Opera: Cosi fan tutti by Mozart - synopsis

Act I.
In a coffee shop, Ferrando and Guglielmo (two officers) claim that their brides (Dorabella and Fiordiligi, respectively) will be eternally faithful. Don Alfonso joins the discussion and lays a wager with the two officers, claiming he can prove in a day's time that these two women (like all women) are fickle. The wager is accepted: the two officers will pretend to have been called off to war; soon thereafter they shall return in disguise and attempt to seduce each other's lover. The scene shifts to the two women (they are sisters) who are praising their men. Alfonso arrives to announce the bad news: the officers have been called off to war. Ferrando and Guglielmo arrive, brokenhearted, and bid farewell (quintet: Sento, o Dio, che questo piedo è restio—"I feel, oh God, that my foot is reluctant"). As the boat with the men sails off to sea, Alfonso and the sisters wish them safe travel (trio: Soave sia il vento—"May the wind be gentle"), then Alfonso, left alone, rails against the fickleness of women (arioso: Oh, poverini, per femmina giocar cento zecchini?—"Oh, poor little ones, to wager 100 sequins on a woman").

The scene shifts to a room in the sisters' home. Despina, their maid, arrives and asks what is wrong. Dorabella bemoans the torment of having been left alone (aria: Smanie implacabili—"Torments implacable"). Despina mocks the sisters, advising them to consider new lovers over old lovers (aria: In uomini, in soldati, sperare fedeltá?—"In men, in soldiers, you hope for faithfulness?"). After they depart, Alfonso arrives upon the scene. He fears Despina will recognize the men through their disguises, so he bribes her into helping him win the bet. The two men then arrive, dressed as mustachioed Albanians. The sisters enter and are alarmed by the presence of strange men in their home. The Albanians attempt to win over the sisters, Guglielmo going so far as to point out all of his manly attributes (aria: Non siate ritrosi—"Don't be shy"), but to no avail (aria: Come Scoglio—"Like a rock"). Ferrando, left alone and sensing victory, praises his love (aria: Un aura amorosa—"A loving breath").

The scene shifts to a garden, with the sisters still pining. But Despina has asked Don Alfonso to let her take over the seduction plan—and suddenly, the Albanians burst in the scene and threaten to poison themselves if they are not allowed the chance to woo the sisters. As Alfonso tries to calm them, they drink the poison and pass out. Soon thereafter, a doctor arrives on the scene (Despina in disguise), who, through use of a large magnet (see animal magnetism), is able to revive the Albanians. The revived men, hallucinating, demand a kiss of the goddesses who stand before them. The sisters refuse, even as Alfonso and the doctor (Despina) urge them to acquiesce.

Act II.
The act opens in the sisters' bedroom, with Despina urging them to succumb to the Albanians' overtures (aria: Una donna a quindici anni—"A fifteen year old woman"). After she leaves, Dorabella confesses to Fiordiligi that she is tempted. Fiordiligi remains steadfast, however (duet: Prenderó quel brunettino"—"You take the darker one").

The scene shifts to the garden, where Dorabella and the disguised Guglielmo pair off, as do the other two. The conversation is haltingly uncomfortable, and Ferrando departs with Fiodiligi. Now alone, Guglielmo attempts to woo Dorabella. She does not resist strongly, and soon she has given him a medallion (with Ferrando's portrait inside) in exchange for a heart-shaped locket (duet: Il core vi dono—"I give you my heart"). Ferrando is less successful with Fiordiligi (Ferrando's aria: Ah, lo veggio—"Ah, I see it," and Fiordiligi's aria: Per pietá, ben mio, perdona—"Please, my beloved, forgive"), so he is enraged when he later finds out from Guglielmo that the medallion with his portrait has been so quickly given away to a new lover. Guglielmo at first sympathises with Ferrando (aria: Donne mie, la fate a tanti—"My ladies, you do it to so many") but then gloats, because his betrothed is faithful.

The scene changes to the sister's room, where Dorabella admits her indiscretion to Fiordiligi (É amore un ladroncello—"Is love a little thief"). Fiordiligi, upset by this development, decides to go to the army and find her betrothed. Before she can leave, though, Ferrando arrives and continues his attempted seduction. Fiordiligi finally succumbs and falls into his arms (duet: Tra gli amplessi—"In the embraces"). Guglielmo is distraught while Ferrando turns Guglielmo's earlier gloating back on him. Alfonso, winner of the wager, tells the men to forgive their fiancées. After all: Cosi fan tutte—"All women are like that."
The final scene begins as a double wedding for the sisters and their Albanian grooms. Despina, in disguise as a notary, presents the marriage contract, which all sign. Directly thereafter, military music is heard in the distance, indicating the return of the officers. Alfonso confirms the sisters' fears: Ferrando and Guglielmo are on their way to the house. The Albanians hurry off to hide (actually, to change out of their disguises). They return as the officers, professing their love. Alfonso drops the marriage contract in front of the officers, and, when they read it, they become enraged. They then depart and return moments later, half in Albanian disguise, half as officers. Despina has been revealed to be the notary, and the sisters realize they have been duped. All is ultimately forgiven, as the entire group praises the ability to accept life's unavoidable good times and bad times.

Arthur Miller's Lessons

washingtonpost.com
Arthur Miller's Lessons
By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A17

Facing grave new threats from demonic forces, we can't be as exacting as we used to be about our rights and traditions, can we?

"Though our hearts break, we cannot flinch," a prominent clergyman declares. "There is a misty plot afoot so subtle we should be criminal to cling to old respects and ancient friendships."

The clergyman in question is the Rev. John Hale, a character in Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," set at the time of the Salem witch trials of the 1690s. Miller's death last week at 89 will, one hopes, lead to a new engagement with the work of a playwright who knew the impossibility of sharply dividing the political from the moral and the public from the personal.

Miller instructed us on the individual's obligation to stand up to frightened, and thus dangerous, majorities. But he also offered a withering moral critique of an empty individualism that saw no connection between personal actions and a common good that Miller devoutly believed existed. He preached against selfishness because he knew its strong tug on our souls. He was a moralist deeply suspicious of how moralism is used.

To say that "The Crucible," first produced in 1953, reads as if it were a response to today's headlines is just to repeat what has been said for half a century -- by former dissidents in post-communist Eastern Europe no less than by American liberals during the McCarthy period. "I can always tell what the political situation is in a country when the play is suddenly a hit there," Miller wrote in his autobiography. "It is either a warning of tyranny on the way or a reminder of tyranny just past."

For our own moment, consider this speech by Deputy Governor Danforth defending the role of Salem's witch-hunting court. "But you must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time -- we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God's grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not light will surely praise it. I hope you will be one of those."


"The Crucible" was seen as an allegory to the anti-communist crusade of the 1950s. Miller's critics argued that the Soviet threat was real in the way that witchcraft wasn't. Much the same might be said today of terrorism.


Miller pointed to the dangers of drawing too facile a line between good and evil not because he denied evil but precisely because he understood its power to affect the righteous. Few theologians had as rich an understanding as Miller of man's fallen nature. In "After the Fall," one of Miller's characters asks: "God, why is betrayal the only truth that sticks?"

Yet Miller's genius in appreciating the dark side is precisely what enabled him to celebrate the human struggle against it. And Miller's understanding of human frailty created one of the great ethical imperatives of his work: the demand that respect be offered to other human beings despite their shortcomings.

Miller set his face against the world's tendency to write off large parts of humanity as losers. If Miller was aware of the corruption of the strong, he was also insistent upon the dignity of the weak. This inspired the storied soliloquy in "Death of a Salesman" from Willy Loman's wife, Linda: "I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention finally must be paid to such a person."

Or as Willy himself put it, "You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away -- a man is not a piece of fruit."

Miller never lost the old-fashioned social commitment he learned in the theater of the 1930s. Yet even in his most political work -- including his first successful play, "All My Sons" -- his characters were never simply mechanical representatives of a class. Human beings, not some abstract, undifferentiated humanity, were the stuff of Miller's drama.

Commenting on the 1950s, Miller once said: "We were all going slightly crazy trying to be honest and trying to see straight and trying to be safe. Sometimes there are conflicts in these three urges."

There still are.

postchat@aol.com
© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Music - Review of John Adams Transmigration

J. Adams - On the Transmigration of Souls.
Philip Smith tpt; New York Choral Artists; New York Philharmonic Orchestra; Brooklyn Youth Chorus/Lorin Maazel; Nonesuch New CD 7559 79816-2 (25 minutes : DDD)

Reviewed: Gramophone 10/2004, Rob Cowan
A musical postlude to a tragedy, sensitive but powerful, and well-suited to recording

When I first heard this 25-minute Pulitzer Prize- winning musical response to 9/11 at the Proms last year, I was unsure. Listening alone to the CD is a very different experience: pre-recorded speaking voices that were lost in the hall spring to meaningful life and the sensation of private grieving – so essential for what is in effect an extended threnody – never lets up.

On the face of it, Adams took on an almost impossible commission from the New York Philharmonic. Abstract ‘tragedy’, like religious myth or narrative, has often inspired great music; far less so tragic, historic events that call for a more personal response. Sixty years on from the Holocaust we’re still waiting for a worthy commemorative masterpiece, so it is much to Adams’s credit that On the Transmigration of Souls is a relative artistic success.

Nonesuch has done well to issue this as a CD single. My initial impulse after first hearing was to listen to it again, which I did – and might not have done had there been something else on the disc to distract me. It may well be that, like Reich’s Different Trains, Transmigration is best heard in private, so that sundry noises – street sounds, walking, talking, the distant drone of a police siren – can catch the imagination.

And yet this is no external narrative, more a shared ritual set to a mostly meditative backdrop, carefully thought through, deeply felt but unsentimental. There are no references to specific events, no hints of melodramatic overkill that might make for short-term poignancy but which posterity would possibly deem surplus to artistic requirements. Instead, names of victims, sometimes particulars, recollections (‘she had a voice like an angel’) and fragments such as ‘light… day…sky’ that rage towards the end of the piece and that Adams infuses with pathos.

The use of a choir of children avoids clichéd ‘innocence’ while the tortured climax that sets in at around 17'17" has the gnarled, angry, at times hopeless, aura of the storm’s eye in Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony.

The most affecting passage in Transmigration (the title alludes to all manner of migration, physical or abstract) is the quiet, otherwordly coda with names pattering down, evocative of a crucial image recalled by Adams as more significant than most: the silent paper blizzard, millions of displaced documents that floated lifelessly to the ground after the attack, a symbol more telling than most. This is surely an aspect of Transmigration that will endure once 9/11 has become painful history and the events that grow out of it, whatever they may be, have replaced it in the foreground of our consciousness. I cannot fault either the performance or the recording.
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