shy, and Don Alfonso speaks for the “Albanians,” while Despina takes up the office for the girls. Fiordiligi and Ferrando wander off among the flowers, and Dorabella and Guglielmo are left to carry on the flirtation. It quickly develops into a melodious duet, and before things have got very far, Dorabella gives Guglielmo a miniature of her fiancé, Ferrando. Then they walk off among the flowers, and Fiordiligi returns, alone. Apparently Ferrando has also been making improper advances, but he has been repulsed, as the soprano tells us in the virtuoso aria
Per pietà
. Still, she does not seem to be confident about how long she will hold out. And so, when the three men meet to compare notes, Guglielmo is triumphant, Ferrando is despondent, and Alfonso promises further developments. Just wait till tomorrow, he says.

Scene 3
develops some difference in character and temperament between the two sisters. Dorabella has already succumbed to Guglielmo’s advances, and Despina congratulates her; but Fiordiligi, though she admits she loves the other supposed Albanian, still resists her feelings. She now decides that they ought to dress in the uniforms of their lovers and join them at the front. But scarcely is she decked out in this warlike garb when Ferrando rushes in. He begs her to kill him with the sword rather than deny her love, and he offers marriage—anything she wants. Fiordiligi, already weakened, finally succumbs, and they rush off. But her fiancé, Guglielmo, has
been watching with Don Alfonso. It is now the second lover’s turn to be in despair, and he curses out the girl thoroughly in her absence. Nor is he more pleased when his self-satisfied friend, having deposited Fiordiligi somewhere, returns. But Don Alfonso soothes them both. In a short speech he advises them to marry their fiancées after all, for, as he says,
Così fan tutte
—“All women act like that.” Together they repeat this solemn generalization:
Così fan tutte;
and the scene ends as Despina announces that the ladies are ready to marry the Albanians.

Scene 4
Despina and Don Alfonso are directing the servants in preparing a large room for the wedding, and then they depart. The happy lovers (the men still in disguise) are congratulated by the chorus, and they themselves sing a self-gratulatory quartet. It concludes with a three-part canon, for only Guglielmo stands aside and mutters his dissatisfaction.

Now Don Alfonso introduces the necessary notary, who is, of course, Despina in disguise, and who brings along the marriage contract. The marriage ceremony is just beginning when, off-stage, the soldiers’ chorus is again heard. Can it be the returning lovers? The girls, hide their supposedly new fiancés in the next room, and a few moments later the men reappear in their military uniforms. Almost at once Guglielmo deposits his knapsack in the next room, and finds Despina, still garbed as a notary. She quickly explains this away (says she had been to a fancy-dress ball); but when Alfonso carefully drops the marriage contract before Ferrando, the jig is up for the girls. They ask to die for their guilt. But then the two men make a quick costume switch once more; Guglielmo returns Ferrando’s portrait to Dorabella; and Don Alfonso finally explains everything. The lovers are properly united and all six principals join in appending a moral: happy is the man who can take the good with the bad—a typical sentiment from the Age of Reason.

DIDO AND AENEAS

Opera in three acts by Henry Purcell with libretto
in English by Nahum Tate based on
Book IV of Virgil’s
Aeneid

Time: after the fall of Troy

Place: Carthage

First performance at Chelsea (London), 1689

    
Dido and Aeneas
is the first truly great opera ever composed by an Englishman, and there are those unkind enough to call it the last as well. It was composed, in 1689, by young Henry Purcell, the glory of English music, and it was composed
for
—of all places—a girls’ school. This school was run by a dancing master named Josias Priest, who seems to have had some influential friends. For not only did England’s leading composer write the score, but the libretto was written by England’s poet laureate, Nahum Tate. Perhaps he was not a very great poet, but he did write a nice, proper libretto for a girls’ school on a classical tale of passion and death. The source is the fourth book of Virgil’s
Aeneid
. Perhaps the girls were studying it in school at the time.