Così Fan Tutte R Freiburg Baroque Orchestra P
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Monday Evening, August 15, 2016, at 7:30 pm m Pre-concert lecture by Scott Burnham at 6:15 pm in the a r Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse g o Così fan tutte r Freiburg Baroque Orchestra P Louis Langrée , Conductor e Lenneke Ruiten , Fiordiligi M|M h Kate Lindsey , Dorabella T Sandrine Piau , Despina Joel Prieto , Ferrando M|M Nahuel Di Pierro , Guglielmo M|M Rod Gilfry , Don Alfonso M|M Musica Sacra M|M Kent Tritle , Chorus Director Annette Jolles , Director Andrew Hill , Lighting Designer MOZART Così fan tutte , ossia La scuola degli amanti (1789–90) This performance is approximately three-and-a-half hours long, including one intermission between Acts I and II. M|M Mostly Mozart debut Please make certain all your electronic devices are switched off. Tonight’s performance is dedicated in honor of Renée and Robert Belfer. The Mostly Mozart Festival is made possible by Renée and Robert Belfer, Sarah Billinghurst Solomon and Howard Solomon, and Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser. This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center. Fortepiano by R.J. Regier, Freeport, Maine Alice Tully Hall , Starr Theater Adrienne Arsht Stage Mostly Mozart Festival Additional support is provided by Chris and Bruce Crawford, Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz, The Howard Gilman Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Inc., Charles E. Culpeper Foundation, S.H. and Helen R. Scheuer Family Foundation, and Friends of Mostly Mozart. Public support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts. American Airlines is the Official Airline of Lincoln Center Nespresso is the Official Coffee of Lincoln Center NewYork-Presbyterian is the Official Hospital of Lincoln Center MetLife is the National Sponsor of Lincoln Center “Summer at Lincoln Center” is supported by Diet Pepsi Media Partner WQXR Artist Catering provided by Zabar’s and Zabars.com The cast of Così fan tutte originally appeared at the 2016 Aix-en-Provence Festival. UPCOMING MOSTLY MOZART FESTIVAL EVENTS : Tuesday and Wednesday, August 1 6–17, at 7:30 pm in David Geffen Hall Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra Matthew Halls , conductor (New York debut) Joshua Bell , violin MENDELSSOHN: Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream MOZART: Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major BEETHOVEN: Overture to Coriolan BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 8 Pre-concert recitals by Alexi Kenney, violin, at 6:30 pm Friday and Saturday, August 19–20, at 7:30 pm in David Geffen Hall Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra Louis Langrée , conductor Joélle Harvey , soprano M|M Cecelia Hall , mezzo-soprano M|M Alek Shrader , tenor M|M Christian Van Horn , bass-baritone M|M Concert Chorale of New York James Bagwell , director ALL-MOZART PROGRAM Mass in C minor Requiem Pre-concert lecture by Andrew Shenton at 6:15 pm in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse M|M Mostly Mozart debut For tickets, call (212) 721-6500 or visit MostlyMozart.org. Call the Lincoln Center Info Request Line at (212) 875-5766 to learn about program cancellations or request a Mostly Mozart brochure. Visit MostlyMozart.org for full festival listings. Join the conversation: #LCMozart We would like to remind you that the sound of coughing and rustling paper might distract the performers and your fellow audience members. In consideration of the performing artists and members of the audience, those who must leave before the end of the performance are asked to do so between pieces. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in the building. Mostly Mozart Festival Shades of Humanity in Mozart’s Operas By Peter A. Hoyt Mozart’s operas stand among the most celebrated artworks of European culture. They are beloved not only for arias of exquisite beauty, but also for ensembles of almost unbelievable dramatic range. Although most of the standard operatic repertoire was created in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Mozart managed to contribute a good half-dozen works to this collection of canonical offerings between 1781 and 1791. Though the beauty of his works might seem sufficient justification, the promi - nence of Mozart in the operatic repertoire is not easy to explain. A number of his predecessors—Monteverdi, Purcell, Handel, Rameau, Gluck—also created extraordinarily attractive scores. Mozart, however, was among the first com - posers to give his characters a psychological depth that can be identified as modern. Previous composers typically regarded their singers as representing universal types: A noble monarch in an opera by Handel, for example, was understood as an allegorical representation of noble monarchs in general. The emotions portrayed by such figures were also regarded as universal; musical expressions of anger were so similar that they were collectively known as “rage arias” and were frequently regarded as interchangeable. In the early 18th cen - tury, singers often substituted one such aria for another, much to the annoyance of composers. Mozart, on the other hand, treated emotions as having many nuances that man - ifest the personality and experiences of a specific individual. Subtle shades of anger, for instance, can be heard in the music Mozart gives to Elettra in his Idomeneo of 1781. The Greek princess desires Idamante, the crown prince of Crete, but he is enamored of someone else. In her two outbursts of jealous rage, Elettra blends fury with a wide range of other emotions, including self-pity, offended dignity, and a covert pride in the gods’ choice of her royal house for unrelenting suffering. More than any previous composer, Mozart sought to jux - tapose such seemingly disparate states, an approach that gave his operatic ensembles an unprecedented scope. In his musical language, Mozart seems to be fashioning a modern individual torn between irreconcilable impulses. The modern belief that the human personality is marked by inner conflicts reflects the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud (185 6–1939) and the his - torical accounts of Michel Foucault (1926–84), who maintained that our prevail - ing concepts of the individual originated in the late 18th century—precisely as Mozart was composing his greatest masterworks. If his stage works now mark the beginning of the standard operatic repertoire, it may be because he created the first musical characters we can recognize as fully sharing our own humanity. —Copyright © 2016 by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. Mostly Mozart Festival I Words and Music Soul unto Soul Glooms Darkling By Charles Leonard Moore Disguise upon disguise, and then disguise, Equivocations at the rose’s heart, Life’s surest pay a poet’s forgeries, The gossamer gold coinage of our art. Why hope for truth? Thy very being slips, Lost from thee, in thy crowd of masking moods. Why hope for love? Between quick-kissing lips Is room and stage for all hate’s interludes. One with thy love thou art!—her eyes, her hair Known to thy soul, a pure estate of bliss; But some least motion, look, or changëd air, And nadir unto zenith nearer is: Thou mayst control her limbs, but not begin To know what planet rules the tides within. —“Soul unto Soul Glooms Darkling,” from Book of Day-Dreams , by Charles Leonard Moore For poetry comments and suggestions, please write to [email protected]. Mostly Mozart Festival By Paul Schiavo t o Romantic love famously separates lovers from common sense, h objective reality, and emotional equilibrium. In order to restore those s connections, men and women equally require hard lessons in La scuola degli amanti (“The School for Lovers”), which was the original p title of Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte . They must learn that lovers’ a promises do not predict their actions; that we tend to see our para - n mours through proverbial rose-tinted glass; that our amatory pas - sions lie mostly beyond our control; and that, in matters of the heart, S we must accept and forgive our common frailties and imperfections. Happily, the instruction in these matters that Mozart and his libret - tist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, offer in Così fan tutte entails a good deal of wit and mirth—and a great deal of inspired music. The opera’s story tells how two soldiers, each certain that his fiancée is a paragon of fidelity, are persuaded to put their faith to a test. To their dismay, their ladies’ constancy proves ephemeral. The mechanism by which this sad truth is proved involves preposterous disguises and out - landish courtship, making for high humor. But Così fan tutte hides satiric barbs within its comedy. While the dialogue and music sparkle with gaiety, that quality cannot entirely mask an undercurrent of melancholy, of genuine regret at love’s imperfection. The lessons of Mozart and Da Ponte’s schooling are nothing if not bittersweet. Yet it is precisely their complex, nuanced view of love and lovers that makes Così fan tutte worthy of attention. —Copyright © 2016 by Paul Schiavo Mostly Mozart Festival I Synopsis By Paul Schiavo s i ACT I s In Naples, two soldiers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, are dining with the elderly p Don Alfonso. The latter has evidently questioned the fidelity of the young o men’s fiancées, and they demand that he prove his contention that their sweethearts cannot be trusted. Eventually they settle on a wager, the condi - n tion being that the soldiers follow Alfonso’s instructions precisely. y S At the home of Ferrando and Guglielmo’s darlings, Dorabella and Fiordiligi, the sisters sing of their handsome soldiers and pledge to be true to them. Alfonso arrives with news that the young men have been ordered to war. Ferrando and Guglielmo follow, and the two couples bid tender farewells.