Three Modes of Perception in Mozart. The Philosophical, Pastoral, and Comic in Cosí fan tutte

This is the first full-length, scholarly study of what is widely regarded as Mozart?s most enigmatic opera and Lorenzo Da Ponte?s most erudite text. Against the long-standing judgment that the opera uses a misguided confidence in reason to traduce feeling, Goehring?s study shows how Così affirms comedy?s regenerative powers and its capacity to grant access to modes of sympathy and understanding that are otherwise inaccessible. In making this argument, the book surveys a rich literary, operatic, and intellectual territory. It offers a new perspective on the relationships between text and tone in the opera, on the tension between comedy and philosophy and its representation in stage works, and on the pastoral mode, which the opera uses in especially subtle ways. Throughout, Goehring's argument is sustained by close readings of primary sources, many of them little known, and is richly illustrated with musical examples.

- Offers a new interpretation of Mozart?s Così fan tutte
- Richly illustrated with music examples
- Relevant to the fields of opera study, theatre history and the history of ideas

CONTENIDO:

List of tables
Preface and acknowledgments
A note on translations
List of abbreviations

1- An overture to Così fan tutte: the poetics of the opera over two centuries

A history of word/music relations in Così fan tutte
Nineteenth-century roots to modern thought
Così fan tutte and postmodern poetics
The reception of Così fan tutte in the eighteenth century
Toward a new poetics of Così fan tutte
The recitative
The overture and "Tutti accusan le donne"

2- The philosophical mode

The philosopher and other comic eccentrics
Don Alfonso as old man and poet
Don Alfonso as cynic
The philosopher as comic character
The comic philosopher as an operatic type
Paisiello?s Il Socrate immaginario
Don Alfonso as philosopher
Materialism and Mesmerism in Così fan tutte
Don Alfonso and popular wisdom
The moral tale in Così fan tutte
Don Alfonso?s musical identity
Don Alfonso?s ottava

3- The pastoral mode

Despina?s textual and musical authority
"In uomini, in soldati"
"Una donna a quindici anni"
The theory and practice of the pastoral mode
Eros and episode in the pastoral
The sentimentalization of the pastoral in the eighteenth century
Despina and the pastoral mode
Despina?s Epicureanism
The uses of pity in the pastoral and in Così fan tutte
Dorabella?s pastoral transformation
The limits of the pastoral in Così fan tutte
Beauty and transcendence in "Soave sia il vento"
"Soave sia il vento" revisited: of beauty and contingency

4- The comic mode

Introduction: Don Alfonso as comedian
Comedy in the sentimental mode
Una cosa rara and sentimental heroism
The origins and language of sentimental comedy
Così fan tutte as anti-sentimental opera
Heroic and martial images of love in the soldiers
Fiordiligi as sentimental heroine
The seduction duets
Ferrando?s second-act scena
The comic vision of Così fan tutte


Epilogue
Bibliography
Index