If you look up Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in an appropriate work of reference you will probably find some 15 completed operas listed, many written when he was very young. Classical music lovers have quickly reduced this number to five frequently performed compositions, and of these Cosi fan Tutte pro-bably ranks fourth for most listeners.
Written late in Mozart's short life, it is considered an undisputed masterpiece, but a connoisseur's piece nonetheless. It lacks the range, both musical and emotional, of Figaro, Don Giovanni or The Magic Flute, and was neglected for the first 100 years after the composer's death (its first performance in the US was not until 1921, 18 years after the first New York performance of Parsifal). If it has now regained its rightful place in the repertory, it nonetheless remains the "Cinderella" of Mozart's undisputed mature operatic masterpieces.
Furthermore, its subject-matter has often caused raised eyebrows. It concerns two pairs of lovers, with the two men, in response to a bet, testing the faithfulness of the two sisters who are their girlfriends. The men pretend to go away to war, but return disguised as Albanians. Each one then tries to seduce the other one's lover. They effectively succeed, leading to the opera's title which in essence means "all women are the same" (i.e. not to be trusted). You don't have to be a feminist to find this cynical and sexist and see the opera's supposedly happy reversion to the original status quo as "a hasty, shifty compromise, intended to be unsatisfactory" (as the critic Peter Conrad described it).
The music, however, is very fine throughout, though even this remains too lacking in famous set-pieces for some tastes. Cosi fan Tutte is thus in many ways a problem opera -- enigmatic and a qualified success for some, an exquisite masterpiece reserved for true Mozart aficionados, with genuine pain and highly intelligent irony behind its surface polish, for others.
Those in charge of this weekend's production certainly side with the enthusiasts. Cosi is the second opera to be produced in Taipei of the three Mozart wrote with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. All three are using the same line-up of director, conductor and soloists.
"This is the most sophisticated of the three and for a theater director it's great stuff," said director Stan Lai (
"Cosi is the most difficult of the three Mozart/da Ponte operas," said conductor Chien Wen-pin (
This weekend's performances will be set in 1920s Shanghai. When the opera begins the two men, wearing traditional Chinese costumes, will be smoking opium, while the girls are getting a massage. When the men supposedly go off to war, they will do so waving Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) flags. And when they return, instead of the original's Albanians, they will be dressed as Westernized Chinese, wearing business suits and sporting beards.
This particular tactic is well-suited to the production's aim of mirroring contemporary Taiwan because it carries with it the implication that girls can be carried away, if not by actual Westerners, then at least by fellow Taiwanese displaying all the modish indicators of Westernized modernity.
The staging is by the Mexican-American set designer Donato Moreno. At a rehearsal on Monday he told me he had been working on the production for three months, and that his designs will feature four two-sided folding screens -- formally lacquered on one side, painted with foliage on the other -- and above them a Chinese frieze.
The opera will be sung by six of the soloists who starred in Don Giovanni. Indeed, it's the intention of both Chien and Lai to carry on where that production left off.
"In setting Cosi fan Tutte in 1920s Shanghai I'll be showing a society that was as decadent as Taiwan's is today," Lai said. "And Figaro next June will feature another decadent society, that of late-Qing dynasty China around 1900, with all the feudalism and class issues that were to the fore at that time."
Continuity with Don Giovanni will be tight. Chen Yen-ling (
Moreno was enthusiastic about the way the production was progressing. "The crew are beginning to laugh now at some of the ironic contrasts between what the singers are singing and what the situation actually is," he told me. "As for Despina, she's Carmen's great-grandmother -- don't you think so?"
"Mozart was not a chauvanistic pig," said Stan Lai. "He and da Ponte were satirizing not only women but all people. The men play a cruel joke and it backfires on them. Who wins? So it's back to the opium pipes and massages for the girls -- they need a massage after all that!
"Mozart wrote this opera without knowing it would ever be performed in a city like Taipei. I think he would have liked the idea of frustrated women depicted going shopping and drinking English tea! The music is very sophisticated, but in the ensembles the characters sing with high but light voices -- like the breeze. I admire this work so much!"
Tsai Wen-hao told me that his character, the cynical manipulator Don Alfonso, was someone who refused to believe in any human goodness and set out to prove to the couples that love by its very nature wasn't a long-lasting thing. But he felt inclined to modify this analysis to take account of the Chinese setting the opera had been given in this production.
Perceptions into the opera were flying around like squibs on Monday evening. One of the orchestral musicians related to me a brilliant insight that had come to him while playing, namely that the way Mozart used pairs of different wind instruments, and kept changing the combinations, was a joke on the swapping of sexual partners at the center of the opera's plot, even though it might be something only other musicians would be likely to appreciate. But now he's told me, I'm sure I'll enjoy this particular musical joke every time I hear it.
There are many DVD versions of Cosi fan Tutte. For once, Peter Sellars, known for setting operas meant to take place in 18th century drawing rooms on bomb sites, adds a welcome roughness to this elusive work by setting it in a modern American diner, with the orchestral music coming out of jukeboxes. A spectacular production from Berlin, directed by Doris Dorrie, is set in the 1970s and has everyone transformed into hippies in Act 2. A recommendable and highly intelligent version, one that emphasizes the opera's dark side, is Jurgen Flimm's for Zurich Opera, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and starring Cecilia Bartoli and Agnes Baltsa.
This year is the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth and Taipei's two orchestras are already well advanced in preparations to mark the occasion. The National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), in addition to this Cosi and Figaro (the latter due on 30 June, 2 and July 4), is combining with the Wiener Blaserphilharmonie in two mostly-Mozart concerts (23 and 28 April), and there will be one by the Vienna forces alone (April 26). In addition the NSO will present concerts in Taipei's Recital Hall of Mozart songs (May 13), a "Mozart's Family Concert" (May 20) and an evening of Mozart's choral music (May 27).
Meanwhile the Taipei Symphony Orchestra will present productions of Don Giovanni in August, followed by The Magic Flute in September.
Finally, rumors are rife of a single cycle of the Ring operas from the NSO in September, with James Morris as Wotan, and Linda Watson as Brunnhilde. Morris was the Metropolitan Opera's Wotan for over a decade, and Watson is the new Brunnhilde at Bayreuth. Should this rumor prove to be true, remember where you saw it first.
For your information :
What: Cosi fan Tutte
Where: Taipei's National Concert Hall, at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, 21-1, Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei (
When: Tonight at 7.30; Sunday at 2.30, and Tuesday at 7.30.
Tickets: From NT$400 to NT$2,000. Call (02) 3393 9888, or go to www.artsticket.com.tw
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