The received wisdom about Così Fan Tutte, the last in a troika of masterpieces that Mozart wrote to libretti by the scallywag Lorenzo Da Ponte, comes down to three points. One, it’s sexist. Two, the disguises that drive the plot don’t work. Three, the music is heaven.
You’ll get no quarrel about any of this from Renée Fleming, who in her Mozartian heyday dazzled as Fiordiligi, a lady of Naples on whose fidelity her boyfriend places a losing bet. But Fleming has been coming at the story from a different place lately as she prepares for her directorial debut, at the Aspen Music Festival and School, one of her many alma maters.
“Singing Così, I thought about the opera entirely from Fiordiligi’s perspective,” Fleming says. “When you’re directing, you see a much broader view.”
Così Fan Tutte has a cast of just six: Fiordiligi and her sister, Dorabella; their beaux, Ferrando and Guglielmo, who assume disguises in order to switch partners; the cynical philosopher Don Alfonso, who puts the boyfriends up to their mischief; and the ladies’ maid, Despina, who is half in on the plot and half in the dark. “It’s just never believable that the women don’t recognize their lovers,” Fleming protests. “Maybe it never can be believable. The guys’ voices should give them away.”
But Da Ponte decreed otherwise. “Così fan tutte,” Don Alfonso intones philosophically as betrayal and disillusionment supervene. “Women are like that.” A sexist maxim, to be sure, but it’s not as if the dudes came off smelling like roses.
Luckily for the young artists from the Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS program, who have just three weeks to get the show on its feet, Fleming has done her homework with characteristic passion and rigor. “I’ve done Così in major professional companies when the director never got to the end,” she says, “and we just threw it together the day before. It’s not a good feeling.”
Veterans in her shoes often like to concoct some classic, model staging following best practices from their glory years. To Fleming, a devotee of contemporary theater, directorial license is second nature. “Updating pieces or stories of any kind makes them more relevant to us,” she says. But what about the rampant cognitive dissonance between what characters are saying and what the audience sees with its own eyes?
“Part of the fun,” Fleming says, “is seeing that puzzle and being able to hold on to both realities at once. Preparing for Aspen, I’ve loved looking at the complexities of the entire story. I know a lot about what it’s like for Dorabella and Fiordiligi, but what is it like for the guys? That’s a really interesting story. How would Despina be different today? Who’s Don Alfonso if we look at him in another period?”
To explore these questions, Fleming has set the action in a community gym in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, in 1980. “That’s my generation,” she says. “Pre-Internet, pre–all those things that have made everything in the world available to young people. All that didn’t use to exist. I wanted the characters to have that innocence. I made them high-school students.” Not believing in Da Ponte’s happy ending, Fleming has invented a new one.
Allusions and visual references to Rocky and the wrestling boom and Jane Fonda’s aerobics hearken back to the culture of the times. “I don’t want the protagonists to be funny,” Fleming says. “Così is a strong coming-of-age story. They’re going through quite a lot. But I do want the period to be funny. It was very new for women to be athletic. Some of the drama is executed through exercise routines. So we’ll see how it works. Wish me luck! Are you coming?”
Così Fan Tutte is on at the Wheeler Opera House, in Aspen, July 21, 23, and 26
Matthew Gurewitsch writes about opera and classical music for AIR MAIL. He lives in Hawaii
