35. Out of order

For me, the most important reason to look at a composer’s manuscript—or (more likely) a scan or facsimile of it—is to understand something about how it came to be written.  Compositional process (to use the musicological jargon) is always at least interesting to me, and it can sometimes be riveting.  Often you find that a piece that you know well “as it is” was nearly very different.  (I keep promising I will blog about Mendelssohn’s Italian symphony in this regard; indeed I will, but I just need to find time to re-read John Michael Cooper’s excellent study of it.  But there are very many examples of less extreme but still significant revisions in the standard repertory.)

This month’s post concerns just two instances where a composer decided to insert or re-order material, so that the manuscript presents the music out of sequence with what became the composer’s intended text was.  That’s not to say, of course, that (given time) the composer might not have changed it again, reverting to the original sequence or inserting or reordering new material.  Whatever one might say about the Fassung letzter Hand, its very “lastness” makes it a handy reference point.  For example, in the discussions below I will refer to the bar numbers of the texts as we have come to know them, not as they appear in sequence in the source.

SOURCE:  detail of Mozart’s autograph of K. 491/i f. 2r, 
showing  bb. 40-43 and 63-66.  The autograph is held by the
Royal College of Music, London, as RCM MS 402, but this scan is
from the 2014 Bärenreiter facsimile of the score.  
(A 1964 black-and-white facsimile is freely available on the IMSLP.)

An interesting instance of inserted material occurs in the first movement of Mozart’s gloomy, glorious C minor piano concerto, K. 491.  As seen at right, Mozart originally followed the bar 43 (as we number it) with the bar that later became 63—that is, he made a nineteen-bar insertion at this moment—and a gorgeous one it is, with the duet of descending figures alternating between flute and bassoon.  He thus continues the subdued mood a little longer before the outburst that he originally planned at this moment.

I have mocked-up an audio example of this juxtaposition, although of course we can't know that it would have sounded like this:  Mozart generally orchestrated in layers, adding instruments one at a time, and so he might have scored this a little differently if the passage beginning at b. 63 had really been at b. 44.  But if you want to hear the text with the nineteen-bar cut, it’s on my soundcloud here.

The insertion of a new idea leaves this opening ritornello in a particularly awkward state in the autograph, requiring a jump forward to find b. 44, a jump backward to find b. 63, and a consequent jump forward again to find b. 90.  Moreover, as portions of this are reused again as the closing ritornello (which Mozart indicates with a dal Segno (in this instance, a cartoon head facing back toward the beginning) and other markings), one page of the autograph (f. 3v) contains bb. 54–62, 91–98 (re-used as 501–508), and 99.  But this is an extreme case, and Mozart leaves no doubt about his letzter intended sequence of bars.  (And, so far as I know, no edition has ever screwed it up.) [See Addendum below.]

As I was working on the previous post about bar numbers, my research took me to a page that I would nominate as perhaps the single most interesting page of extant Handel manuscript.  (I may well be wrong:  I have had my eyes on perhaps 5% of Handel’s extant manuscripts—mostly in facsimile or scans—so I can hardly claim to any authority.  Moreover, I would welcome nominations for other contenders for that title.  By all means let me know.)

Anyway, my nominee for that distinction is this page, which has the conclusion of the second movement of the organ concerto published as Op. 7 no. 5 (HWV 310):

SOURCE:  page from Handel’s autograph for HWV 310 (Op. 7 no. 5), mvt. 3; British Library R.M.20.g.12, f. 69v

Handel dated this manuscript, indicating that it was completed on 31 January 1750.  Then again, what does completed mean?  The alterations on this page might well have been made after that date.  The dating is a minor consideration, however.  The real question is What happened here?

This movement is a set of variations over a ground bass.  (Here’s a good recording by Lorenzo Ghielmi with La Divina Armonia.)  While it would not be fair to say that the variations could work as effectively in any order, this movement is clearly highly sectionalized into two bar segments, eighteen in all (with many of them immediately repeated).  Handel’s autograph shows that at some point after finishing the movement with just fifteen segments, he added three more.  He also (at the same time?) re-ordered the intended sequence by numbering each segment.  The first four segments are on the preceding page, so this page starts with the fifth segment.  The following illustration is intended to clarify what the autograph reveals:  the sections shaded in red were (I argue) the original version of the movement, proceeding in their original order (left-to-right, top-to-bottom).  The shaded sections in blue were added subsequently, and the numbering shown incorporates the new variations into a re-ordered sequence.  (The bar numbers indicate the final form, as do the bold variation numbers.)

SOURCE:  my own schematic offering a hypothesis about Handel’s original sequence of the variations as presented in the autography; a recording edited to manifest this sequence (and omitting the blue sections) is available here on my soundcloud page.

There is a logic to Handel’s revised ordering: the first three sections (3-4-5) are melodic, but thereafter there is a series of showy 32nd-note patterns, first arpeggiations in each hand (6), then scales in one hand or the other (7-8-9); then, starting at the mid-point, a stretch of new melodic ideas with more daringly chromatic harmonies (10-11-12); then, by way of a “Scotch snap” [short-long, with the short note in a metrically stronger position] figure (13), there are three sections with triplet figuration—right hand, left hand, both together (14-15-16); the ending of the movement consists of the most brilliant of the 32nd-note arpeggiation patterns (17), and a grand chordal peroration (18).

There is, however, also a logic to Handel’s original version, which is not at all stream-of-consciousness.  (The variation numbers here refer to the final version.)

• melodic introduction (3–4–5)
• triplets (14, 16)
• more chromatic melody (10–11–12)
• “Scotch snap” (13)
• 32nd-note figures (7, 9, 17),
• chordal coda (18)

In the original version the triplet sections come before the central chromaticized melodic passages, and—in a move commonly seen in Baroque variations—the speed of the ornaments increases as it nears the end, with (in this case) a series of three 32nd-note variations.  It is notable that the three (blue) sections that were added later each feature the left hand, which was apparently not emphasized in Handel's original conception of the piece.  Indeed, I think it not too fanciful to suggest that even the (inner-line) left-hand triplets in variation “16” were added as part of the revision:  they seem to my eye squeezed into the staves in an already sufficient texture.  (I note that in Simon Preston’s recording, which I was using for my cut-and-paste version on Soundcloud, he leaves out the left-hand triplets on the first time through this variation, adding it in only for the repeat.)

SOURCE cropped to show detail of the same page given in full above

It is not at all unusual that such reordering and insertions occurred:  this is the way we write.  Having written, we may then proceed to move chunks of prose around hither and yon as it seems better to us—as we have new ideas and second thoughts.  I was surprised, however, to find such clear evidence of Handel’s revisions—and delighted to try it out another way.

ADDENDUM  30 September 2018

After reading my post, one of my mentors from Cornell, David Rosen, mentioned to me the very interesting case of the first movement of Mozart’s last piano concerto, K. 595, about which David had written years ago in The Journal of Musicology.  In that case, Mozart’s insertion of seven bars into the opening ritornello happened much later in the compositional process, in that it doesn’t get notated until the closing ritornello—and, indeed, all editions before the Neue Mozart Ausgabe neglected to insert it after bar 46.  David’s fascinating article argues that the version known before the NMA’s text exhibited a “formal quirk” that did not accord with Mozart’s “standard operating procedure” in concerto first-movements—that procedure as outlined by Robert Levin and Daniel N. Leeson in the Mozart-Jahrbuch 1976/77.  The thesis of David’s article applies just as well to K. 491, too:  that Mozart inserted material to accord with the ways things had worked well before.  In both of these cases (and who knows how many others?) his first thoughts deviated from his well-trodden path, yet in both he eventually settled on something more conventional.

34. So teach us to number our bars

Today’s post marks the second birthday of Settling Scores.  I have been having altogether too much fun with it, and I’ve met all sorts of interesting (and interested) people.  Some were names I knew professionally, but very many have been entirely new.  I am gratified by the response, even if I am sometimes completely in the dark on the reasons why some posts take off and others fall comparatively flat.

Although when I started this project I had a long list of issues I wanted to cover—and that list remains long—I never imagined I would spend a post on bar numbers.  What could there possibly to say?  The bars are numbered!  End of story!  But just a few weeks after I began blogging, I knew eventually this post would happen.  It was prompted by a post on the blog put out by the G. Henle Verlag.  Henle urtext editions have dominated the market (particularly for piano students) in the USA for as long as I can remember.  You’d know those slate blue covers anywhere, even if they have updated the look a bit over the years.  Their blog comes out every two weeks, written by their house editors in rotation.  It offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse at editorial work in progress.

The post that got me thinking concerned their new edition of Camille Saint-Saëns’s marvellous second piano concerto.  (To clarify:  the edition is a two-piano version, with a new reduction of the orchestral material.)

SOURCE:  cropped page scan of https://www.henle.com/en/detail/index.html?Title=Piano+Concerto+no.+2+in+g+minor+op.+22_1355, accessed 20 July 2018

Although in the preface editor Peter Jost goes to some pains to point out that the piano reduction published as the first edition in 1868 was not by the composer (but rather his pupil, Adam Laussel), the Henle blurb above gets this wrong.

Jost’s blog post concerns the arresting opening of this concerto—a free-flowing, unmeasured prelude at first, developing gradually into more conventional Romantic virtuoso piano figures covering the whole compass of the instrument.  Here are the first three pages as they appeared in first edition of the full score:

SOURCE:  scan of 1875 Durand edition from 1995 Dover reprint.

The Durand engravers have provided the conventional full score accolade on the first page, showing the complete resources required for the work.  In the autograph, however, the first page to be in full score is the third page, at the orchestral entrance, and the preceding two pages appear very much as a separate introduction, ending mid-page with a double bar and a clearly implied attacca across the page:

SOURCE:  scans of the autograph score, F-Pn Mus. MS-488, fully available here.  In this example, I have taken the images not from the Bibliotheque Nationale site, but rather from the Henle blogpost.  This has required cropping them to display them appropriately:  Henle inaccurately represents p. 2 abutting p. 1 (as if recto facing the preceding verso), although it really should abut p. 3, as above.

Jost points out that Saint-Saëns numbered the measures of this movement, starting with the orchestral entrance.  Thus the “prelude” is unnumbered—although it isn’t entirely unmetered, and even concludes with ruled bars.  Jost follows the composer on this, yielding a movement of a prelude plus 112 bars.

The first edition lacked measure numbers, but had rehearsal letters.  Sabina Teller Ratner’s thematic catalogue of Saint-Saëns works gives the total number of measures in each movement, and thus in this case numbers from the beginning, with the last bar as number 115.  (Her bar 11 below is Jost’s bar 8.)

SOURCE scan of Ratner catalogue (OUP, 2002) Vol. 1, p. 353

I do not understand the value of Mr. Jost’s “return” to the composer’s “original numbering.”  We don’t know enough to understand whether those numbers were intended to mean anything at all.  Was Saint-Saëns making a philosophical statement about the music (as Mr. Jost inevitably is—some music designated as “preceding” the real piece)?  Was there at that moment nothing written on the preceding pages, with the composer planning to improvise an introduction based on material that appears later in the movement—eventually codifying it as text?  I exchanged e-mails with Mr. Jost in the days following his post, but came away unsatisfied.

As I see it, bar numbers serve one principal and practical function:  orienting the user in a score.  A bar number is a coordinate used to locate something.  It need not be anything else. 

For any music requiring more than one player, numbered bars are useful in rehearsal (“We’ll start in bar 63”), where the system is more precise—and arguably less cumbersome—than rehearsal letters (“We’ll start six bars before F”).  In Jost's edition, taking it “from the top” is not the same as from bar #1, and that may lead to some confusion.

Measure numbers are essential, however, in critical editions (like Jost’s) so that the editor can cite a detail in the critical commentary and the user can locate it easily.  Compare, in this connection, how the new C. P. E. Bach edition deals with the unmeasured sections of the fantasies:

Source:  cropped scan of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach:  The Complete Works, Ser. I, Vol. 3 (ed. David Schulenberg, 2005); detail of p. 34, the fantasy from Wq 63 no. 6.

Here the first portion of the piece goes without a barline for several systems, so each system is given a letter:  bar 1a, bar 1b, bar 1c.  This illustration begins at bar 1h.  The first barline does not appear until after the 3/4 time signature, so that in this edition the bar marked Largo is still bar 1j, with the bar following it reckoned (finally) as bar 2.  (The critical commentary can thus cite a note in a specified portion of this extended bar 1.)  This method is necessarily idiosyncratic:  it works for this edition, but it would not be readily translated to another.  But it doesn't need to be:  the sole function of these bar numbers is to connect the critical commentary portion of the volume with the score, and this system works well enough.  (To be fair, Jost does employ a similar policy:  the opening systems of the Saint-Saëns are labeled with Roman numerals—like the front matter of a book—which inevitably suggests that we haven’t yet reached the “real thing.”)

It is a more honest method than, for example, Henle’s treatment of the Mozart “Modulating prelude” (K. Anh. C 15.11) which gets a new bar number for each system, despite no barlines:

SOURCE:  cropped scan of Mozart:  Klavierstücke (HN 22, ed Ullrich Scheideler, 2006), p. 66.

Glancing through their back catalogue, I see that Henle’s practice has been inconsistent.  Here is a page of K. 394 in their 1955 edition (no longer in print), and the circled bar numbers correspond with ruled bars rather than with systems:

SOURCE:  scan of p. 40 of Mozart:  Klavierstücke (ed. B. A. Wallner; Henle, 1955)

Incredibly, this same work—newly edited by Mr. Scheideler—appears in the same new volume as the modulating prelude (HN22) with the bar numbers allocated exactly the same way as in 1955, so the new volume itself is inconsistent.  The Neue Mozart-Ausgabe isn’t much better in this respect:  K. 394 is treated as above (although the Henle and NMA bar numbers do not correspond); other works in the volume, including the modulating prelude, use the a... b... c... system as in the C. P. E. Bach edition.  For a particularly interesting situation, see the NMA’s presentation of K. 284a [NMA IX/27/2, pp. 5–9]; bar “(25)” is my favorite.

Does any of this really matter?  It depends, of course, on whether a number is merely a milepost or whether it has any substantive meaning relating to the music.  Once you start disconnecting the numbers from the sequence of bars on the page you surely must mean something.  I looked to see what the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe does with those passages in the organ concertos in which they have interpolated Wolfgang Stockmeier’s “suggestions” of how to improvise in response to Handel's instruction “ad libitum.”  I, for one, don't think such interpolations belong in that sort of scholarly edition, but at least the editors had the good judgment to leave those bars unnumbered (and in small type):  Handel didn’t indicate how many bars to play, and neither should the HHA.

SOURCE:  cropped scan of a portion of the second movement Op. 7 no. 4 (HWV 309) as presented in HHA Ser. IV Bd. 8, p. 204

For comparison, here’s Handel's autograph for this section:

SOURCE:  page from Handel’s autograph for HWV 309 (Op. 7 no. 4), mvt. 2; British Library R.M.20.g.12, f. 66r

When I began work on my first editorial project—Walton’s Variations on a Theme by Hindemith for the William Walton Edition—I remember starting by numbering the bars and assuming that it would be a straightforward task (young and callow as I was).  The anxiety that awaited me!  I wanted to number the bars sequentially across all the variations.  In a way, this was a substantive statement:  it meant essentially the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  But really there was a practical reason for this:  the critical commentary would be much harder to use if you had to keep track not only of the bar number but also of the variation number.  When I set to work, however, I found that Walton had paid no attention to the seams between the variations.  This might be because he would send off a completed variation to his publisher before starting another, but it is just as likely that he didn’t care if a complete final bar of one variation was followed by a pick-up bar of the next.  In many musical editions, “bar number 1” is the first complete bar rather than the first thing on the page—but I found I would have to count each of these incomplete tags at the beginnings and ends of variations as full bars if I wanted to have just a single numbering system for the whole piece.  It worked, but I still don’t like the look of it.

On the substantive (rather than practical) value of rehearsal marks, the words of Jonathan Del Mar are a useful reminder.  The following disclaimer can be found in the preface to each of the scores of his Bärenreiter editions of Beethoven symphonies (and a similar one for the concertos, etc.):

SOURCE:  cropped scan of p. V of Del Mar's edition of Symphony no. 9 (BA9009)

How orchestras survived for so long without rehearsal marks I can’t imagine, and at least those who attempt historically-informed-performance are not bound to historical rehearsal practices.  (The unions would never stand for it.)  I bristle against heavy-handed editing, when the editor goes out of the way to make a mountain out of a molehill.  Herr Jost’s treatment of the Saint-Saëns strikes me as just that.  Then again, this blog is made entirely out of molehills treated as if they were mountains, so I’m one to talk.

30. Double-crossed?

I spoiled the mood.  I was at a dinner with musicological colleagues and students after a meeting of the Southeast chapter of the American Musicological Society last spring.  It was a lovely time—great food and conversation—but then someone thought to ask a question to the whole table:  What is your favorite opera?

When the turn to answer came around to me, I knew that there would be a universal howl of disapproval for my choice:  Così fan tutte.  There was.  I suppose I could have picked several others as honest answers to the question.  “Favorite” isn’t really a fair word for such a big repertory.  Still, I adore Così even while I dislike it.  And I certainly understand why others are repelled by it or think it unworthy of Mozart’s genius.  It can certainly be played tastelessly (as this perceptive review of the current Seattle Opera production shows).  But I think it can be staged beautifully in a way that doesn’t sugarcoat anything.  I have taught the piece many times, and in class I usually have turned to Nicholas Hytner’s superb (and superb-looking) Glyndebourne production from 2006.  As I regularly tell my students, each time I teach this piece I am seeing it again, where they are (almost always) seeing it for the first time.  Each time it affects me more deeply, and there will be tears streaming down my cheeks while they look on unfazed.  But that's how art works:  the more you invest, the more you reap.  This scene—beautiful as it is—is harrowing for me to watch, as these guys put their girlfriends in an utterly false position just over a cocky bet.  I hate it.  And yet....

Certainly Così is an example of what I would describe as the Disney Happy Ending Problem.  All sorts of terrible, traumatic events happen in children’s movies; no matter how blissfully perfect the finale ultimo appears to be, it never seems to me to compensate for the kidnapping, the guardian’s death, the lonely wanderings (or whatever) of Scene 2.  Granted, by the time we reach the end of Così, I’m not really enjoying it anymore—but I’d say that of just about every opera I know (Idomeneo being an exception in that regard).  Hytner’s production does a good job of leaving the audience—or me, at any rate—with a lingering bad taste.  As Mozart’s C major fanfares bellow in the pit, the four protagonists eye each other nervously.  “Happily ever after,” perhaps, but it is no longer clear who belongs with whom.

SOURCE:  The original couples restored but confused:  cropped screenshot from DVD of 2006 Glyndebourne production (at 2:56:58, during the orchestral conclusion to the Act II finale).  

One of the things that makes the ending so unsatisfactory is that we’ve hardly seen the “right” pairings of these couples, and—more than this—those “right” pairings are so musically wrong:  the opera seria soprano Fiordiligi is not the fiancée of the romantic tenor Ferrando, but rather of the baritone Guglielmo; it is the buffa mezzo Dorabella who is engaged to the tenor.  Our ears—or at least my ears—know that something is wrong with this.

SOURCE:  Boydell & Brewer website

It was thus refreshing to read Ian Woodfield’s fascinating monograph Mozart’s Così fan tutte:  A Compositional History.  I read it when it came out in 2008, but have been eagerly awaiting a chance to re-read it, and teaching the work again this spring while also writing the blog prompted me to find the time to do it—and to have the (relatively inexpensive) facsimile of Mozart's autograph at my elbow.  This is a great convenience, as the autograph itself is split between two libraries (Kraków and Berlin), and the facsimile includes also a scan of the original printed libretto and portions of a Viennese copyist manuscript.  That is only a start, though, as Woodfield scrutinized twenty further copyists’ scores of the work.  “Scrutinized” is a mild word to capture the intensity of Woodfield’s examinations, but the only way to appreciate that is to read the book.  This sort of forensic study is not for everyone, but I would expect anyone who follows this blog would find it at least worth a try.  That said, the conclusions Woodfield draws from this are earth-shattering.  Of these, the most astonishing is that, at some point during their work on the opera, Mozart and da Ponte planned that the couples would not be switched—that the conditions of the bet would be that the guys would be compelled to seduce their own (rather than each other’s) fiancees.

This is, of course, not the work as we know it.  I suspect that it was an attempt to make the far-fetched plot seem a little more reasonable (not that that is a precondition for opera libretti...).  We might be more willing to accept the women’s yielding so quickly to suitors physically like their boyfriends, but that would result in a dramatically much weaker second act.  In the opera as finished Ferrando has to learn from Guglielmo that his side of the bet is lost, and we get two powerful reactions:  Guglielmo’s misogynist rage (“Donne mie, la fate a tanti”) and Ferrando’s conflicted recognition that he loves her still, sadder but wiser (“Tradito, schernito”).  If the pairs were not crossed, Ferrando would not need to be told anything (nor Guglielmo later), nor would the audience.  It would be a recipe for tedium.

I should add that Woodfield does not argue that the un-switched pairs was da Ponte’s original plan, but that instead it was an innovation during the gestation of the work with Mozart.  Intriguingly, the opera was first intended for Antonio Salieri, whose incomplete draft of the first few numbers survives.  (On this issue, see the compelling 1996 Cambridge Opera Journal article by Bruce Alan Brown and John A. Rice.)  The libretto Salieri was working on begins in exactly the same way, commencing with Ferrando praising “his” Dorabella as “incapable” of infidelity:

SOURCE:  cropped screenshot of a page from Antonio Salieri’s attempt [La scola degli amanti], Austrian National Library, shelfmark Mus.Hs.4531, fol. 5.

With Mozart’s(?) idea to revise the plot, these name-pairings remained the same—that is, Dorabella and Ferrando were paired (throughout, even with Ferrando in disguise)—and similarly Fiordiligi and Guglielmo.  Leaving these couples together, though, made it necessary to switch the vocal types, with Dorabella as the high soprano and Fiordiligi as the mezzo.  Evidence supporting this can be seen where these vocal parts have been reversed in the autograph (as in the example below in their first number (4), but nos. 6, 10, and 13 have the same situation); also suggestive are places where lines given in the first edition of the libretto to one sister are set by Mozart for the other.

SOURCE:  detail of scan of Bärenreiter facsimile (Vol. I, p. 55), reproducing Act I, fol. 28—the beginning of the duet No. 4, “Ah guarda, sorella” 

Woodfield’s scrutiny of the autograph score reveals Mozart’s considerable indecision at crucial moments.  In the recitative below, there is a false start for Ferrando, then (after the new accolade with clefs) the same text allocated but given to Guglielmo, followed by Ferrando’s response, but which Mozart then struck through, reversing the order of the characters back to the original plan, and adapting the vocal parts accordingly.

SOURCE:  detail of scan of Bärenreiter facsimile (Vol. I, p. 207), reproducing Act I, fol. 104—the beginning of the recitative “Ah non partite.”

If Woodfield had to rely on a single page for strong evidence of his theory, it would certainly be the first page of an aria intended for Guglielmo, but replaced long before the premiere.  There are good dramatic reasons for replacing it, but Mozart clearly valued it enough that even after removing it from the opera he entered it in his own catalogue of works, where it appears thus:

SOURCE:  detail of scan of Mozart’s Thematic Catalogue:  A Facsimile (BL Stefan Zweig MS 63, ff. 22v-23)

In December [1789]
An aria intended for the opera Così fan tutte, for Benuccì.  Rivolgete à me lo sguardo etc: —2 violini, viola, 2 oboe, 2 fagotti, 2 clarini e Timpany e Baßi:

The cut aria remains in situ in the score.  Here’s the first page:

SOURCE:  detail of scan of Bärenreiter facsimile (Vol. I, p. 209), reproducing Act I, fol. 105—the beginning of the Guglielmo's cut aria “Rivolgete”

SOURCE:  the same, even more detailed

Looking more closely [detail at right], we can see that the aria was originally addressed to Dorabella, but her name has been scratched out and Fiordiligi’s superimposed.  Beyond this, though, Woodfield notes the ink color of the word “lui” is different than the surrounding text.  Mozart left the space for the pronoun blank for a while as he decided what Guglielmo was to say (and to whom).  In the catalog listing, he says “Turn and look at me” (“Rivolgete à me lo sguardo”); but in the score he says instead “Turn and look at him.”  Mozart’s omission of the pronoun allowed him time to figure out what would work best for the opera.  Ultimately that was a restoration (apparently) to the criss-cross couplings, but it is fascinating to consider how different the work might have been.

These are a few of the dozens of examples Woodfield musters to support his conclusions, and I cannot do justice to them in the small scale of a blog post—still less to his examinations of performing traditions in sources dating from the first few decades after the premiere.  The work that resulted is not perfect.  It bears the traces of Mozart trying to make changes as he went along, and then incompletely fixing them.  (Fiordiligi’s first line of recitative, for example—“I’m ready for some mischief this morning”—seems more in character with her sister.)  This is a problematic work, and Mozart struggled to bring it off.  Given that Mozart fell in love with one woman and ultimately married her sister (to whom he was later to write about the necessity of her fidelity in preserving his honor), it wouldn’t be surprising if this plot hit particularly close to home.  One reason I like teaching this piece is that I think it comes close to my students, too.  Generally speaking, my students are still idealists, like the couples in this opera.  

The moral of the tale—that one will be better off accepting how people are than pretending they are who we want them to be (and consequently being perpetually hurt or disappointed)—is, I think, one well worth learning.  Maybe it is my Calvinist upbringing, but I have found the #metoo revelations simultaneously appalling and unsurprising.  What conceivable grounds do we have to expect people in power to behave better?  (Granted, Le nozze di Figaro deals more overtly with #metoo; and the moment at the end of Act III where Barbarina turns it to her advantage is particularly satisfying.)

I don’t like the plot of Così; I don’t like the situations the characters are put in.  I understand why people don’t want to see it (and thus the howls of disapproval at an otherwise pleasant dinner last spring).  It is an ugly story beautifully—though problematically—told.  I can’t stand its title, which singles out women specifically and unfairly.  It should be called Men behaving badly:  their arrogance is the cause of all the heartache.  I would settle for This is how people are.  Any work with a title like that is bound to be a tragedy:  da Ponte in bed with Voltaire. 

The textual situation of Così is a healthy reminder that (of course) all life is compromise:  not just politics, but relationships too—and even art from as sure a hand as Mozart.  The music is so beautiful, but it appears he didn’t get it to work out quite the way he wanted.  Still, it’s so much better than nothing at all.  That, too, is the lesson his couples have to learn if the ending is going to mean anything to us.