I guess you just have to write a certain amount of plays or operas until you get the hang of it. Even if you are Mozart -or DaPonti, I'm not sure whether the music or the lyrics came first.
Cosi Fan Tutti, last night at the Seattle Opera, was rollicking along. Great first half. Great start to the second half. And then -- just as the plot is thickening and we're deep in the story -- the soprano has a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnng introspective solo. Followed by several people's lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng introspective solos. After which the opera picks up and completes. I don't think a director on earth could fix that, without major cuts. It's just an early work.
This opera is like Shakespeare's early comedies -- tastes great, less filling. Mozart did not yet have the command of melody and truth that powers Don Giovanni.
The production was gorgeous. Modern day, in modern dress, having fun with the supertitles (substituting "Capitol Hill" for "Verona"). Young singers in young roles. Singing lying on their backs, bare-stomached, wearing long leather trenchcoat & shades and pink silk jackets. The soprano & mezzo duets were gorgeous. So were the baritone & tenor. The tenor and soprano were breathtaking. Great voices, great bodies, great acting. Cosi is famous for all its duets, trios, quartets, sextets. The harmonies are stunning.
A beautiful way to end a day of painting.
"You look like you just came from a deep rehearsal," said Scott. That's what the painting felt like. We're doing co-painting, where two or more people work on the same painting at the same time. Intimate & truthful. My painting yesterday was like Mozart's Cosi -- I, too, was just relaxing in harmonies and doodling. Not yet going for the guts and the truth.
When Chopin died, he requested that Mozart's Requiem be sung at his funeral. But the church did not allow women, and the Requiem is written with female voices. Chopin was adamant that it be sung as written. Two weeks after his death, the church finally said okay, as long as the women stood behind a black curtain, where they could not be seen.
Can you imagine Mozart's Requiem, sung at Chopin's funeral? Chopin's strange jazzy empty mourning washes of color and bone, their ashes sung by Mozart's hanging longing voices.
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