Performance is everything
Interview |
You once said that *Così fan tutte* is the most difficult of the three Mozart-Da Ponte operas to stage. Why?
*The Marriage of Figaro*, for example, follows a certain mechanism. It’s like a carousel: You jump on, and then it’s all about solving problems the whole time. Entrances, exits, hiding places, and so on. If you don’t respect this mechanism—the comic principle that lies at the heart of Le nozze di Figaro —you fall off the carousel. Ultimately, it’s like a dance theater; you have to follow the structure. The narrative structure of Così fan tutte is different. Actually, everything is very clear and simple. It’s about the clashes that arise between a group of different people. But the interweaving of these constellations is like a delicate puzzle, which can only be assembled through very precise work. Così fan tutte thrives—more so than Le nozze di Figaro and more so than Don Giovanni —on the concrete staging on stage. For the work is ultimately much more abstract than it first appears: By the time one reaches the second act, the narrative has practically dissolved. But it is precisely in this second act, in this dissolution, there are extraordinary moments of human interaction that are completely unguarded, painful, and beautiful. And that is why Così fan tutte is such a masterpiece—and so difficult to stage.
You have often described the staging of *Così fan tutte* as an “experiment,” and at times you have also called the piece a “laboratory.” Despina certainly plays a significant role, but the one who ultimately conducts the experiment is Don Alfonso. A fundamental question for any engagement with the work is: Why is he doing this? What drives him in your version of the story?
I think this question needs to be considered in a broader context: What is Don Alfonso’s status, and what is his relationship with the younger men? As the evening progresses, the play continues to evolve toward an emotional abstraction —you have to have established a very specific setting for the experiment beforehand. I’ve seen productions of Così fan tutte that didn’t address the question of who Don Alfonso actually is at all. For me, that was a very important question. That’s why I also spent a long time thinking about the framework in which I could place him: What kind of setting would allow one to explore the difference between genuine emotion and feigned emotion; what does it mean to take on a role, a costume, or a posture for the sake of love? In what kind of space can one start and stop an emotion on command, enter it, step out of it, and even comment on it? What kind of world would that be? At some point, it dawned on me: it is the rehearsal space.
So your reflections led you into the world of theater.
I’ve started to imagine Don Alfonso as a director and theater manager. He is working with four young singers who are staging a more or less obscure opera, and Despina is the stage manager. The four young people form two couples. We play with the idea that Don Alfonso is a kind of method director from hell [Method Acting: an acting technique based on empathy and the calculated reproduction of emotions according to Konstantin Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg, note]. He now uses the framework of rehearsal and performance to prove his point: that women are fundamentally unfaithful. It is important to emphasize this; one cannot escape the play’s inherent misogyny.
Why is it so important for Don Alfonso, in your interpretation, to prove his point?
To answer this question, one must analyze his psychology. I’m working on his biography with our Don Alfonso performer Chris Maltman, who is a very intelligent singer. In our story, Don Alfonso was once a famous director, but now he works in a small theater in the provinces.
So he may no longer be getting the love he was used to.
He may have had twenty relationships, wives and girlfriends; he may even have children. What matters is what defines him: the inability to see the difference between theater and reality. His manipulative character. His emotional sadomasochism and his obsession with revenge, which he seeks to take out on the world for his own emotional impotence. Don Alfonso is an unpleasant character. So we must find a way to ensure that we don’t simply say in the 21st century: It is just as he says. That cannot be the play.
The original story is structured in such a way that the *scuola degli amanti* is a school for men. In a sense, the women are the subject of instruction. How do you strengthen the position of women in your production?
That is a fundamental question. I think it helps a lot that we have Fiordiligi and Dorabella on stage right from the very beginning in our production. This means that the women hear what Don Alfonso says about them and can react to it. Consequently, they will take a completely different path through the piece. Basically, I find it amazing how much one can achieve in this play with a little humor and self-reflection, in terms of how women view their own positions.
"Così fan tutte " has a long tradition of adaptations: Just a few years after the premiere, theaters began to make changes to the text and the story, even creating versions that completely replaced Da Ponte’s text. But even less radical adaptations often emphasized that the women learn of the plot—the wager —and either join in or seek revenge. Do Dorabella and Fiordiligi in your version realize what is being played out? Or does the question arise quite differently given the theatrical situation you establish?
This basic premise leads to an unusual plot. In our version, the four young people will consciously decide to take part in a theatrical experiment. So we will see four people who are in on everything, but pretend that they don’t know what is being performed. And in doing so, they’ll portray characters who also have no idea. This allows us to create a situation that gets to the heart of the matter the entire play is about: Can you “fake” emotions? Can I convince you that I love you—through the way I express myself? And what happens when, in the course of an artificial, invented game, a revelation suddenly occurs?
Shakespeare’s *Cymbeline* is sometimes cited as the source of certain motifs in *Così fan tutte*, which in turn can also be found in Boccaccio’s *Decameron *. But when we first talked about Così fan tutte, another of Shakespeare’s works was important to you: The Tempest.
In *The Tempest*, Prospero attempts to control the plot. The island he rules has much in common with a theater. One could say that he is trying to stage the entire story of The Tempest: Ariel and Caliban, his daughter, the love story, the storm: the entire mechanism of The Tempest is a theatrical metaphor. Don Alfonso is not Prospero, but he is confident in his ability to control everything and to direct and manipulate the four young people like chess pieces through his game. The difference is that Prospero decides to end his play. Don Alfonso does not make this decision. The experiment spirals out of control. This makes him a sort of failed Prospero.
Let’s talk about cross-dressing. It’s an incredibly important theme in *Così fan tutte* —the whole story is based on it, and every production must make decisions about the function and mode of operation of the disguises, which drastically influence the outcome. The history of disguise is ancient and fascinating, in theater as in mythology. Masks have been associated with seduction and eroticism, but also with betrayal and abuse.
Here we see this extraordinary reflection drawn from mythology, fairy tales, literature, and theater. One of the most common motifs in all forms of storytelling is the idea of disguising oneself: Jupiter, Mercury, Pluto. But what does that mean? In fact, disguising oneself is omnipresent: simply by the clothes we wear, we disguise ourselves. We hide ourselves. We try to present ourselves through our bodies and our clothing in the way we want to be seen. Our lives are performative. And that is naturally reflected in the theater as well. Shakespeare was obsessed with disguises. Don Giovanni and Le nozze di Figaro have prominent and important episodes in which disguises are used. In Così fan tutte, however, disguise is the meat of the meal; it is the main course. Here, the disguise is the absolute theatrical metaphor for the experience of love at the heart of the opera: The essential question posed is that of emotional disguise. Emotions are disguised as other emotions; artificially generated, fabricated emotions become real and generate new emotions —and in the end, no one will be able to tell which of these emotions are authentic. Or perhaps the question is even obsolete. In fact, disguise is something quite primal in the art of theater-making. It is the foundation of theatrical performance.
And isn’t it also of central importance to the eroticism of the theater? In Così fan tutte, the men’s “Albanian” costumes traditionally have something somewhat ridiculous about them—at the risk of making the women who fall for this masquerade look ridiculous. But if we trace this topos back to its origins in ancient literature, every scenario in which someone pretends to be someone else—or something else—has something essentially erotic about it. Often with a dark undertone.
Everything to do with costumes that cover the body is erotic. In *Figaro* and *Don Giovanni*, eroticism—or Eros—is a fundamental force. In the Cherubino dressing scene, in the trio scene from Don Giovanni, in the finale of Le nozze di Figaro with Susanna and the Countess in the garden with the men. Eros drives the entire play. I have often mentioned this: The two central forces in theater are Eros and Thanatos. And the tension between eroticism and mortality and death is the fundamental tango in the performing arts.
Do you think the final chorus could in any way be meaningful to the four of them? “Happy is the person who looks at everything from the bright side and lets reason guide them through life’s ups and downs”— —after all they’ve been through?
Maybe not right when they’re singing it. Maybe the next day. The idea behind our production is that the four of them are very young; we imagined them to be around 18 years old. That’s very important, because they’ve just had a significant experience and will draw their own conclusions from it. I don’t think they’re so traumatized that they’ll never be able to love again. They’ve learned something—that’s what happens in life. For our production, it is crucial that the four of them do not simply accept Don Alfonso’s experiment, but rather turn against him. Which means that his plan—this cruel, manipulative, misogynistic, misanthropic game will backfire on him. I don’t see him triumphing. He will end up bitter, lonely, and impotent. As for the four young people: I wouldn’t take it for granted that they’ll still be together the next day. But I think it’s particularly important that we leave a question mark here. A question mark in the face of this labyrinth of love. That is the end of the opera: a labyrinth of love.