Mozart and Salieri: The School of Jealousy

François Boucher, Lovers in a Park, 1758 (detail). Image source: Timken Museum of Art

In my previous post Mozart and Salieri: The Magician's Cave I mentioned that during Mozart's lifetime Antonio Salieri was by far the more popular composer. That began to change shortly after Mozart's death in 1791. Throughout the rest of the decade Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) continued to be performed regularly at Emmanuel Schikaneder's Theater auf der Wieden, leading to the revival of Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Rescue from the Harem) and then the Mozart-Da Ponte operas in German translation. Salieri stopped composing operas after 1804, and even his most popular operas gradually fell from the repertory. In the meantime Mozart was increasingly recognized and embraced by writers such as E.T.A. Hoffmann ("Don Juan") and Alexander Pushkin ("The Stone Guest" and "Mozart and Salieri"). By the end of the 19th century Mozart was considered (rightfully) as one of the greatest composers ever to have lived, and Salieri was all but forgotten, except (unjustly) as his rival and nemesis.

Today a highly unscientific search of the global library catalog WorldCat turns up more than 30,000 books on Mozart and his works in all languages, including more than 3,000 that are categorized as biographies (the first, by Franz Xaver Niemetschek, was 78 pages long and published in 1798, seven years after Mozart's death). By contrast, there are only about 600 books on Salieri and his works in all languages, including four dozen biographies (the first, by Albert von Hermann, was 24 pages long and published in 1897, seven decades after Salieri's death). For every book published about Salieri, 50 have been published about Mozart.

Antonio Salieri, by Joseph Willibrord Mähler, 1815 (detail). Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Four of Mozart's operas, including the three with libretti by Lorenzo Da Ponte, are among the ten most performed operas in the world, according to Operabase.com; Salieri's operas have been all but absent from the stage for more than two hundred years. But without Salieri there would have been no Mozart-Da Ponte partnership. When Da Ponte came to Vienna in early 1782, he carried a letter of introduction to Salieri from Caterino Mazzolà, poet of the court theater in Dresden and librettist of Salieri's Venetian opera La scuola de' gelosi (The School of Jealousy). A year later the letter bore fruit. Da Ponte wrote in his Memoirs,

. . .I chanced to hear a rumor that Joseph II was considering reopening an Italian Opera in his capital; and remembering Mazzola's suggestion, the thought flashed upon me that I might become a poet [librettist] of Caesar. . .I called on Salieri, to whom I had delivered Mazzola's letter on my arrival; and he not only encouraged me to apply for the post, but volunteered to speak himself to the Director of Spectacles [Count Rosenberg] and to the Sovereign personally, of whom he was particularly beloved.

Salieri managed the matter so deftly that I went to Caesar for my first audience, not to ask a grace, but to give thanks for one. [1]

Despite never having written a play, much less an opera libretto, Da Ponte was appointed to the position of poet to the court theater and held this position for eight years. During that time he wrote libretti for both Mozart and Salieri, as well as several other composers. One of his first tasks after receiving his appointment was the revision of Salieri and Mazzolà's La scuola de' gelosi when it was chosen as the inaugural production of Joseph's new opera buffa troupe.

Lorenzo Da Ponte, engraved by Michele Pekenino after a portrait by Nathaniel Rogers, ca. 1822 (detail). Image source: Wikimedia Commons

While it's incontestably true that Mozart is a greater composer than Salieri, it's also true that Mozart and Da Ponte borrowed (and generally improved) musical and textual ideas from Salieri's operas. This borrowing has become even clearer from the new productions and recordings that have begun to appear over the past decade or so, and La scuola de' gelosi is a case in point. 

In La scuola a Count, whose affections are estranged from his loving wife, plans to seduce a woman from a lower class: Ernestina, the wife of the merchant Blasio. There are disguises, false assignations, and a denouement in a garden where all the couples surprise one another and the jealous Blasio and the straying (and also fiercely jealous) Count are chastened by their faithful spouses.

If this sounds reminiscent of the plot of Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), it's actually the other way around: La scuola was written in 1778, six years before Beaumarchais' play La folle journée, ou Le mariage de Figaro was first produced and eight years before Mozart and Da Ponte's Figaro had its première.

La scuola prefigures Figaro not only in its plot and text, but also in its music. In Act II La scuola's Countess sings an aria in which she yearns for the return of her husband's love:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcNyXHJDi7Y

The singer is Francesca Mazzuli Lombardi with L'Arte del Mondo conducted by Werner Ehrhardt. The words of the aria:

Ah, sia già de' miei sospiri sazio il fato e sazio il Ciel! Abbastanza a' suoi martiri mi serbò destin crudel. Fra gli orrori d'avversa sorte dovrei sempre i di passar? Il tormento della morte men terrible mi par. Torna, torna, amato sposo al desio del primo amor, e bei giorni di riposo sien compenso al mio dolor.

Ah, may both fate and Heaven be sated with my sighs! I have been tortured enough by my cruel destiny. Am I doomed to dwell always among the horrors of suffering? The torments of death seem less terrible to me. Come back, come back, beloved husband to the desire of our first love, and beautiful days of peace will reward me for my sorrow.

"Ah, sia già de' miei sospiri" may remind you of the arias sung by the Countess in Figaro. In "Porgi amor" she sings, "O love, offer me some relief / For my sorrow, for my sighs! / Give me back my beloved / Or let me die" with the same descending melody on the word "morir" with which La scuola's Countess sings "crudel." And the structure of "Dove sono" from Figaro is audibly similar, at least to my ear:

https://youtu.be/syG9qMEE8K4?t=125

The singer is Nadine Sierra in live performance with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra conducted by Patrick Summers. (For my post about Nadine Sierra and this production, see The Marriage of Figaro.) The words of the aria:

Dove sono i bei momenti Di dolcezza e di piacer? Dove andaro i giuramenti Di quel labbro menzogner? Perchè mai, se in pianti e in pene Per me tutto si cangiò, La memoria di quel bene Dal mio sen non trapassò? Ah! se almen la mia costanza, Nel languire amando ognor, Mi portasse una speranza Di cangiar l'ingrato cor!

Where are those lovely moments Of sweetness and pleasure? Where have the promises gone That came from those lying lips? Why, if all is changed for me Into tears and pain, Has the memory of that sweetness Not vanished from my breast? Ah! if only, at least, my faithfulness, Which still loves amidst its suffering, Could bring me the hope Of changing that ungrateful heart!

The musical and textual echoes among these arias suggest that the Countess in Figaro was modelled at least in part on the Countess in La scuola.

Wolfgang Mozart ca. 1782, unfinished portrait by his brother-in-law Joseph Lange (detail). Image source: Wikimedia Commons

La scuola also seems to have inspired Mozart and Da Ponte's Così fan tutte (All women are the same). When Blasio and the Countess learn of the Count's scheme to seduce Blasio's wife, a mutual acquaintance (who himself yearns after the Countess) advises them to turn the tables on the Count by pretending to be lovers and making him jealous. Shades of Don Alfonso advising (and manipulating) the couples in Così. And in La scuola's finale Blasio and the Count offer as a reason for men to remain faithful that "tutte son la stessa cosa" (all women are the same). Da Ponte's original title for Così fan tutte was La scuola degli amanti (The School for Lovers), and he originally offered it to Salieri as a sequel to La scuola de' gelosi. But after composing the opening numbers Salieri did not continue, and Da Ponte took the libretto to Mozart. (For ways in which both Così and Don Giovanni echo the Salieri-Giovanni Casti opera La grotta di Trofonio, please see Mozart and Salieri: The Magician's Cave.)

The 2015 Deutsche Harmonia Mundi recording of La scuola de' gelosi by L'Arte del Mondo conducted by Werner Ehrhardt is charming. All of the vocalists acquit themselves more than honorably, and the women (Francesca Lombardi as the Countess, Roberta Mameli as Ernestina, and Milena Storti as Carlotta, the Countess's maidservant) are especially good. While Massimiliano Toni's continuo fortepiano occasionally may be a bit overactive for some tastes, Ehrhardt's tempos are well-judged and the playing of the ensemble L'Arte Del Mondo sparkles. The full recording is available on YouTube and elsewhere, and is recommended; it received an honorable mention in my Favorites of 2019: Recordings. Salieri may not have been Mozart, but being Salieri was more than sufficient.

Image source: Presto Classical

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1. Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte, translated by Elisabeth Abbott. J.W. Lippincott, 1929, p. 129. Da Ponte's gratitude to Salieri had waned by the end of his tenure as court theater poet. In 1791, after Joseph's death and the accession of his brother Leopold II, Da Ponte was dismissed. He wrote out a list of enemies, among whom he listed his "Principal enemy: Sig. Salieri." One of Salieri's crimes, in Da Ponte's view, was that "he assigns prima-donna roles to [Caterina] Cavalieri," Salieri's mistress, instead of to Adriana Ferrarese, Da Ponte's mistress. Da Ponte's intriguing came to nothing, and his accusations were mis-aimed: Salieri is unlikely to have prevailed on Leopold to dismiss Da Ponte, if for no other reason than that his influence was sharply diminished under the new ruler. Under the new regime Salieri himself lost his position as musical director of the court theater, although he remained as Hofkappellmeister.

Mozart and Salieri: The Magician's Cave

Antonio Salieri (detail). Image source: Terra.com.br

There is an indelible popular image of the composer Antonio Salieri, thanks to Peter Shaffer's 1979 play Amadeus and F. Murray Abraham's Oscar-winning performance in the 1984 Miloš Forman film version. In the play and film Salieri, "the patron saint of mediocrity," envies Mozart, undermines him at every turn, and finally, to rid himself of his more talented rival, poisons him.

Salieri's culpability for Mozart's death was taken by Shaffer from Alexander Pushkin's dramatic dialogue Mozart and Salieri, one of the four Little Tragedies (1830):

Salieri:
I am an envier. I envy; sorely,
Profoundly now I envy. — O Heaven!
Where, where is justice? When the sacred gift,
Immortal genius, comes not in reward
For fervent devotion, complete self-denial,
For toil and effort and prayers,
But casts its glow upon a madman's head,
An idle loafer's brow. . .O Mozart, Mozart!

This image of Salieri is contradicted, however, by the historical evidence. For one thing, Salieri was vastly more successful than Mozart. In 1774, at the age of only 24, Salieri was appointed Kammerkomponist ("chamber composer"—in essence, the director of non-church and non-ceremonial music) and director of the Italian opera at the Viennese court of the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II. Salieri was also the protégé of Gluck, the most renowned opera composer of the previous generation. Between 1783 and 1792 Salieri's operas received a total of 167 performances in Vienna; Mozart's operas received 63 performances—respectable, certainly, but only sufficient to make him the seventh-most-performed opera composer in the imperial capital. Beyond Vienna, Salieri's operas were performed in Milan (where Joseph's brother Ferdinand was Grand Duke), Venice, Rome, and Paris (where Joseph's sister Marie Antoinette was Queen). Mozart had far more cause to be envious of Salieri than the other way around. [1]

Michael Kelly by Adèle Romany. Image source: Nancy Storace (1765-1817)

Michael Kelly, the Irish tenor who sang in Vienna between 1784 and 1787 and by his own account appeared in Paisiello's Barbiere di Siviglia (Barber of Seville) and the first performances of Martin y Soler's Una Cosa Rara (A Rare Thing) and Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), knew Salieri well. He wrote of him in his Reminiscences (1826),

Salieri. . .was a composer of eminence. . .He was a little man, with an expressive countenance, and his eyes were full of genius.

. . .Salieri, indeed, would make a joke of any thing, for he was a very pleasant man, and much esteemed at Vienna; and I considered myself in high luck to be noticed by him. [2]

This does not mean, of course, that there was no rivalry between Mozart and Salieri. Since they were both producing operas for the court theater and vying for the Emperor's and the audience's favor, it could hardly have been otherwise. And not all of Salieri's decisions as director of the opera would have been pleasing to Mozart, which may have colored his perspective. Kelly reports that

. . .three pieces were nearly ready for representation at the same time, and each composer claimed the right of producing his opera for the first. The contest raised much discord, and parties were formed. The characters of the three men were all very different. Mozart was as touchy as gunpowder, and swore that he would put the score of his opera [Le nozze di Figaro] into the fire if it was not produced first; his claim was backed by a strong party. Righini, on the contrary, was working like a mole in the dark to get precedence [for Il Demogorgone, ovvero il filosofo confuso].

The third candidate was Maestro di Capella to the court [Salieri is described as Maestro di Capella on the title page of the score of La Grotta di Trofonio below, although he was not officially appointed Hofkapellmeister until 1788], a clever, shrewd man, possessed of what Bacon called, crooked wisdom; and his claims were backed by three of the principal performers, who formed a cabal not easily put down. [3]

Was there a conspiracy against Mozart led by Salieri? Mozart thought so at times. One of his father's letters to Mozart's sister Nannerl says that "very powerful cabals have ranged themselves against your brother. Salieri and all his supporters will move heaven and earth to try to down his opera. . .many people are plotting against him." [4] The most probable source of Leopold's information was his son. Complicating this picture, of course, are what we know of Mozart's own "touchy as gunpowder" nature (was he seeing dark conspiracies to undermine him where none existed?), the fact that Salieri did not actually have an opera ready in the spring of 1786 (La Grotta di Trofonio (The Cave of Trophonius) had been performed the previous fall, and had been very successful), and Mozart's miraculous ability to thwart the nefarious plans of the "powerful cabal": in the end, it was his Figaro that was the first opera produced when the season resumed.

But if they were sometimes at odds with one another, Mozart and Salieri also worked together. In 1785 they collaborated, perhaps with a third composer, on a short cantata celebrating the return to health of Nancy Storace, a leading soprano in the opera troupe (the score of the cantata was identified in 2015). Among many other roles, Storace created Ofelia in Salieri's La Grotta and Susanna in Mozart's Figaro.

Nancy Storace (detail) by Pietro Bettelini, 1788. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

And in early 1786 Mozart and Salieri each composed a one-act comic opera—Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario) in German, and Salieri's Prima la musica, poi le parole (First the music, then the words) in Italian—to be performed at a banquet held by the emperor. So while at times they were professional rivals, they were also colleagues who could poke fun at backstage machinations. Whatever the truth or falsity of Mozart's suspicions, it seems that relations between them remained generally cordial until the end of Mozart's life.  [5]

Mozart would borrow elements of Salieri's parody of a prima donna's aria ("Lá tu vedrai chi sono") from Prima la musica when later writing Fiordiligi's partly-parodic "Come scoglio" in Cosi fan tutte (1790). As I wrote in my post on a recording of excerpts from Der Schauspieldirektor and Prima la musica, selected as one of my Favorite recordings of 2018, "Nothing was lost on Mozart."

That feeling was reinforced on hearing the superb recording of Salieri's La Grotta di Trofonio with Les Talens Lyriques conducted by Christophe Rousset (Ambroisie, 2005). In the opera two sisters, the more serious Ofelia (Raffaella Milanesi in Rousset's recording) and the more lighthearted Dori (Marie Arnet) have reached the age of marriage and have chosen lovers who reflect their temperaments. Ofelia loves the contemplative Artemidoro (Nikolai Schukoff), while Dori loves the fun-loving Plistene (Mario Cassi).

Title page of the score of La Grotta di Trofonio: Ofelia and Dori meet Trofonio outside his cave in a scene from Act II. Vienna: Artaria, 1786, engraving by Mansfeld. Image source: Oxford Music Online

While wandering in the forest Artemidoro encounters the magician Trofonio (Carlo Lepore) and enters his cave in search of knowledge. Soon, seeking his friend, Plistene also enters the cave. When the two friends emerge their personalities have been switched, to the dismay of the sisters. The women's father Aristone (Olivier Lallouette) suggests that the simplest solution is for them to exchange lovers. The sisters reject this idea and decide to visit the magician's cave themselves, where their personalities are also switched—only, in the meantime the men have re-entered the cave and been switched back. Now the couples are mismatched again, this time to the dismay of the men. Finally Aristone pleads with Trofonio to resolve the situation. He invites the sisters back into the cave where they return to their original personalities, and the opera ends with a double wedding.

When he wrote the libretto for Cosi fan tutte, Lorenzo Da Ponte clearly drew inspiration from Giovanni Casti's libretto for La Grotta. Da Ponte's libretto also features two sisters and two swains of differing temperaments, an older man advising/manipulating the two couples and pressuring them to switch partners, and at the end a restoration of the original couples and a double wedding.

Mozart also borrowed musical ideas from La Grotta. Salieri's overture begins with sustained chords in the low strings evoking the underworld, an unusual opening that is also heard in Mozart's Don Giovanni (1787), as is the recurrence of the same music later in the opera at the appearance of the supernatural. (This is somewhat unusual; in this era the music of the overture was still often independent of that of the opera it introduced.) La Grotta's opening trio involving Aristone and his daughters prefigures the sound-world of Cosi and the trios featuring Don Alfonso, Fiordiligi and Dorabella (like Dori in La Grotta, the livelier/shallower sister).

In Act I of La Grotta, Artemidoro (a tenor) sings a beautiful aria about finding peace and tranquillity in solitude, "Di questo bosco ombroso" (In this shady wood):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA0IRhZyC88

In Act I of Cosi, Ferrando (a tenor) sings a beautiful aria about nourishing his heart on the hope of love, "Un' aura amorosa" (A breath of love). Though in a different key, the aria's phrases follow a similar melodic arc:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77M1fg_fXrw

Perhaps it is not surprising that these arias sound similar: they were written for the same singer, Vincenzo Calvesi, who appeared in the first performances of both operas.

This is not to say that La Grotta develops the full emotional resonance of Cosi, of which I've written that "the depth of feeling expressed by Mozart's music complicates the cynical farce of Da Ponte's plot." In Cosi the lovers' understanding of each other and themselves is transformed by the emotional trials they undergo; in La Grotta the characters may switch personalities but when it's all over they haven't much changed. As is also the case with Handel, when Mozart borrowed ideas from other composers he generally improved them. Nonetheless, La Grotta is a sparkling comic opera whose brilliant score is done full justice in Christophe Rousset's excellent recording, which is available for download.

And if the evidence of Mozart's borrowings is not fatal to the idea of Salieri as a talentless hack (after all, you don't borrow ideas you think are bad), there are the other composers who sought out Salieri as a teacher in the decades after Mozart's death, such as Beethoven, Schubert, and Meyerbeer. And the most successful opera composer of the generation following Salieri's, Gioachino Rossini, paid his own tribute to Salieri. The opening vocal phrase of Rosina's aria "Una voce poco fa" from Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816) follows that of "Ne lo stato conjugale," a duet for Dori and Plistene from Salieri's La Grotta, virtually note-for-note. (According to Christophe Rousset, Rossini knew La Grotta very well, as it continued to be performed for three decades after its premiere.)

In Pushkin's Mozart and Salieri, Mozart gives a speech that perhaps provides a more historically accurate reflection of his relationship to Salieri:

Mozart:
Here is a toast
To you, my friend, and to the candid union
That ties together Mozart and Salieri,
Two sons of harmony.

Update 23 March 2021: When writing this post I had thought that my recognition of connections between Salieri and Casti's La Grotta and Mozart and Da Ponte's Cosi was reasonably original. It turns out that several scholars had this insight more than two decades before me.

In The Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozart's Vienna Mary Hunter describes Cosi as being "in conversation" with other opere buffe in the repertory of Vienna's Burgtheater, including Pasquale Anfossi and Giovanni Bertati's Il curioso indiscreto (Unwise curiosity, 1777, performed in Vienna in 1783), Paisiello and Bertati's I filosofi immaginari (The imaginary philosophers, 1779, performed in Vienna in 1783), and Martin y Soler and Da Ponte's L'arbore di Diana (The tree of Diana, premiered in Vienna in 1787). Hunter devotes 16 pages to a discussion of the parallels between La Grotta and Cosi, including the Dori/Dorabella and Ofelia/Fiordiligi echoes, textual and musical parallels between the first act trio in La Grotta between Aristone and the sisters' suitors with the opening trio in Cosi between Don Alfonso and the sisters' suitors, similarities between the two operas' first-act finales, and affinities between the two "filosofi," Trofonio and Don Alfonso (although she dismisses the correspondences I noted between the suitors Artemidoro and Ferrando as "broadly typological" of tenor lovers). "In every example of significant resemblance between the two operas," she writes, "Cosi either improves upon or mocks Trofonio." [6]

Bruce Alan Brown and John A. Rice also discovered another connection between Salieri and Cosi: Da Ponte evidently wrote the libretto for Salieri, not Mozart. Salieri went so far as to begin setting the text to music: he wrote out the vocal part for the opening trio involving Don Alfonso, Ferrando and Guglielmo, "La mia Dorabella," and fully scored the second trio for the men that follows, "È la fede delle femmine." (In "La mia Dorabella" the suitors expound on the beauty and faithfulness of their sweethearts; in "È la fede delle femmine," Don Alfonso tells them that "the faithfulness of women is like the Arabian phoenix; everyone says it exists, but no one has ever found it.") However, after composing these two numbers Salieri stopped for reasons that are unknown, and Da Ponte took the libretto to Mozart. Brown and Rice quote Victor Novello's paraphrase of Constanze Mozart's feeling that "Salieri first tried to set this opera but failed, and the great success of Mozart in accomplishing what he could make nothing of is supposed to have excited his envy and hatred, and have been the first origin of his enmity and malice toward Mozart. . ." [7]

But Salieri must have known that Da Ponte would be offering the libretto to Mozart if he gave it up, and Cosi did not have "great success": although it was apparently well-received, it was performed only five times in January and February 1790 before the death of Joseph II closed the theaters, and then only five more times between June and August of that year. Hunter writes that the circumstances surrounding Salieri's giving way to Mozart in the setting of Cosi "does not tell us much about the relationship between the two composers. The relations between Trofonio and Cosi, however, do seem to tell a story of unrelieved competitiveness on Mozart's and Da Ponte's parts; whether this was meant more or less amicably or in bitterness, and how it was received, will probably never be known." However, we do know that a little more than a year after Cosi's final performance Mozart invited Salieri to see his new opera The Magic Flute, and that Salieri praised it highly (see note 5).

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1. The list of composers with more opera performances in Vienna than Mozart during his lifetime, in descending order: Paisiello (251), Salieri (167), Martin y Soler (140), Cimarosa (127), Guglielmi (112), and Sarti (97). Tallies taken from John Platoff, "Mozart and his Rivals: Opera in Vienna," Current Musicology, Vol. 51, No. 1, 1993, p. 105-111.
   
2. Michael Kelly, Reminiscences, Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 99, 101. 
3. Kelly, Reminiscences, p. 130. The "discord" must have taken place in the spring of 1786, but Kelly mis-remembers that Salieri was advocating for La Grotta; it had already been performed in the fall of 1785.
4. Leopold Mozart to his daughter, [25th?] April 1786. Letters of Mozart and his Family, vol. III, translated and edited by Emily Anderson, Macmillan, 1938, p. 1336.
5. In October 1791 Mozart took Salieri and his mistress, the soprano Caterina Cavalieri (who had sung Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni), to see Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). Mozart wrote his wife Constanze, "Salieri listened and watched most attentively and from the ouverture to the last chorus there was not a single number that did not call forth from him a bravo! or bello! It seemed as if they could not thank me enough for my kindness." Quotation from Letters of Mozart and his Family, vol. III, translated and edited by Emily Anderson, Macmillan, 1938, pp. 1442-43.
   
6. Mary Hunter, The Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozart's Vienna, Princeton University Press, 1999, Ch. 8, pp. 247-272.
7. Bruce Alan Brown and John A. Rice, "Salieri's 'Così fan tutte'," Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1 (March 1996), pp. 17-43.

The first Glyndebourne Mozart recordings

Glyndebourne in the 1930s. Photo: Glyndebourne Archive

Today, when it seems that every sizeable English country estate offers its own summer opera series, the utterly radical nature of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera at its inception may not be readily apparent. Of course, at the time of the founding of the Festival in 1934 there were long-established opera festivals on the European continent. But Glyndebourne was unprecedented in several respects:

The setting. Spike Hughes writes in Glyndebourne: A History of the Festival Opera that "ever since the Teatro San Cassiano was opened as the world's first public opera house in Venice in 1637, opera had always been an essentially urban form of entertainment." [1] Not quite "always," perhaps, but before Glyndebourne only princes had built opera houses on their country estates. And performances at, for example, Esterháza or Versailles were entertainments for the court, not a ticket-buying public. Opera festivals that depended on selling tickets located themselves in cities, such as Munich and Salzburg. Even Bayreuth at the time of the founding of the Wagner Festival had a population approaching 30,000. In contrast, in 1931 the population of the village of Glynde was 257. [2]

The funding. Other opera festivals were not only located in urban settings, they were the undertakings of whole communities. They were funded publicly, by musical societies, and by private donors. The financial and logistical burdens of the Glyndebourne Festival were borne entirely by one man: Glyndebourne's owner, John Christie. Over the first three seasons the Festival's deficit totaled £21,000 (close to £1.5 million today). [3] Christie, undaunted, continued the Festival until World War II forced a hiatus, and resumed it after the war ended. The Festival's survival is a monument to Christie's dual devotions: to opera, and to his wife, the soprano Audrey Mildmay.

The languages. At the end of January 1934, it was announced that the first season of the Glyndebourne Festival would involve six performances each of Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) and Cosi fan tutte (That's what they're all like) sung in Italian. In our current era of supertitles, performing an opera in the language in which it was originally written may not seem unusual. But in Britain at the time of the Glyndebourne Festival's founding Mozart's operas were generally sung in English. Before marrying John Christie, Audrey Mildmay had regularly performed the role of Zerlina in Don Giovanni with the Carl Rosa Opera Company, but she had to re-learn the part in Italian for the 1936 Glyndebourne première.

The recordings. As Paul Campion and Rosy Runciman write in Glyndebourne Recorded, before Glyndebourne "no attempt had ever been made to record a Mozart opera." [4] But after the Festival's opening night on 28 May 1934 had made clear both the high quality of the musical performances and the suitability of the theater as a recording venue, The Gramophone Company sent a mobile unit to Glyndebourne. On Wednesday, 6 June 1934, the Festival cast and orchestra performed 14 excerpts from Figaro (primarily the ensembles from Acts II and IV), most recorded on two "waxes" simultaneously as insurance against damage. All but four of the excerpts were recorded in one take.

The recordings were judged a success by all involved. During the Festival's second season in 1935 the mobile unit returned to Glyndebourne to record much of the rest of Figaro as well as Cosi fan tutte, and the following season Don Giovanni was recorded.

All of these recordings have been reissued (and re-ordered, in the case of Figaro) on the Naxos Historical label. After our experience of Glyndebourne, and especially after seeing David Hare's play The Moderate Soprano on the life of Audrey Mildmay Christie and the founding of the Glyndebourne Festival, we were very curious. As I wrote in my post on Audrey Mildmay, "The Glyndebourne recordings were the first (nearly) complete recordings of Mozart's operas in Italian, and so are landmarks of recorded music." But how well would these recordings stand up after the passage of more than eight decades?

As it turns out, remarkably well. Few allowances need to be made for the age of the recordings. They have all been splendidly remastered by Ward Marston, reducing surface noise without dulling the sound. They are in mono, of course, lack the full frequency range of modern studio recordings, and the orchestra is somewhat recessed relative to the singers. But we found that our ears soon adjusted. The performances of the singers are generally quite good, and some are extraordinary.

Le nozze di Figaro

Recorded 6 June 1934, 24 & 28 June 1935. Released as The Mozart Society Volume One (June 1935), Volumes Two and Three (December 1935).

One reason the Glyndebourne performances sound so accomplished is that they were all preceded by an unusually extensive rehearsal period. Hughes states that there were twenty-four full orchestral rehearsals for Figaro, and the results are certainly audible in the crispness of the orchestral playing and in the cohesion of the vocal ensembles. Conductor Fritz Busch "had endeared himself to the players from the first moment when, on raising his baton to rehearse the overture to Figaro for the first time, he had dropped his arm and said 'Already too loud!'" [5]

Busch favored extremes, not only of dynamics, but of tempo. The overture is so fast that I wondered briefly whether, in order to fit it onto one 78 rpm side, it was recorded at the wrong speed (it wasn't). Busch flashes through it in under four minutes (3:55 to be exact), requiring some truly astonishing feats of musicianship from the Glyndebourne Festival Orchestra (made up of players from the London Symphony). For some later comparisons, in his 2004 period-instrument recording René Jacobs takes 4:11, while in his classic 1959 version Carlo Maria Giulini (whose tempos strike me as very well-judged) requires 4:16.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SqZB_tZ12Y

If Busch's overture is among the fastest on record, he takes some arias more slowly than I'm used to (for example, both of the Countess's arias, and Susanna's "Deh vieni"). Although the slow tempos allow us to revel in Mozart's gift for melody, they also slow the momentum of the comedy. Busch's tempos seem to work best in the ensembles, which thanks to the cast's long stage work together are wonderfully vivid (and where some of the rapid patter had me laughing out loud).

Hughes writes that "Audrey Mildmay's success as Susanna was not done justice to on the Glyndebourne recordings, for it was the result of a unique combination of charm of spirit and temperament and physical attraction which no record could possibly capture." [6] Not having seen Audrey Mildmay on stage, I can't compare her live to her recorded performances, but her "Venite, inginocchiatevi," sung in the Countess's bedroom while Susanna is dressing the ardent page Cherubino in women's clothes, seems full of charm:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNFGUzguqPQ

SUSANNA Venite, inginocchiatevi; Restate fermo lì. Pian piano, or via, giratevi: Bravo, va ben così. La faccia ora volgetemi: Olà, quegli occhi a me. Drittissimo: guardatemi. Madama qui non è. Restate fermo, or via, giratevi, bravo! Più alto quel colletto. . . quel ciglio un po' più basso. . . le mani sotto il petto. . . vedremo poscia il passo quando sarete in pie'. piano alla Contessa Mirate il bricconcello! Mirate quanto è bello! Che furba guardatura! Che vezzo, che figura! Se l'amano le femmine han certo il lor perché.

SUSANNA Come, kneel down; Stay right here. Keep quiet, now turn around: Bravo, that's very good. Now turn and face me: Here, keep your eyes on me. Straight ahead: look at me, Madame isn't here. Keep still now, Turn around, bravo! That collar a bit higher. . . Those eyes lowered. . . Your hands clasped before you. . . Now get on your feet And let's see how you walk. softly to the Countess Look at the little scamp, How beautiful he is! What roguish glances, What airs, what graces! If women fall in love with him, They have good reasons why.

The Countess of Aulikki Rautawaara is the outstanding performance of this first Figaro recording, and she is ably partnered by the stentorian Count of Roy Henderson and the hearty Figaro of Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender (father of Brigitte Fassbaender). As Cherubino, Luise Helletsgruber may not sound very much like a teenage boy, but that's true of many other recorded Cherubinos as well.

This first Figaro was recorded with substantial cuts. Left out were almost all of the recitative, the Act I chorus "Giovani lieti," and the Act IV arias of Barbarina (Winifred Radford), Marcellina (Constance Willis), and Don Basilio (Heddle Nash). Nonetheless, if you know the opera it's easy to follow the story. Busch also omitted all unwritten appoggiaturas, an omission that most of us won't notice as to this day appoggiaturas are applied very inconsistently. (For an explanation of appoggiaturas, see NPR's "Another Take on The 'Appoggiatura.'")

So while I wouldn't recommend this recording to someone coming to Figaro for the very first time, it's fascinating document of the first season of Glyndebourne. The "freshness of the voices," "the precision of rhythm" and the "perfection of ensemble" noted by reviewers certainly remain audible, even after the passage of nearly a century. [7]

Cosi fan tutte 

Recorded 25, 26, 27 & 28 June 1935. Released as The Mozart Society Volumes Four, Five and Six (March 1936).

The impression that conductor Fritz Busch was at his best in ensembles is borne out by the recording of the ensemble opera Cosi fan tutte. Hughes writes that the first audiences for the Glyndebourne Cosi "enjoyed an experience that was even more exhilarating than the opening Figaro. . .To most people in the audience Mozart's last Italian comedy came not only as a revelation but in many cases as a complete novelty." [8] (The reasons Cosi was so rarely performed in the years before Glyndebourne are discussed in the post "Was Mozart a misogynist?") Mary Hunter writes that Cosi did not enter "the canon of routinely performed Mozart operas until three decades into the twentieth century; it is generally agreed that the Glyndebourne production of 1934 was the turning point." [9]

It's easy to hear why. In "Di scrivermi ogni giorno," the violins pulse in time with the heartbeats of the four lovers—Fiordiligi (Ina Souez) and Guglielmo (Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender), Dorabella (Luisa Helletsgruber) and Ferrando (Heddle Nash)—as they promise to write one another every day during their enforced separation. That the men are playing a cruel trick on the women is known to the audience and commented on in asides by Don Alfonso (John Brownlee), but is unacknowledged by the sublime music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45D5ftMVaOA (the chorus "Bella vita militar," calling the men away to war, begins at 2:01)

As he did in Figaro, Busch chooses slow tempos for some of the arias, especially Fiordiligi's "Come scoglio" (Like a rock) and "Per pièta" (Have pity). And one feature of the recording that will strike a modern listener as dated is the treatment of the recitative: the accompaniment is a piano playing single chords, one chord per measure (or two or three) of singing. The difference in the sound-world between the accompanied sequences and the spare recitative is a bit jarring. Nonetheless, thanks to Mozart's gorgeous ensembles and Ina Souez's striking performance as Fiordiligi, it's clear why this recording had such an impact. Fiordiligi and Dorabella in "Ah, che tutta in un momento si cangiò la sorte mia" (All in a moment my fate has changed), their first acknowledgment of an attraction to the two handsome strangers (their fiancés in disguise, of course):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J16TWAlg-70

Curiously, Souez almost did not participate in the second Glyndebourne season. According to Hughes, at the end of the first season in June 1934 Souez had been told that she would be hired to repeat the role of Fiordiligi the following year. However, Glyndebourne's artistic management did not send her a contract until mid-February 1935, by which time she had quite understandably made other commitments. It wasn't until 5 May—just over three weeks before the opening night of Cosi on 30 May—that Souez was secured. It didn't seem to affect her performance in the house or on the recording.

Hughes writes that "the Glyndebourne performance revealed this enchanting work in all its glory." [10] In 1936 an anonymous critic in the New English Weekly wrote of the recording, "It is Mozart at his very best, sparkling like champagne." [11] The critics' glowing praise for an opera that before Glyndebourne had been rarely performed is a testament to the excellence of both the production and the recording.

Don Giovanni 

Recorded 29 & 30 June, 1, 2, & 5 July 1936. Released as The Mozart Society Volumes Seven, Eight (March 1937), and Nine (May 1937).

In the 19th and early 20th centuries Don Giovanni was far and away Mozart's most popular opera. So it's interesting that the Glyndebourne Festival, wholly devoted to Mozart in its first years, didn't stage it until its third season in 1936. Don Giovanni didn't appear on the Glyndebourne stage until after Figaro, Cosi, Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Abduction from the Harem), and Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). Perhaps Glyndebourne was trying to offer audiences experiences they couldn't readily have elsewhere.

Hughes called the Glyndebourne Don Giovanni "a performance that left no corner unilluminated of this score's miraculous variety." [12] (A corner of variety? Never mind.) Even with the limited frequency range of these recordings the "Don Giovanni" chords that begin the overture send shivers up the spine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hV1JYphjNw

Hughes thought that the 1936 season offered Audrey Mildmay's best singing; he wrote that she "was bewitching and unforgettable as Zerlina." [14] The slow tempos that Busch chooses for Zerlina's music make her character seem less flirtatious and more serious than she is sometimes portrayed, as you can hear in her duet with Don Giovanni (John Brownlee), "La ci darem la mano" (There we will join hands):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB-xE7gFrsM

DON GIOVANNI Là ci darem la mano, Là mi dirai di sì. Vedi, non è lontano; Partiam, ben mio, da qui. ZERLINA (Vorrei e non vorrei, Mi trema un poco il cor. Felice, è ver, sarei, Ma può burlarmi ancor.) DON GIOVANNI Vieni, mio bel diletto! ZERLINA (Mi fa pietà Masetto.) DON GIOVANNI Io cangierò tua sorte. ZERLINA Presto. . .non son più forte. . . . DON GIOVANNI Andiam! Andiam! ZERLINA Andiam! A DUE Andiam, andiam, mio bene, a ristorar le pene d'un innocente amor.

DON GIOVANNI There we will join hands, There you will tell me 'yes.' See, it's not far; Let's go there, my dearest. ZERLINA (I would like to, and I wouldn't, My heart is trembling a little. True, I might be happy, But it could be a trick.) DON GIOVANNI Come, my beautiful delight! ZERLINA (I feel pity for Masetto.) DON GIOVANNI I will change your fate. ZERLINA Soon. . .I won't be able to resist. . . . DON GIOVANNI Let's go! Let's go! ZERLINA Let's go! BOTH Let's go, let's go, my dearest, To soothe the pain Of an innocent love.

There was a dispute involving the Don Giovanni recording. It had become regular practice for two takes—and on rare occasions three takes—of each number to be recorded. Busch would then listen to test pressings and select the take to be issued on the final album.

But after the Don Giovanni albums were released John Christie and Audrey Mildmay took issue with Busch's choices for two of Zerlina's arias. Christie wrote to The Gramophone Company,

My wife maintains quite definitely that some of her worst records have been used. For instance, record No 9 in Act 1 of Don Giovanni. The record was made, I think, three times. The one chosen shows her quite often to be flat. The alternative records, I believe, did not do so. [14]

A meeting was held on 20 June, and a letter was sent shortly afterwards to Audrey Mildmay:

This confirms our interview yesterday on the alternative recordings. Altogether we heard three records, and in two cases we will alter the previous masters.

2ER 149-1   Batti Batti — original master
2ER 149-2      "       "    — new master

2ER 169-2   Vedrai carino — original master
2ER 169-1       "         "      — new master

So two different versions of the opera were issued commercially. As a result it can be impossible to determine which takes of Zerlina's arias appear on the various reissues of these recordings. I notice that the timing of "Vedrai carino" on the Naxos Historical Don Giovanni is several seconds different from the version that appears on the Warner Classics Fritz Busch at Glyndebourne compilation, which may indicate that different versions were used. Which is which, though?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J85OwMikyYI

The Glyndebourne Don Giovanni has also stood the test of time. Reviewing a reissue in 1989, David Cairns wrote that "[John] Brownlee remains in many respects an ideal Don Giovanni. His voice may lack honey, and his Italian is a little suspect, but he sings with superb authority. . .Ina Souez's fiery Donna Anna is one of the best on record" [15].

There are many excellent later recordings of each of the three Mozart-Da Ponte operas that feature full-spectrum stereo sound and accomplished singers. Nonetheless, these early recordings are invaluable, if inevitably imperfect, documents of Glyndebourne's early seasons. But more than that, they remain highly pleasurable listening after nearly a century. They are another remarkable aspect of Glyndebourne's unique legacy.

Further reading:

• Glyndebourne
• The moderate soprano: Audrey Mildmay

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1. Spike Hughes, Glyndebourne: A History of the Festival Opera, David & Charles, 1981, p. 15.
2. GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, Glynde CP/AP through time | Population Statistics | Total Population, A Vision of Britain through Time. URL: http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10290454/cube/TOT_POP, accessed 5 August 2018 
3. Bank of England inflation calculator: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator
4. Paul Campion and Rosy Runciman, Glyndebourne Recorded: Sixty Years of Recordings 1934-1994, Julia MacRae Books, 1994, p. 7.
5. Hughes, p. 58. If I rely rather heavily on the testimony of Hughes in what follows, it is because he was an eye-witness, as so many later writers (including me) weren't.
6. Hughes, p. 63.
7. Quoted in Campion and Runciman, pp. 10-11.
8. Hughes, p. 71. 
9. Mary Hunter, Mozart's Operas: A Companion, Yale University Press, 2008, p. 163.
10. Hughes, p. 71. 
11. Quoted in Campion and Runciman, pp. 16-17.
12. Hughes, p. 105. 
13. Hughes, p. 105. 
14. Quoted in Campion and Runciman, p. 23. "Record No 9" is probably "Batti, batti"—it appears on the flip side of the first record in Volume Eight, making it the ninth record (18th side) of the complete set. Two takes of this aria were recorded, both on 1 July 1936.
15. Quoted in Campion and Runciman, p. 24.

Was Mozart a misogynist?: Così fan tutte

Miah Persson as Fiordiligi and Anke Vondung as Dorabella
in the 2006 Glyndebourne production of Così fan tutte

Two soldiers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, make a bet on the fidelity of their girlfriends, the sisters Dorabella and Fiordiligi. The men pretend to get called up to war, and then disguise themselves as copiously-mustached Albanians (!?) to try to woo each other’s sweethearts: Ferrando tries to seduce Fiordiligi, while Guglielmo makes a play for Dorabella. At first (to the men's secret delight) the women rebuff these strange and ardent new suitors. But over the course of a single day both sisters, to the men's dismay, unexpectedly yield. When the men reveal their disguises, the original couples are abruptly restored, and the chagrined and contrite women promise to remain true from now on. "I believe you," both men tell their lovers, "but I won't put it to the test."

Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti (All women do the same, or the School for Lovers, 1791) was the third and final collaboration between Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. The first two, Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, 1786) and Don Giovanni (Don Juan, 1787), regularly vie for the title of the greatest opera ever written (my vote goes firmly to Figaro in that contest). But Così—at least for the first 150 years or so after its premiere—had a very different reception.

In 1791 Friedrich Schröder called Da Ponte's libretto "a miserable thing, that debases all women." An anonymous reviewer that same year called it "a miserable Italian piece of work" [1]. Nearly a century later, the critic Eduard Hanslick wrote that "the boundless triviality of the libretto everywhere deals a death blow to Mozart’s lovely music." Richard Wagner thought that the libretto would have "desecrated" Mozart's music if the music had been any good, which (according to Wagner) it wasn't [2].

It's hard not to agree with Schröder's judgment about the libretto's misogyny. Ferrando and Guglielmo may be foolish and manipulative, but Dorabella and Fiordiligi are unfaithful (and a bit dim-witted)—as all women are, according to the title. Peter Sellars' modern-dress production attempted to redeem the story by indicating that the sisters see through the men's half-hearted disguises immediately, and decide to teach them a lesson (or, perhaps, explore their mutual curiosity). But unexpectedly, each of them really begins to fall for her "Albanian." Sellars' version ends without the couples reuniting; instead, the characters reel about the stage as the curtain falls, their former bonds of friendship and love forever shattered. But Sellars' version goes against the grain of the libretto (he's even been accused of mistranslating it to make his points [3]). There's nothing in Da Ponte's words to suggest that the women aren't really taken in by Ferrando and Guglielmo's absurd disguises.

Another intriguing possibility that some directors have explored is that the original couples—Ferrando and Dorabella, Guglielmo and Fiordiligi—are mismatched, which in terms of sensibilities (and operatic conventions) they are. Ferrando and Fiordiligi have both comic and serious elements in their characters, while Guglielmo and Dorabella are more straightforwardly comic. In other Mozart operas, the "mixed" characters (the Count and Countess in Figaro, Belmonte and Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Abduction from the Harem, 1781)) are coupled, as are the buffa characters (Figaro and Susanna, Pedrillo and Blonde). Also, in terms of the emerging conventions of voice type (though they were conventions that were not yet fully established, and which Mozart did not generally follow), the leading tenor (Ferrando) was usually matched with the leading soprano (Fiordiligi). But if the original couples are mismatched, a new arrangement would be better for everyone, no?

The problems presented by Così are only deepened by Mozart's music, because it is among the most sublime he ever wrote, especially in the numerous ensembles. In "Soave sia il vento," Fiordiligi, Dorabella, and the cynical Don Alfonso (who has goaded the men into their bet, and is working to make them lose it) bid farewell to the men as they head to war—or so the sisters think:

The words in Italian and English are: "Soave sia il vento, / Tranquilla sia l'onda / Ed ogni elemento / Benigno risponda / Ai nostri desir" (May the breezes be gentle, and the waves be calm, and all the elements smile on them in response to our wishes). This video is from the 1996 production at the Palais Garnier, Paris, with Susan Graham as Dorabella, Susan Chilcott as Fiordiligi, and William Shimell as Don Alfonso.

As Bernard Williams has pointed out about this trio in his brilliant essay "Passion and Cynicism: Remarks on 'Così fan tutte'" (included in the collection On Opera, Yale University Press, 2006), "already at that early moment—the earliest possible moment—we can hear something of the reserves of desire which are going to engulf these ladies' conventional commitments" [4].

The depth of feeling expressed by Mozart's music complicates the cynical farce of Da Ponte's plot, and in Williams' view, contradicts its misogyny. Through Mozart's music, "if Così...says anything special about women's feelings, it is that they are more serious than men's" [5]. This is especially apparent in the character of Fiordiligi, who resists seduction longer, and who is more anguished about her newfound desire, than the light-hearted Dorabella. In "Per pietà," Fiordiligi begs for pity from her absent lover for the new feelings that have overwhelmed her, and which she is trying, unsuccessfully, to resist:

Susan Chilcott in the 1996 Paris production

In Williams' view, the attachments of the original couples, based on social expectations and convention, are overthrown when both women (but especially Fiordiligi) discover their true desires. But this means that there is a bitter, even tragic, dimension to the restoration of the social order at the end, where the women "are briskly, indeed brutally, returned to a conventional arrangement which was grounded, as we were shown, in shallower sentiments." As Williams concludes,

"If one feels that Mozart in this work agreed that it was better so, then one may be able to hear the ambivalent end of the second act as a convinced, if rather wry, celebration of a return from danger. If on the other hand one finds, as I do, that the end makes a rather stunned and hollow sound, one may feel that this work is more concerned to display the demands of the world against feeling than it is to justify them." [6]

There are several excellent recordings of Così. For more than a generation the standard was set by the 1962 version featuring Elizabeth Schwarzkopf as Fiordiligi, Christa Ludwig as Dorabella, Alfredo Kraus as Ferrando, Giuseppi Taddei as Guglielmo, and Walter Berry as Don Alfonso, conducted by Karl Böhm. More recently a superb period-instrument version was issued on Harmonia Mundi, with Veronique Gens, Bernarda Fink, Werner Güra, Marcel Boone, and Pietro Spagnoli accompanied by Concerto Köln conducted by René Jacobs. On DVD the Glyndebourne production from which the still above was taken features a cast of youthful, good-looking lovers (Miah Persson, Anke Vondung, Topi Lehtipuu and Luca Pisaroni) in handsome costumes and settings.

Live, the recent San Francisco Opera production (seen June 12) was a disappointment. It featured an excellent Fiordiligi (Ellie Dehn) and Guglielmo (Philippe Sly). But Christel Lötzsch as Dorabella, in the difficult position of stepping in for the previously announced Heidi Stober, had such a disconcertingly wide vibrato that her voice did not blend well in the ensembles; nor did the slightly nasal tenor of the Ferrando, Francesco Demuro. The greatest problem, though, was the slack-paced conducting by SFO music director Nicola Luisotti, who wallowed in Mozart's lovely melodies as though he were instead conducting a Puccinian tragedy. It completely drained the production of comic energy, did the singers no favors, and made for a long and oddly dispiriting evening in the theater.

By far the best live performance I've seen was by the young singers of the Merola Opera program in a 2001 production directed by John Copley, with musical direction by Scott Bergeson; it was so good that it transformed my view of the opera. At the beginning it was clear that the sisters (Elizabeth Caballero and Sarah Kleeman) were enjoying the theatricality of their own emotions; later, those emotions deepened, and real feelings came powerfully into play for all of the lovers. By the way, the cast we saw included Bryan Hymel as Ferrando, who triumphed last year in Les Troyens.

Copley also staged the comic bits with Despina (Saundra DeAthos), the women's maid, with such cleverness that they were actually funny—a rarity, in my experience. The direction was highly detailed, but never fussy, and made the piece work onstage in a way that it generally hasn't for me before or since. But given the work's complexities and contradictions, perhaps the scarcity of productions so carefully thought through, well performed, and emotionally satisfying shouldn't be a surprise.

Update 7 June 2020: Glyndebourne is streaming its 2006 Così beginning today at 5 pm London time (in the U.S.: noon Eastern / 9 am Pacific time); the stream will be available for viewing until the same time on 14 June. This excellent production gets even better each time we view it: Nicholas Hytner's direction is detailed and observant, and the young, fresh-voiced cast is superb. A special mention should be made of Anke Vondung, whose wide-eyed Dorabella reveals her to be a brilliant comedienne. Mozart's music is ravishing, of course, and is ravishingly performed. Highly recommended.

---

1. Otto Eric Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, Stanford University Press, 1965, pp. 394-395.

2. Bruce Alan Brown, W. A. Mozart: Cosi fan tutte (Cambridge Opera Handbooks), Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 172.

3. Brown, p. 181.

4. Bernard Williams, "Passion and Cynicism: Remarks on 'Cosi fan tutte'," On Opera, Yale University Press, 2006, p. 46.

5. Williams, p. 45.

6. Williams, p. 47-48.