So you want to get into opera? Vol. 1

Empathy, ensembles and eroticism in Mozart's Da Ponte operas

“So you want to get into opera?” posts are targeted towards those new to opera who are in the process of figuring out how to listen and how to discover what they like. Each post features three similar(-ish) pieces with some historical / musical context and a pitch for why I think they are worth a listen. If you like what you hear, you can find lists of similar things to explore in the footnotes.

Let’s get into some actual music! I got into opera via Mozart, so I think it’s a great starting point for this series. Mozart himself was a cool, weird dude — there’s a cute Opera After Dark podcast episode that talks about his interest in fart and poop jokes, and from his letters you just get the sense he would have been a fun person to know. Personally, through his music, I think of Mozart as sophisticated, witty and incredibly empathetic. I’m trying to avoid words like genius, because, well, while they are TRUE, I think when we talk about Mozart in such superlative terms it can get in the way of FEELING his music in a more intuitive visceral way. If you get too caught up in the technicalities of why it’s so good, you can forget to just feel what’s happening.

What do I mean by “Da Ponte operas”? Opera composers often work with a librettist, a collaborator responsible for writing the text (a.k.a. libretto) being put to music. Mozart worked with a few different librettists over the years, but his three operas produced with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte are particularly noteworthy: The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro), Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte.¹ In addition to collaborating with Mozart, Da Ponte was close friends with Casanova and the first professor of Italian literature at Columbia University. He led an interesting and eventful life!

Empathy

For me, something that’s really special about Mozart’s operas — and kind of miraculous in my opinion, if you think about the time in which he was working — is a real interest in and understanding of his female characters. You can genuinely feel the empathy, affection and admiration he has for women in the music he writes for them.

One example of this is “Mi tradì quell'alma ingrata” (This ungrateful soul has betrayed me) from Don Giovanni. Talking about Don Giovanni is a whole thing — on the one hand, it’s an incredibly important and influential work of art carrying centuries of socio-psycho-dissertative baggage (e.g. liner notes consisting of phrases such as “[t]his opera is our great inheritance”) 😮‍💨² — on the other, it continues to rank as one of the easiest operas to pick up and enjoy on first listen.

For now I’ll skip over the ‘greatest hits’ you likely are already familiar with (e.g. this duet) and focus on Donna Elvira. Before the action of the opera, Don Giovanni has seduced, dumped and abandoned Donna Elvira and she has gone out looking for him. She finds him in Act I and as the opera progresses, is repeatedly rejected and betrayed by him and is understandably very angry and upset by this. Despite herself however, she still loves him. That’s what this aria is about, “ma se guardo il suo cimento, palpitando il cor mi va” — when I look at his face, my heart still goes crazy. I like that it doesn’t really have a resolution, and I like that it feels very empathetic to what that kind of feeling feels like. I can’t find a subtitled video on YouTube of my current preferred version with Kiri Te Kanawa, but I also really enjoy this one with Cecilia Bartoli. Her take is impressive because she takes time and space for the emotional beats AND has the technical ability to be exposed in those moments and still hit everything perfectly. Skip to 2:03 in for it to really pick up:

Ensembles

The other thing I really enjoy in Mozart is his ensembles — there’s many moments in his operas where the plot is being driven along at the same time as really fun, expressive and exciting music. There’s a scene in Amadeus that references one of these ensembles from the Marriage of Figaro and does a great job of capturing how exciting and innovative it is. Opera gradually developed from music interrupted by talking or sing-talking (sections called recitatives) to eventual end-to-end music à la Wagner or Puccini and Mozart’s work is a big part of that evolution! There’s many of these sequences in Marriage of Figaro, but I think my favorite is the one mentioned in that Amadeus clip that comes at the end of Act II. The plot is silly, but it is kind of helpful to know what’s going on… but it also doesn’t really matter. Opera to me is like sports — you don’t watch baseball for the rules, you watch it to see how the players operate within the confines of the rules. I think of opera plots in a similar way — it’s not really about the story. I mean, the story adds pathos to what’s happening, but it’s more about the expression of those feelings, and how the performers and orchestra are interpreting and working together to communicate those feelings.

Ok so, end of Act II — Marriage of Figaro is a domestic drama. The Count wants to cheat on his wife, and she is sad about it. Figaro and Susanna are servants in this household, and are trying to get married, but the Count is trying to sleep with Susanna. The whole opera is a series of misunderstandings and setting up traps for the Count which then go awry and they have to get out of them, etc. etc. — here, the Count thinks the page, a young boy named Cherubino that has a crush on the Countess, is hiding in her closet. The page WAS hiding in the closet, but when the Count and Countess leave off stage to go get the key to open the locked closet door, Susanna sneaks in, frees the page, and takes his place. So when in a murderous rage the Count opens the door and finds Susanna, both the Countess and Count are shocked. Taking advantage, the Countess and Susanna use this as an opportunity to make the Count feel bad, and there’s this great moment of reconciliation where the Count apologizes and all three sing “da questo momento quest'alma a conoscerla/mi/vi apprender potrà” - from this moment I’ll / they’ll try to understand each other better (in the clip @ 1:18:05). In that moment these people really do want to be better versions of themselves for each other, and the music just does such a good job of evoking what it feels like to fight with someone you love and then reconcile with sincere forgiveness and repentance. Even though the plot is a bit ridiculous, Marriage of Figaro is full of these really truthful and relatable moments of interpersonal relationships — of quotidian disappointment we can have in the people we are closest to and the remarkable faith and forgiveness of love.

Immediately, Figaro comes in wanting to start the wedding with Susanna and the energy shifts again back to the Count being suspicious, questioning Figaro about a letter he wrote, essentially more silly plot business, which is more of an excuse for fun back-and-forth music as the Count tries to catch Figaro in a lie and Figaro keeps evading him. We get a suspenseful volley between the Count and Figaro leading eventually to this beautiful section where Figaro, Susanna and the Countess plead for the Count to just give in — “Deh signor, nol contrastate, consolate i miei/lor desir” - come sir, don’t be obstinate, give in to our wishes (@ 1:21:11), interspersed with an impatient underlying rhythmic line of the Count continuing to plot. I love these ensemble pieces for the rich sound of multiple voices on top of the orchestra, and the contrasts you can get depending on what each person is saying / feeling.

Next, the gardener comes in yelling he’s seen Cherubino jump down from the window and the Count gets set off again. We now get some new suspenseful sparring music as the Count and Figaro go back at it, with a rewarding finish as Figaro (with the help of Susanna and the Countess) finally out-maneuvers the Count (1:26:38). I love the Count’s line, “Questo birbo mi toglie il cervello, tutto è un mistero per me” - this rascal drives me crazy, everything is a mystery! (my favorite Counts spit this line with a lot of contempt and frustration, with a good trill on ‘birrrrrrrrbo’). There’s also a cute musical joke when Figaro lies and says that HE was the one who jumped, not Cherubino, and that he sprained his foot — the note he sings on ‘pie’ (foot) is purposefully in a different key (1:24:35).

After this, more people storm in and all hell breaks loose and you get a more dramatic finish to the act. Personally I lose a bit of interest at this point — there’s some fun moments but it’s also a little too bombastic opera-opera — for me, the best parts of the Act II finale are when you get this slow build and then a very satisfying subtle cathartic payoff that marries the text of what’s happening musically. It is, all in all, ~20 minutes, but each section is such a nice build to the next I find it captivating. I couldn’t find a good version of just this section, but did find this excellent subtitled version of the whole opera (with Kiri Te Kanawa as the Countess!) — the unbroken section of music that ends the act starts at 1:09:58.

Eroticism

So far we’ve got a sad solo and a lengthy ensemble, so I’ll finish with a devastating love duet from Così Fan Tutte (All women do it / So do all women). Apart from this trio, Così is relatively less well-known and performed than Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. This perhaps is due to its zanier-than-usual plot that on the surface is incompatible with modern sensibilities. If you have the right person explain to you, however, why it’s interesting and compelling and see the right production (for me this was Agapò te Musikè 2’s YouTube video comments; Daniel Heartz’s book Mozart’s Operas and the beloved 2006 Glyndebourne production) you realize it’s actually most modern in its insights on human nature and relationships and, in some ways, the most mature opera of the Da Ponte trio.

The plot builds off of a ‘swapped lovers’ trope that was apparently a thing in the 17th / 18th century. At the start of the opera, two young women are in love with two young men, the young men make a bet with an older dude and pretend to go off to war but instead come back in disguise and try to woo the young women (switching partners) in an attempt to prove to the cynical old man that their girlfriends are faithful. Of course eventually both girlfriends fall for the ‘new’ lovers, are dramatically confronted for their perfidy and in the end meekly go back to their original partners expressing the moral that “they who look on the bright side will always be happy”.

The key with Così is to pay close attention to the music. While the characters say things like “all accuse women, and I excuse them — if a thousand times daily they change their love, others call this a vice, others a custom. To me it seems a necessity of the heart”, the music in fact suggests that one of the men (the tenor) falls in love with their ‘new’ partner too! Così fan tutti!

Candidly, I didn’t understand this until reading musicologist Daniel Heartz’s book. Heartz demonstrates how Mozart musically subverts the text, showing deep empathy and affection for these young women and equal derision for their male counterparts. He also points out the clear alignment in the music and character of the ‘new’ couples and that Da Ponte and Mozart don’t end the opera with a wedding — it’s still possible these couples will break up or get together with the other partner!

For me, Così Fan Tutte is about young love. It’s about our tendency to feel emotions very strongly at that age that are ridiculous and something to make fun of, but also something to look back on with empathy, affection and pity. There are serious heart-breaking aspects of the kind of mercurial love you feel at that age, and just because it’s volatile doesn’t make it any less real!

A duet that captures this intensity of feeling happens near the end, when the tenor finally wins over his ‘new’ girl. Plot-wise, the soprano is preparing to escape the conflicting romantic feelings she’s started to develop for the tenor by dressing up as a soldier to join her original baritone boyfriend at the front, but the tenor storms in interrupts her. In a documentary about a 2006 Glyndebourne production,³ the director talks about how in this moment Mozart has one line of music in which the soprano falls in love with the tenor, and how amazing it is that there is so much in that one line. Here’s the full duet, with the magic line at 3:10. The words themselves are also very pretty: “Volgi a me pietoso il ciglio: In me sol trovar tu puoi: sposo, amante, e più se vuoi — Idol mio, più non tardar” - turn a merciful eye to me… only in me can you find a partner, a lover and anything else you want — my idol, don’t wait any longer. 😭

Phew! Ok that’s it for now. Hopefully you found this helpful — if you liked any of these excerpts, check out similar pieces below!

If you liked Mi tradì …⁴

If you liked Figaro’s Act II finale …⁵

If you liked Fra gli amplessi … ⁶

1. I will refer to an opera with its English name if it’s a fairly common convention. The rules for English speakers governing whether or not to use the original language are a little fuzzy, but usually the more well-known the opera and complicated the title, the more likely people will revert to English. E.g. Il barbiere di Siviglia → The Barber of Seville; Die Zauberflöte → The Magic Flute; Der fliegende Holländer → The Flying Dutchman; Der Ring des Nibelungen → the Ring cycle; Пиковая дама → The Queen of Spades / Pique Dame etc. etc. Sometimes albums or opera houses will use the English name to indicate that the opera is sung in English (the Met does this) but in regular conversation it can come across as a bit pedantic / unnecessary in my opinion.

2. Personally, I interpret moments when he is framed musically or dramatically in a charming or seductive way as Mozart both building dramatic irony and extending Don Giovanni’s seduction to the audience. Mozart draws you in! Centuries of wondering “but is he really that bad?” are just a testament to how effective the music is. It makes you invest in a sociopathic rapist murderer. This is my current theory for why certain productions make weird unsupported choices like Donna Anna inviting Giovanni in before the opera starts or think pieces with titles like “Don Giovanni: Hero or Villain?” — he’s like American Psycho, you idiots! You are supposed to have a hard time believing he’s dangerous and deranged!

3. Glyndebourne is a music festival in England with a reputation for high quality productions (a specific version of an opera show — staging, costumes, sets, etc.) and performances. There’s an episode of Frasier (I think it’s season 5, episode 10 “Where Every Bloke Knows Your Name”) where Frasier gives Niles a VHS of Orfeo ed Euridice and Niles enthusiastically says “the Glyndebourne production?!” 😂

4. Dono sono from Marriage of Figaro; Per pieta from Cosi fan tutte; Ach ich fühl’s from Magic Flute (libretto with English translation — this aria is No.17)

5. Cosi fan tutte’s Act I finale; Act I finale of Don Giovanni (libretto with English translation); finale of Marriage of Figaro (libretto with English translation)

6. Deh vieni alla finestra from Don Giovanni (libretto with English translation); Giunse alfin il momento / deh vieni non tardar from Marriage of Figaro; Ah taci, ingiusto core from Don Giovanni (libretto with English translation)