Cosi fan Haneke

The rise and rise of Cosi fan tutte, from a work despised for its triviality by Beethoven and Wagner to its present position as the Mozart masterpiece of masterpieces, has been one of the operatic achievements of the past fifty years. When Glyndebourne staged it at the 1948 Edinburgh Festival, with a marvellous international cast, it still seemed the most frivolous of comedies, Mozart at his slightest. A production I saw at the 1965 Aix-n-Provence Festival, even with Teresa Berganza in the cast, was just a send-up. . A Sadler’s Wells production around the same time omitted the work’s greatest and most eloquent aria, Fiordiligi’s Per Pieta in Act 2, presumably because it was thought not  to “fit in.” 

Yet by 1967  the tide was turning and, in Britain, Scottish Opera led the way. With Elizabeth Harwood and Janet Baker to star in it,  the new young company decided that the opera was not just a joke but emotionally serious. Since then, most other companies have followed suit, to the extent that Cosi is now often regarded as not a comedy at all.   True, there have been lapses, as English National Opera’s current prouction - lamentably staged, it would seem, as a sort of seaside entertainment - has demonstrated. 

But when the great Austrian film director Michael Haneke - whose films have been growing increasingly sombre to the point of morbidity - was invited by Gerard Mortier, the opera world’s most progressive impresario, to stage it in Madrid we could guess what was coming. For Haneke, whose most recent films have included Amour (about love, old age, and death) and The White Ribbon (about the bleakness and cruelty of German village life just before the First World War), frivolity was not an option. And though Madrid is not the handiest of places for opera, a DVD of his production, available from Amazon, shows in vivid cinematic close-up just how unfrivolous Cosi fan tutte can be made to look. 

It’s not, however, that it’s utterly cheerless.  There are token  trickles of merriment to offset the high seriousness of the rest of the production. Since the singers possess not only exqusite voices but film-star good looks, their portrayals carry exceptional credibility. We see them grovelling on the floor and clinging to each other’s legs in misery as the story of love gone wrong inexorably unfolds. The maidservant Despina at the start of the performance is wan, bewildered, and emerging, though only just, from what appears to have been - perhaps  still is - an unhappy relationship with the grimly manipulative Don Alfonso. It’s only when he brings her into his satanic plot against the lovers that she cheers up. 

Alfonso himself, no rascally contriver, is unsmiling, lip-curling, solemnly watchful. The young men, prodded by him into trying to swap partners, grow more and more furious the more they succeed. The crucial closing scene is frantic in its torment and hatred. Despina slaps Don Alfonso. Don Alfonso viciously slaps her back. It is evident that, in Haneke’s hands, the young men have more to lose than their sweethearts. Does it ring true?  Though Mozart, as a product of the enlightenment, clearly intended a moral to be pointed, he equally clearly visualised a happy ending, complete with bright music in the work’s home key of C major.

True or false to Mozart’s intentions, Haneke’s production could hardly fail to work strongly. And when you see him, greeted by cheers, taking his somewhat whimsical, quizzical bow at the end, you can tell that he is not displeased with how it has turned out.  Sylvain Cambreling conducts unobtrusively and unhurriedly. The singers, none of them  (apart from William Shimell as Alfonso) yet a famous star, do well. Though the DVDs are not conspicuously cheap, they are a lot cheaper than an unsatisfactory international night at the opera. 

10 June 2014