terrifying twists
Lorenzo
da Ponte (libretto, after the comedy by Pierre-Auigustin Caron de
Beaumarchais), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (music) Le nozze di Figaro / the performance I saw was the Metropolitan
Opera live HD broadcast, October 18, 2014
Like
many an opera buffa, Mozart’s Le nozze di
Figaro is filled with would-be lovers jumping in and out of beds; late
night romantic assignations; flirtations and sexual encounters between maid(s)
and master, mistress and godson (or male servant(s), or any visiting admirer); intriguing
switches of amative attentions; startling revelations of heritage and
birthright; as well as, quite often, temporary alterations of sex—all
undertaken beneath the nose of a highly suspicious husband or another such
authoritative figure who is usually the greatest transgressor of the lot.
Anyone who has seen this “precursor” to Rossini’s just as character-leaden
and plot-stuffed
Il barbiere di
Siviglia
knows, Mozart’s work offers all of the above in great proliferation. Between
Count Almaviva’s (Peter Mattei) attempts to bed nearly all of his housekeepers,
and his maid Susanna’s (wonderfully elucidated by Marlis Petersen) and her
soon-to-be husband Figaro’s (Ildar Abdrazakov) attempts to get even (or in
Figaro’s case, to revenge) for the master’s unwelcome attentions of the lively “flower
of the household,” there is hardly a moment in this heady elixir of amour and
feudal abuse that isn’t jam-packed with new plot twists.
“Twist,” indeed, is the perfect word for
the constant story fluctuations, which the Saturday HD broadcast host, Renée
Fleming (who has performed in her share of Figaro
productions) characterized as “a perpetual turning of the tables.” So many
epistles have been written and posted through the pockets of Figaro that, at
one point, when cornered by the Count, he admits that he even he cannot keep
track of the would-be comings and goings of figures, as three notes of
assignation simultaneously fall from his pockets. Fortuitously, Rob Howell’s
well-oiled swing of the settings and Sir Richard Eyre’s precisely-timed
fluidity of direction keep the production moving, even if, at moments, the
audience and characters lag behind in comprehension.
But the “twists” of this busy-bee work lay
not only in the turning down of bedsheets by the Count, but in the twisted
relationships of various characters, most notably Marcellina (the housekeeper
to the pompous Dr. Bartolo) who long-hankering after Figaro, has long-ago
loaned him money attached to a contract stating that if he does not pay her
back, he must marry her. Bartolo, who like the much younger Count, at one time
clearly employed house staff in roles beyond their job descriptions, is more
than delighted to now have the opportunity to get rid of “old cow,” while also revenging
himself for Figaro’s involvement in preventing him (incidents represented in
Rossini’s operatic version) from obtaining Rosina, now the Count’s lovely wife.
Suddenly in act III we discover that the man Marcellina would marry is her
long-lost son, Rafello, fathered by her employer, Bartolo. In short, she, who
the Count was determined just minutes before to declare Figaro’s wife would
have lured him in a horrific coupling, like Oedipus and Jocasta, of mother and
son. In the context of Mozart’s pre-Freudian world, such a marriage does not
represent a psychological condition but rather serves as a hovering omen over
the machinations of the Count, threatening to transform the comic “pranks” of Lorenzo da Ponte’s and Mozart’s work into a
tragedy of epic proportions like Oedipus
Rex. The potential parallel between the Count’s and Bartolo’s actions
cannot be missed by the man who has just sung a song (Vedrò, mentr'io sospiro) expressing his jealousy of his own servant.
Similarly, throughout their opera da Ponte and Mozart feature a newly
created figure, not in the original Beaumarchais play, Cherubino—who the great
Kierkegaard described as a figure “drunk with love”—who twists and turns his
way throughout this play in stupor that would dizzy even the most sure-footed
angel. Yes, Cherubino, obviously, is a kind of angel, a man so beautiful that—as
the writers insist in their script—he must be played always by a beautiful
young woman (in this case, the lovely and musically gifted Isabel Leonard). Cherubino
is a sort of shadow to the Count, a being who aspires to the same status as his
master, which also explains why, discovering the young sex-fiend wherever he
goes, the Count can only seek his destruction. But Cherubino also has
significant qualities that the Count is missing: beauty and youth. Accordingly,
like a twisted, fun-house looking glass, the stare of Cherubino, which the
Count seems to encounter everywhere, can only remind him that he will soon be
an old and ugly fornicator, like Bartolo, who also once challenged him for his
wife!
Unlike the often clumsy and blundering
Almaviva (a long-living soul, or one who learns through the long-time
experiences of life), always behind his nemesis, the cherub can literally “fly,”
as he proves through his escape from the balcony window of his godmother’s
bedroom. Using the former castrati role as a tranvesti character
to perfect effect, Mozart and his librettist
require that not only every woman in the play be sexually charmed by the young
man but must attempt to make every man equally so; except for perhaps Rossini’s
Le Comte Ory, opera has never before used transvestitism to such wonderful
effects. Not only do the Countess and Susanna spend long moments in joyfully
dressing up their youthful lothario as a lovely woman whom they hope will satisfy
the sexual longings of the Count, but another of the Count’s conquests,
Barbarina hides him, when Cherubino has deserted from his military service, by
dressing him up as a provincial beauty. Time and again, the woman
turn-the-tables, so to speak, on this would-be molester by rendering him
neuter, by turning him into one of their own kind.
Still, the rapscallion Cherubino nearly
destroys the day for the penultimate “twist” of the story, wherein the
Countess, having transformed herself into Susanna through her dress (while
Susanna hiding her eager desire for Figaro’s embracement within the Countesses’
gown), prepares to receive her unrepentant husband. Cherubino’s unwanted
attentions reiterate not only the pains the Countess has had so suffer for his
husband’s philandering, but suggests what Barbarina may have to suffer later in
her life.
For
the moment, however, the day is saved, and, the final “twist” is played out in
all its grand ironic display, the Count unconsciously playing lover to his own
wife.
Suddenly realizing that he has become the fool in front of everyone, the
Count, at least momentarily, is forced to realize the errors of his way, asking
for forgiveness not just from his wife (“Contessa perdono!), but to
everyone in hearing range, including the audience whom he has so entertained.
The Countess’ proclamation that she is kinder than her husband in forgiving
him, results in a beautiful choral work that expresses joy while reminding
everyone of the “terrible twists” of reality that they have almost accidentally
escaped. As I whispered to Howard a few moments later: “That is the saddest
aria to a happily-ending opera that I have ever witnessed.”
Los Angeles, October 19, 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment