No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2008
One of Così fan tutte's more amusing episodes occurs in the first-act finale when Despina marches on stage disguised as a doctor and, in a spoof on Mesmerism, produces a magnet to heal the stricken Albanians. She introduces this little scenario with a ridiculous salutation: ‘Salvete, amabiles, bones puelles’. The source of this mangled Latin is interesting: it is present in Mozart's autograph, but not in Da Ponte's libretto, where the Latin appears in its proper form, ‘bonae puellae’. Only two words, to be sure, but they have attracted attention because of the rare glimpse they offer of Mozart's direct intervention in a Da Ponte text, of a parting of ways between composer and librettist. Mozart's change has traditionally been interpreted not as an error at all, but as a kind of ‘correction’ of Despina's character: since the servant Despina lacks the status and education to know proper Latin, Mozart portrays her in a way that is true to her station. As one commentator says, she ‘understands only half of what she says; she imitates what she has picked up from frequent doctor's visits to her masters’.
1 This study is in part the product of work done under the sponsorship of a 1994 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar entitled ‘Music and Literature’, offered by Stephen Scher. A version of this paper was read at the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society in Minneapolis on 30 October 1994.
2 Kramer, Kurt, ‘Da Ponte's Così fan tutte’, Nachrichten der Akademie der ssenschaften in Göttingen I. Philologisch-historische Klasse (1973), 19.Google Scholar Kramer's reading of this passage is also taken up in the NMA edition of the opera (II/5/18, ed. Ferguson, Faye and Rehm, Wolfgang [Kassel, 1991], I, xvii)Google Scholar, where Mozart's emendation is seen as a way of clarifying Despina's lack of education (‘daß damit die Unbildung der Zofe Despina verdeutlicht werden sollte’). It is also offered by Daniel Heartz, who says that Mozart's changes serve the dictates of realism; see Mozart's Operas, ed. Bauman, Thomas (Berkeley, 1990), 236n8.Google Scholar
3 The presence of the commedia dell'arte is felt everywhere in this scene. Fake poisoning is so frequent a lazo that Kathleen Lea notes that it is often taken for granted – she even gives it a separate heading (‘Supposed Poison’) in her discussion of lazzi in Italian Popular Comedy A Study of the Commedia dell'arte, 1560–1670, with Special Reference to the English Stage (New York, 1962), I, 182.Google Scholar
4 For the influence of Marivaux, on Così fan tutteGoogle Scholar, see Rosen, Charles, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (New York, 1972), 312–15.Google Scholar
5 Only Geoffrey Chew draws such a connection, arguing that the libretto parodies the Italian Platonic love pastoral. He adds, however, that the music is ‘scarcely pastoral in any distinctive sense’. See ‘Pastoral’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Sadie, Stanley (London, 1992), III, 912.Google Scholar For the pastoral as a topic in Le none di Figaro, see Allanbrook, Wye J., Rhythmic Gesture in Moart. ‘Le norme di Figaro’ and ‘Don Giovanni’ (Chicago, 1983).Google Scholar
6 The letter appears in Michtner, Otto, Das alte Burgtheater als Opernbühne. Von der Einführung des deutschen Singspiels (1778) bis arum Tod Kaiser Leopolds II. (1792), Theatergeschichte Osterreichs Vol. 3: Vienna, part 1 (Vienna, 1970), 436.Google Scholar
7 Michtner, , 435.Google Scholar
8 Perella, Nicolas J., The Critical Fortune of Battista Guarini's ‘Il Pastor Fido’ (Florence, 1973), 10.Google Scholar
9 For Don Alfonso's quotation of Sannazaro, , see page 132, below.Google Scholar
10 Halperin, David M., Before Pastoral Theocritus and the Ancient Tradition of Bucolic Poetry (New Haven, 1983), 28–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 For a summary of definitions given to pastoral literature, see Alpers, Paul, ‘What is Pastoral?’, Critical Inquiry, 8 (1982), 437CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ettin, Andrew V., Literature and the Pastoral (New Haven, 1984), 3.Google Scholar
12 Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Cambridge, 1982), 107.Google Scholar Halperin agrees, saying that the ‘pastoral has been known to trespass freely on the territory of the major literary genres’ (see n. 10), 28Google Scholar; and Cooper, Helen sees the pastoral as ‘a mode of thought – a way of recasting and projecting experience’. Pastorali Mediaeval into Renaissance (Totowa, NJ, 1977), 2.Google Scholar
13 Even the title of Empson's, William seminal and highly influential Some Versions of Pastoral (New York, 1974)Google Scholar emphasises pastoral's generic indeterminacy.
14 See Hoboken, Anthony van, Joseph Haydn: Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis (Mainz, 1971), II, 403Google Scholar; for Salieri see Angermüller, Rudolph, Antonio Salieri. Sein Leben und seine weltlichen Werke unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner ‘groβen’ Opern: Teil 3: Dokumente, Schriften zur Musik, 18, ed. Kolneder, Walter (Munich, 1972), 53Google Scholar; the references to Endimion are in the Catalog of Opera Librettos Printed before 1800, prepared by Sonneck, Oscar (1914; rpt. New York, 1967), I, 434.Google Scholar
15 ‘In einer unschuldigen, bescheidenen Liebe, in einer ungeschminckten, angeborenen und angenehmen Einfalt (naïveté).’ Mattheson, Johann, Der vollkommene Capellmeister (1739; rpt. Kassel, 1987), 218.Google Scholar
16 Sulzer, Johann Georg, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, 2nd edn (Leipzig, 1794), II, 581.Google Scholar
17 Nisbet, H. B., ed., German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: Winckelmann, Lessing, Hamann, Herder, Schiller, Goethe (New York, 1985), 210.Google Scholar
18 Nisbet, , 210.Google Scholar
19 ‘Empfindungsweise’. Cited in Chew, (see n. 5), 910.Google Scholar
20 Nisbet, (see n. 17), 211.Google Scholar
21 Nisbet, , 211.Google Scholar The emphasis is Schiller's.
22 Cited in Loughrey, Bryan, The Pastoral Mode (London, 1984), 19.Google Scholar This escapist view of the pastoral has a strong hold on much modern commentary. See, for example, Poggioli, Renato, who argues that ‘the psychological root of the pastoral is a double longing after innocence and happiness, to be recovered not through conversion or regeneration but merely through a retreat’. The Oaten Flute: Essays on Pastoral Poety and the Pastoral Ideal (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), 98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The escapist dimensions have also been noted by Loughrey, 10, and Laurence Lerner, who sees in pastoral literature an impulse to escape from the complex to the simple. The Uses of Nostalgia: Studies in Pastoral Poety (London, 1972), 83.Google Scholar Paul Fussell opens an essay entitled ‘On the Persistence of Pastoral’ with the suggestion that literary genres arise out of universal psychological needs: epic, for example, out of ‘the need to contemplate heroes’, or the love of wit finding expression in the epigram. The pastoral satisfies the ‘urge to escape the actual to lodge in something closer to the ideal’. Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (New York, 1988), 151–2.Google Scholar
23 One finds other pastoral dimensions in this work, especially in the concluding fable of Tirsis and Dorilla. John Platoff also notes the presence of the pastoral elsewhere in the opera, especially in the following passage from Act II scene 8, where the queen paraphrases the opening of Tasso's Aminta (see p. 122, below): ‘Chi mai diria, the in questi rozzi tetti/E sotto queste pastorali spoglie/Tanta virtù, tanta onestà s'accoglie’ (Who would have said that under these rough roofs and among the poverty of these shepherds is harboured so much virtue and honesty?). See ‘A New History for Martin's Una cosa rara’, Journal of Musicology, 12 (1994), 93.Google Scholar
24 Goldoni's reform of comedy has its own literature. However one views the debate regarding his rejection of the commedia dell'arte, it is clear that at least some of his works embraced more noble characters. Above all there was the extraordinarily popular La Cecchina, an adaptation of Richardson's Pamela, a sentimental work if ever there was one. Its equation of the pastoral with the sentimental is evident from the very first number: ‘Che piacer, the bel diletto/È it veder in sul mattino/Colla Rosa it Gelsomino/In bellezza gareggiar!/E potere all'erbe e ai fiori/Dir son'io coi freschi umori/Che vi vengo ad innafiar’ (What pleasure, what great delight there is to see in this morning the jasmine compete with the rose in a contest of beauty, and to be able to say to the grass and flowers that I, with bright spirits, come to water you).
25 On theatrical activity in eighteenth-century Vienna, see Branscombe, Peter, ‘Mozart and the Theatre of His Time’, The Mozart Compendium: A Guide to Mozart's Life and Music, ed. Landon, H. C. Robbins (London, 1990), 358–70Google Scholar; Deutsch, Otto Erich, ‘Das Repertoire der höfischen Oper, der Hof- and der Staatsoper: Chronologischer Teil’, Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, 24 (1969), 369–422CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hadamowsky, Franz, Die Wiener Hoftheater (Staatstheater) 1776–1966: Verzeichnis der aufgeführten Stücke mit Bestandnachweis and täglichem Spieplan (Vienna, 1966-)Google Scholar; Michtner (see n. 6); and Rub, Otto, Das Burgtheater: Statistischer Rückblick auf die Tätigkeit and die Personalverhältnisse während der Zeit vom 8. April 1776 his 1. Januar 1913 (Vienna, 1913).Google Scholar
26 Michtner (304) notes that this opera had a rapid dissemination through Europe, and also that it received praise from Zinzendorf.
27 John Brown sees the accompanied recitative as a vehicle for expressing elevated passions that cannot be contained within the boundaries of the aria. Letters on the Poetry and Music of the Italian Opera: Addressed to a Friend (Edinburgh, 1789), 15.Google Scholar
28 For versi sdruccioli as representative of both the infernal and the pastoral, see Caner, Tim, ‘Versification’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, IV, 965.Google Scholar
29 One also encounters examples of the topic in Bartolo's ‘La vendetta’ and in several scenes in Don Giovanni. Allanbrook, (see n. 5), 221Google Scholar, calls the list as a form of ordering ‘an analogue of anarchy’ in connection with Don Giovanni's ‘Fin ch'han dal vino’. (See also 244–6 and, for Le nozze di Figaro, 169–70.Google Scholar) In Gazzaniga's, and Ponte's, DaIl finto cieco (1786)Google Scholar, Don Fastidio, whose name speaks for itself, sings a catalogue aria about all the scholarly works he has studied in his life.
30 There are also other modifications to the list: at bar 21, there is a shift to an allegretto tempo inspired by the change of poetic metre from ottonari to quinari at ‘Dee in un momento’. The opening of ‘Una donna a quindici anni’, like that of her first-act aria, also has the character of an introduction, which presents a central didactic point for subsequent elaboration. The structure of the aria confirms the introductory character of these bars: when the tonic returns, it does so with the third quatrain of the text – neither the opening stanzas nor the melody associated with them reappear.
31 The aside is indicated in the 1790 libretto through the placement of parentheses around the last stanza.
32 Bauer, Wilhelm and Deutsch, Otto Erich, eds., Mozart. Briefe and Aufzeichnungen (Kassel, 1962), III, 13.Google Scholar The emphasis is Mozart's.
33 The italics appear in the 1790 libretto.
34 Mozart's sensitivity even to the character and number of vowels is documented in a letter to his father of 27 December 1780, in which he complains of concluding lines in an aria text having too many is. Mozart: Briefe, III, 78.Google Scholar
35 Despina's aside exhibits many of the characteristics of the older envoy: though to herself, it contains a form of address (‘Viva Despina’) that recalls the envoy's original dedicatory function; its setting to the melody of the opening verse (as well as the rhyme between ‘Regina’ and ‘Despina’) gives it a refrain character common to the type; also typical is its compact summary and reinterpretation of the content of the previous stanzas.
36 The exit is something denied the two sisters in the first act. ‘Smanie implacabili’ lacks one, and the recitative following ‘Come scoglio’ – an exit aria if ever there was one – positively subverts this convention, for Fiordiligi seeks to leave but is held back. In contrast, Despina's ability to exit unchallenged is yet another manifestation of her authority.
37 Although this is Despina's first aria, these are not her first words, which are ‘Che vita maledetta/È it far la cameriera’ (What a damned life it is to play the chambermaid). Such tirate make their way into innumerable arias from servants, and Mozart's setting of this as a recitative and his giving ‘In uomini, in soldati’ the weightier, more memorable setting indicates how much Così fan tutte deflects the emphasis away from Despina the servant and towards Despina the pastoral representative.
38 See Allanbrook, (n. 5), 43–4Google Scholar, and also Sulzer, (n. 16), III, 660Google Scholar, who singles out the 6/8 metre as one of the pastoral's defining musical elements.
39 See especially Sulzer, , III, 660Google Scholar, who defines the pastoral as ‘ein kleines zum Tanzen gemachtes Tonstük’.
40 The use of the term ‘pleasure principle’ to describe one facet of pastoral literature comes from Poggioli (see n. 22), 14. See also Loughrey, (n. 22), 13Google Scholar; and Rosenmeyer, T. G., The Green Cabinet Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric (Berkeley, 1969), 22.Google Scholar
41 Act I scene 2, lines 678–91.
42 The musical bravado of this passage works against the soldiers, however, for it is not difficult to recall this sound and the accompanying boasts at the end of the opera, when the toasts are not to Cupid the God of love but, ironically, to the other one's beloved: ‘E nel tuo, nel mio bicchiero/Si sommerga ogni pensiero/E non resti più memoria/Del passato ai nostri cor’ (In your and my glasses may every thought be submerged, and may no memory of the past remain in our hearts). Guglielmo: ‘Ah bevessero del tossico/Queste volpi senza onor!’ (Ah! They should be drinking poison, these foxes without honour!)
43 Lempriere, J., Bibliotheca Classica, 15th American edn, rev. Lorenzo Da Ponte and John D. Ogilby (New York, 1851), 700.Google Scholar
44 Nachlass des Diogenes von Sinope, in Werke (Munich, 1965), II, 111.Google Scholar
45 Brown, John (see n. 27), 78.Google Scholar
46 Krause, Christian Gottfried, for example, says that trochaic verses express ‘something serious and pathetic’; Von der musikalischen Poesie (1753; rpt. Kassel, 1973), 211.Google Scholar An amusing example of the relationship of poetic metre to topic comes from the opening of Ovid's Amores (lines 1–4), where the ‘stolen foot’ refers to the turn from hexameter to pentameter:
Arma gravi numero violentaque bella parabam
Edere, materia conveniente modis.
Par erat inferior versus – risisse Cupido
Dicitur atque unum surripuisse pedem.
[Arms and the violent deeds of war I was preparing to extol in weighty numbers, with subject suited to the measure. The second verse was equal to the first – but Cupid, it is said, with a laugh stole away one foot.]
47 Sulzer, (see n. 16), IV, 103.Google Scholar
48 Fiordiligi's arias draw on other means of expansion to create their elevated tone. In particular, both take the three-bar segment, not the two-bar, as the basic phrase unit. This expansion slows down the pace, making it more earnest and allowing for subsequent accelerations without undoing the stately tone. Although ‘Come scoglio’ is sometimes considered comical in these exaggerations ( Rosen, Charles [see n. 4], 315Google Scholar), ‘Per pietà’ seems not to have been. Moreover, this type of phrasing (along with the march patterns) is used in arias that might have served as models for ‘Come scoglio’ and are unambiguously serious: ‘Seguir degg'io chi fugge’ from Una cosa rara and ‘Se it nome mio non basta’, a substitute aria by Tarchi from L'arbore di Diana. I am grateful to Mary Hunter for bringing this second aria to my attention, as well as the facts surrounding its creation and performance.
49 See Nissen, Georg Nikolaus von, Biographie W. A. Mozarts (1828; rpt. New York, 1984), 93.Google Scholar
50 In many respects, the pastoral is ideally suited to the representation of the lower social classes. As Martin Scofield remarks, ‘Pastoral traditionally takes the lives of the lowest social classes – originally shepherds and country labourers – and finds in them fundamental forms of human nature and behaviour’. ‘Negative Pastoral: The Art of Raymond Carver's Stories’, The Cambridge Quarterly, 23 (1994), 243.Google Scholar
51 The exchanges between Fiordiligi and Dorabella in their opening duet might also find inspiration from the amoebaean verses of the Theocritan tradition.
52 See Curtius, Ernst Robert, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Trask, Willard R. (Princeton, 1973), 128–31.Google Scholar
53 There is only one noticeably unstable region in the trio, on the word ‘desir’, the last word of the text and its point of arrival. The diminished-seventh chords appear as deceptive cadences that disrupt the tranquility of the scene. Although stability is eventually restored, these chords remind one of the inherent instability of desire and suggest that it might disrupt later events.
54 See page 110 above.
55 I believe this is the significance of Don Alfonso's borrowing of Lilla's cavatina ‘Ah pietade’ from Una cosa rara. By taking an aria from an unambiguously sympathetic treatment of a sentimental heroine and placing it in Così fan tutte's more ironic setting, Don Alfonso serves notice that the entire tradition of sentimental opera, of which Una cosa rara is a quintessential example, is being inspected.
56 Indeed, few opere buffe in the pastoral mode show such a complex approach to the topic. Dittersdorf's, and Brunati's, Democrito corretto (Vienna, 1787)Google Scholar sets up a debate between two characters regarding the relative virtues and shortcomings of city versus country life (see Act I scene 3), but most others give unambiguously sympathetic portrayals of the bucolic life or ethos.
57 Kunze, Stefan, Mozarts Opern (Stuttgart, 1984), 457.Google Scholar