Cosi Fan Tutte: Wiener Symphoniker [DVD]

This is my favorite among the Peter Sellars productions of Mozart's comedic masterpieces. In fact, it's the only one I remotely like at all.

Cosi Fan Tutte is the last of the three magnificent collaborations between Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, artistic soul mates if ever there were any. It was written during a dismal time towards the end of Mozart's short life. Family health issues and the usual financial stressors were taking their toll on Mozart's strength, but never on his relentlessly exquisite musical output.

Cosi has the most cynical underpinnings of any of Mozart's operas, which are usually imbued with his characteristic warmth and optimistic humanism. Yet, despite Cosi's bleak perspective on love and loyalty, the music is ecstatically gorgeous, and in its sheer beauty perhaps exceeds any of Mozart's other operatic works. It requires perfect singing and flawless vocal technique, as do all of Mozart's operas. This dvd is far from meeting any of the requirements of great singing called for by Mozart's work, but it does have other marginal entertainment values for either those who are not interested in great singing and would just like to be able to make it through an entire performance of the lengthy Cosi, or for those who are so familiar with this master work that they can take time for parody, which is more what this production is about.

Cosi has a rather checkered past. Unfortunately for Mozart, Emperor Joseph II died shortly after the opera's opening. The theatres in Vienna closed down in mourning, and that was the end of Cosi for Mozart's generation. During the 19th century, when Mozart worship was in full swing, the sexually conservative critics and audiences were horrified that Mozart would have applied his divine gifts to such a tawdry libretto about two slutty sisters and their instantaneous infidelity during their lovers' absence. In order to justify performances of this gorgeous but racy opera during that era, more chaste and respectable librettos were inserted to replace the morally shocking original.

You certainly won't find the kind of glorious Mozartean singing on this Sellars dvd that you can find on some of the more spectacular recorded performances of Cosi. On dvd, Daniel Barenboim's Cosi is graced by the wondrous Dorothea Rauschmann as Fiordiligi. This Cosi attempts a satirical point of view, too, but it comes off more as lowbrow slapstick, and is not as funny, original or as true to Mozart's intentions as is the Sellars.

On cd, Barenboim's Cosi on the Erato label has fabulous singing and his brilliant conducting of the Berlin Philharmonic moves along at exactly the right pace to enhance the wit and eroticism of this multilayered, climax-oriented ensemble work. And of course, there's the great classic version on EMI, conducted by Karl Bohm, with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Christa Ludwig. Recently, Guild released a treasure of a Cosi from the early 1950's, conducted by Fritz Busch with Sena Jurinac as Fiordiligi, lovingly restored by Richard Caniell, the patron saint of historic opera lovers everywhere.

While the Sellars production lacks superior vocal talent and skilled conducting (granted, two of the most important components of great opera) it somewhat compensates with a production concept fairly close, I believe, to some of Mozart's ideas about his characters and their interpersonal dynamics.

The setting is "Despina's" - a tacky diner in the late 1980's - located in Florida or someplace like that. The girls are bored, boring and shallow. The emphasis here is on male emotions and male suffering, and the women are portrayed as pure idiots, as opposed to the more vulnerable and sensitive men. Unlike the women, the men (including Don Alfonso), are not opera buffa caricatures, but are authentically wounded by their lovers' triviality and betrayal.

The most charismatic figure in the cast is the Despina, Sue Ellen Kuzma. She shows her stuff in the finale to Act One - one of Mozart's greatest, among his many marvelous, complex finales. Here, in order to heal the alleged suicides of the allegedly desperate lovers, Despina disguises herself as 'il medico', Mozart's hilarious parody of Franz Mesmer, the high profile and controversial Viennese doctor who invented hypnosis (then called 'animal magnetism' - hence the typical magnet jokes in this scene). Kuzma plays the doctor as a very New Age, very California Shirley MacLaine type, testing and adjusting the men's auras, chakras, and other body parts, resulting, of course, in their miraculous healing.

All in all, musically this production is on a pretty low level considering the heights to which Mozartean singing can rise. By no means is it bad singing - it's just not great singing. It's more driven by its theatrical concepts than by any particular musicality or outstanding artistry. The humor is genuine, though, and I admit to having watched it several times and having laughed quite a bit. Somehow, Sellars' insights into Cosi work well as theatre. They're not, by any means, the only way of looking at this opera. But his perspectve did bring a fresh and contemporary accessibility to an eighteenth century work. It's more fun to watch it with a friend who is Mozart savvy - you can share the jokes together.

There are lots of little things wrong with this production. But the main thing is that it works - and it works powerfully. This is not a happy Cosi - at the end the principles are still falling apart. And when you think of it well they should be. Their lives have been terribly shaken by love which is in truth the most powerful force there is.

By updating the time to present day America the sexuality implicit in the story is brought to the fore. Sellars also plays with the story - not just at the end when who goes with whom is still up in the air - but in Act 1 when the turks attempt to pair with their former loves. Then in Act 2 when the women pick their men - the opposite of their loves - the men are taken off guard and wounded. Thus starts the downward plunge of this Cosi into pain. The singing-acting is great. This is not the ideal Mozart singing. But if you want a Cosi that makes you think and feel this is it.

you always pay some price for imagination and innovation,revisiting Opera's encrusted dust-laden ways of putting something and humans on the stage; here Sellars and his on-going cadre of regulars, Sylvan, Larson, Maddalena rise to interesting heights, you cannot say great heights for in the cloistered world of opera, (Oh sorry Opera! )you still have pretentions about Greatness Gr-Greatness (Two "G'S) greatness about what? singing!, we need to have interesting voices to sustain an entire evening sitting as Sellars & Cadre do not sacrifice too much in any direction,but service up full-tilt dramatic situations. Here the singing is perhaps not as great or voluptuous as other tried and tested predictable "Cosis" but then interesting minimalist choreography; hand/arm movements,flailing in ther air and gentle unassuming personas of Susan Larson and Janice Felty really carry the emotive dimensions to Yes!, greatness farther than the prestine relatively sterile productions I've seen as with Barenboim.
Of course only on a TV screen through DVD can you actually see all of Sellars production/direction details,there is a bit of utopia in his conceptualizations, for if you cannot see it, it doesn't exist, except in his Notes. Sellars locates wonderful body and hand gestures which take you right into the complexity of young women obsessed with their bodies and their lack-luster boyfriends,like it is an extension of what their voices are doing, much deeper and interesting than the TV "Sex in the City" but you can see Mozart's and Sellar's imagination were hovering around something similar although not actually knowing/experiencing the vocabulary of either Sarah Jessica Parker or Kim Cattrall.Wolfgang loved good parties with woman falling out of their dresses;still Mozart can take incredible liberties in beleivibility as in the famous Six-Eighth :Trio: saying goodbye "Soave sia il vento" sailing away(fictiously) of the two lovers from Dorabella, Fiordiligi, helped by Don Alfonso, here played by baritone Sanford Sylvan, a Vietnam Vet who is wrapped perhaps too tight,bottled up with something dangerous, ready to explode.Well it is his plot anyway to dupe/test the fidelity as you know of the two adorable woman here.Sylvan is indeed very beleivable more so than the powdered-wig George Washington-like Don Alfonsos you will usuually encounter.But if a parentetical form exists in music as in literature,suspending the flow of the drama,like an escape as this Trio, that is a innovation for Wolfgang; certainly is it The Fifties Diner? which helps loosen things up, the informality of it,as contrasted to a standard production with Southern Belles-like Prom dresses in solid colours, Yuckee and boring to me,you may like it; The Diner and the unassuming costumes provides wonderful backdrops/materials for all the intense emotions without being a distraction;Felty and Larson wear kick-around slacks; the original does take place at a Coffee Shop, so I fail to see how this production alters/ rearranges the sensibilities of hardcore Opera Buffs. The action stays fairly intense here with the Men returning as dressed Turks falling for the opposite lovers of the original pairing,"swapping" it was called in the Seventies before all this sexual sophistication rose to the American living room.