When the oppressed no longer participate...
Interview |
On the occasion of the return of Barrie Kosky's production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, philosopher Christoph Menke reads opera as a space for thinking about liberation - and asks why attempts to abolish rule so often lead to new dependencies.
Beaumarchais' La folle journée ou Le mariage de Figaro premiered in 1784, when the order of the Ancien Régime was already beginning to totter. A socio-critical scandalous play that indicts the social elites and fuels the fire of the coming upheavals.
In your new book Theory of Liberation, Christoph Menke, you put forward the thesis that - when viewed in the light of day - all attempts at liberation sooner or later give rise to new forms of domination and thus servitude. Although the French Revolution was initially followed by the Jacobins' reign of terror, in the long term democracy has improved the living conditions of many people, hasn't it?
I don't want to question the fact that there has been and hopefully still is social progress. I, too, am glad to live after the revolutions of the 18th century and not before. But are we not content with an overly weak concept of progress here? As long as everything always gets a little better, we accept that every attempt at liberation is accompanied by the establishment of new and different forms of rule. We accept capitalism, for example, because it is a little freer, a little more open, a little more equal than feudalism. But do we have to be satisfied with this compromise? Couldn't we instead ask ourselves whether there is a connection between the way in which liberation has been understood in each case and the effects, namely the formation of new rule?
The idea of liberation includes the claim to break the cycle of recurring forms of domination. "Put an end to domination!" is usually the first impulse of any attempt at liberation. This is a rather far-reaching, if not absolute, claim that we should not relinquish so quickly.
Small people, big objection: Figaro, Susanna and the No
Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro is also a play about "little people". Figaro and Susanna are service providers and therefore bound by instructions. Where does liberation begin for them?
There is an essay by Heinrich von Kleist entitled Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden, which aptly describes the beginning of every liberation. Kleist cites Mirabeau during the French Revolution as an example. We are shortly before the ballroom oath. The session of the National Assembly is actually already over when a master of ceremonies calls on the members of the Third Estate to clear the hall in the name of the king. Mirabeau first replies that the order has been heard ... and then: "The nation gives orders and receives none. We yield only to the power of the bayonet."
The act of saying no arises from the moment, and it is still completely open which political demands will be linked to it. Mirabeau's flash of inspiration allows freedom and equality to coincide: Freedom consists in establishing equality by rejecting domination outright. The moment Figaro and Susanna each decide to no longer accept the Count's orders, their attempt at liberation begins.
Can art bring about freedom?
Let's assume that all attempts at liberation begin with an act of stepping out of habit, out of the forms of domination. Then the question immediately arises as to where this improbable human power of freedom comes from. In the course of our lives, we learn a wide variety of skills: we learn to speak, to think, to walk, we can operate a computer and ride a bicycle. We have learned everything that defines us as a subject. However, this also means that we are tied into relationships of dependency, even if it is only dependency on our teachers. The ability that we call freedom or the power of liberation, on the other hand, is not something we have learned, but something that has come to us, something that is given to us - given to us through experiences that I would call demanding in the emphatic sense. Through an aesthetic experience, for example by following a piece of music, we can be torn out of the world we think we know.
Are we not completely at the mercy of music, outwardly passive, inwardly obedient?
We are servants of music, that's true. But it is precisely this servitude to a piece of music that can have a strangely liberating effect when the music claims to surprise us, to be new and different for us. As a result, we ourselves become others.
One opera, many interpretations: Louis XVI, Charles X and Marie Antoinette
By definition, art contains a frame-breaking moment alongside deeply familiar elements. Because of this frame-breaking moment, there can presumably be no binding criteria as to when and how a "mental leap into freedom" occurs in the recipient? What opens up new worlds for one person can really get on the nerves of another.
To illustrate this, I would like to give an example: Shortly after the publication of Beaumarchais' play Le mariage de Figaro, the French King Louis XVI had the work read to him. After reading it, he exclaimed loudly: "This is abominable! It will never be performed. The Bastille would have to be razed so that the performance of this play would not be a dangerous inconsistency." As a result, the Paris production at the Comédie-Française was immediately banned.
In politically turbulent times, it did not seem advisable to the king to allow such an unsparing portrayal of the rulers, their abuse of power and their corruption. So far, so understandable.
However, Louis XVI had a younger brother who was to ascend the throne many years later as Charles X during the Restoration. This Charles took such a liking to Le mariage de Figaro that he had the play performed himself, taking on the role of Count Almaviva, the overbearing feudal lord. The role of the countess was played by a lady-in-waiting. One wonders how one and the same play can be interpreted so differently? There seems to be no consensus on a possible aesthetic of liberation.
This is a really interesting constellation which, to put it somewhat pathetically, expresses a profound truth about the relationship between art and freedom. What is impressive about the later Charles X is the sovereignty with which he surrenders to the pleasure of freedom. Le mariage de Figaro not only depicts freedom, but also establishes it in the moment of performance, as the characters increasingly act at eye level as the plot progresses. It is not only an accusatory play, but also a revolutionary one in the sense that it effectively reverses power relations. A space of equality and freedom is created - really created, not just promised - in the intrigues, in the joint play, even if "only" on stage. I can well imagine that this can be amusing or downright pleasurable if, like Charles and Marie-Antoinette, you have a keen sense for it.
Louis XVI, on the other hand, seems to have sensed that if the game was taken seriously, it would have precisely the consequences that followed. Perhaps art has the power to communicate freedom to us at the moment we experience it. But it probably doesn't have the power to make us take this experience seriously.
Singing together as an experience of equality
A dilemma that has always caused complexes for artists. Instead of rejoicing in the space of possibility, they doubt the value of their art because it does not bring about any measurable changes. But back to Le nozze di Figaro. In keeping with the genre of comedy, the opera ends not with death or revolution, but with the restoration of the old order. The interesting thing is the way in which this happens - namely in a single intoxicating day that leads to a cathartic night. Right at the beginning of the opera, the Count's sexual assault threatens both Figaro and Susanna's private happiness and social existence. The situation is ultimately resolved by maneuvering the Count into a confrontation that makes him aware of his own fears and passions.
In a garden at night, Almaviva is presented with the object of his desire, Susanna. Just as the Count is about to seduce her, out of the corner of his eye he sees his wife, the supposed Countess, in a passionate embrace with Figaro. Extreme jealousy and lust in one and the same moment. Is this a successful attempt at liberation?
I would actually like to ask what the opera can achieve beyond the drama at this point. At the narrative level, it is implied that the Count undergoes a moral transformation as a result of the shaming. At least he no longer pursues his plan to seduce Susanna. But he does not forfeit any privileges, nor does he renounce his prerogatives of his own accord. The relationships remain intact - only in the respect that is existential for private happiness does the supremacy of domination briefly come to a halt.
It ends with a joint song that celebrates the greatness of the day, the love and that everything ended happily.
I could imagine that by singing together in such an exposed moment, something like an experience of equality and thus an experience of freedom actually occurs.
Many musicologists and performers emphasize how much more echo chamber for emotions Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte created in comparison to the theatrical version. The Countess's loneliness and longing for love is often cited as an example, which makes the music so much easier to experience.
In fact, however, all the characters in the opera have the opportunity to sing their feelings, regardless of their respective status. This is also a kind of practice of freedom.
To step down from power
Are there actually also rulers or holders of privileges who want to be freed from their privileges? Could there be something like this in the figure of the count?
Oh yes, I am convinced of that. To a certain extent, we even have to rely on the fact that there are despots who want to be freed from the stress of having to assert their own omnipotence. Conditions today are no longer so simple that we can say: Here is a ruler, and here are thousands of subordinates. Instead, in the course of the global market economy, we have all been diffused into dual roles in a strange way, so that each of us is on the one hand the dominated and on the other hand part of certain power relations. If we do not insist or insist that we do not want to play these roles of domination, then I believe there would be no utopian perspective at all. In this respect, the revolutionary and liberating power of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro should appeal to everyone today. And the hope would be to bring the opera to the stage in such a way that we allow ourselves to be infected, convinced and enticed to a certain extent that it is possible to step back from our own positions of power.
