Problematic Done Right at Seattle Opera’s Cosí fan Tutte

My daughter was scandalized when she saw the Seattle Opera poster for “Cosí fan Tutte – Mozart’s Comedy About Sex.”

She was even more scandalized when she found out I had tickets.

If I’ve been doing my job right as a parent, I think the plot would offend her as much as it did the Victorians, who bowdlerized it. But where the Victorians were appalled by the opera’s depiction of women as subject to sexual desire – and gasp – acting on it, I would hope my 21^st century daughter would be at least as offended by the free pass it gives the manipulative and judgmental men in the story as by the women’s weak commitment to monogamy.

But, if I had taken her to see the opera, I think she would have loved it.

I didn’t take her, however; I deferred to her innocence and took my regular opera buddy instead, and we loved it. Seattle Opera is really doing a marvelous job of acknowledging the problematic elements of the opera canon, and dealing with them in ways that spark conversation and understanding without discarding what is best in the original works.

What’s the Problem?

Classical opera has a misogyny problem, and Cosí fan Tutte is no exception. Since it’s opera buffo, aka comedy, the heroines don’t die tragically for love; instead, Mozart uses his three hours of stage time to belittle women’s morality, which of course, is strictly measured by their chastity.

The story deals with two friends (Guglielmo and Ferrando) who are dating a pair of sisters (Fiordiligi and Dorabella). Egged on by the cynical Don Alfonso, they decide to test their girlfriends’ loyalty. They pretend they have been called up to war, then return later the same day and attempt to seduce their girlfriends in disguise, assisted by the sisters’ maid Despina. They are shocked and appalled when the women fall for it and quickly agree to marry the imposters (Dorabella -ahem- goes down easy; Fiordiligi is the only one in the whole cast with a moral conscience, but she still doesn’t hold out for too long). Don Alfonso tells them not to worry about it because that’s just how women are.

The title of the opera, “Cosí fan Tutte,” literally translates to “So do they all.” It was obviously meant to apply to women, but it doesn’t actually say who “they” are. Watching with a modern eye, it’s easy to take the title to mean “people generally suck.”

Doing it Right

This production exploits the gaps between what the opera actually says and what it means to create a much more self-aware story. In early productions, the men set out to seduce each other’s girlfriends. Sometimes they went back to their original partners after the truth was revealed in a “forgive and forget” type of ending. Sometimes, they stayed with the new partners. The preshow lecture pointed out that the musical styles of the switched partners are more compatible. This ending seems to forgive the betrayal as a course correction – the women gave in because they were better matched with the other man. In a truly modern production like this one, there are at least two other ways that the story could end (all or nothing, so to speak) but I don’t want to spoil it by telling which of the four Seattle Opera chooses.

Instead I’ll point out that one thing this production doesn’t do is let the men off the hook. Although there is little in the libretto to indicate it, the masterful staging of this show fits a lot of nonverbal story between the lines. We can see that the men’s deception destroys not only trust between the sexes, but also within their own friendship. Even accomplice Despina (Laura Tatulescu, last seen in Marriage of Figaro) is disgusted when she finds out that the plot to seduce her bosses was “a test” instead of a chance to have fun. The only one who doesn’t learn anything is the great villain of our time, self-satisfied middle-aged white guy Don Alfonso.

Contemporary Style

When I saw this production in 2006, I was still new to opera and just got a kick out of seeing heroines in pantsuits holding cell phones on stage, falling for their reservist boyfriends dressed as metalheads. This time around, the men first appear looking bro-tastic in their suits and come disguised as Portland hipsters. The sisters don’t just show each other cell phone pictures of their men, they pose for selfies and when the hipsters first appear, say, “Have I seen you before? Maybe in Georgetown? At Uncle Ike’s?” The joke is still funny, but it also serves to highlight how little has changed. The idea of an army regiment shipping out “same day” was no more realistic in 1790 as it is today; but people in 1790 were just as likely to stop and check themselves out when they passed a mirror then as they are now. “Chastity” isn’t such a popular a topic today, but double standards and relationship sabotage are eternal.

Why Bother?

I feel like the staging and tweaks are enough to shift Cosí fan Tutte from a stinking pile of misogyny to an insightful comedy about human weakness, with a dash of gender politics. I certainly wasn’t alone in laughing out loud at the physical gags (Michael Adams’ hip thrusting “seduction” was so god-awful squirm-worthy I almost couldn’t focus on his baritone) and I think conversations afterward focused a lot more on contemporary gender politics than on Mozart’s sexism. Like all good comedy, Cosí fan Tutte lets us delight in laughing at the stupidity on stage, then sends us off with furrowed brow, thinking about how closely we resemble it.

Even if you’re like my daughter and find the whole concept distasteful, you can’t argue with the music. Cosí fan Tutte contains some of the most beautiful ever written. People marvel at how such transcendent music could be written for such a trashy story. That’s kind of what the movie Amadeus was about. Mozart was a déclassé clown and even in his own lifetime people couldn’t figure out how such a person could write such heavenly music.

That’s the human condition, isn’t it? Mozart’s characters are all flawed, immoral and stupid – like the rest of us. They are ridiculous, but also like the rest of us, they are capable of incredible beauty.

The Details

The opening cast featured a pair of sister playing the sisters, which is just the sort of thing writers love to comment on. But the cast I saw was loaded with Seattle Opera debuts – which is actually more exciting. Of the four main characters, only Polish mezzo-soprano Hanna Hipp as the flighty Dorabella has been seen at Seattle Opera before, in Count Ory.

Fiordiligi             Marjukka Tepponen*

Ferrando            Ben Bliss*

Dorabella           Hanna Hipp

Guglielmo          Michael Adams*

Despina              Laura Tatulescu

Don Alfonso       Kevin Burdette

Così fan tutte

Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte

In Italian with English captions

Marion Oliver McCaw Hall

Performances: January 13, 14, 17, 20, 24, 26, 27, 2018

Approximate Running Time: 3 hours, 15 minutes with one intermission

Premiere: Jan. 26, 1790 in Vienna

Previous Seattle Opera Performances: 1974, 1992, 1986, 2006

Buy tickets here.