When we say that 18th century Italian theatre was divided into two big categories – serious and comic – one could argue that theatre has always been like that. Even today. Yes, this is true, except for the fact that the limits between the two genres were clearly established in a set of rules and formulae every playwright should follow back in 18th century. Serious matters involved people of superior social standing – ruling aristocrats (or their mythological counterparts) – who would be tested by extreme events until a) everybody died in the end or b) a god would appear in the last second to forgive everyone and remind them to behave. Comedy was more complex – theatre was the entertainment of the powerful and they would not laugh at ladies and gentlemen being made fun of. The solution was simple. As in real life, there always were servants to perform undesired duties. The backbone of 18th century comedy was the relationship between master and servant. In comedies, one would find parte serie (serious roles) and parte buffe (comic roles). The serious roles generally involved two young people from noble families trying to get married against their parents’ will – and their servants helping them. These young people would always be lovely, innocent, honest and incapable of doing something devious, while their servants would be charming, naughty, cunning and deceitful. In the end, they would be pardoned for all their plotting and scheming because they did it all for their young masters’ sake. Before someone asks me if the young couple would be forgiven for disobeying their parents, of course, they would. The fiancés intended by their parents generally were villains, most of them common people pretending to be aristocrats.
In terms of structure, the DNA of comedy had a glitch – in order to get what they wanted, masters would have to follow the instructions of their servants. Carlo Goldoni was probably the first person to notice that. In his comedies, masters exposed to situations almost as extreme as those in tragedies were even more dependent on increasingly bossy servants. In order to establish this pattern, Goldoni had to blur the borders of genres – and of social boundaries. For instance, in his libretto for Galuppi’s Il Filosofo di Campagna, the housemaid Lesbina calls the cards on her lady, by saying: “If you don’t do as I say, I’ll leave you alone”. Eugenia, the damsel in distress can only answer ,“Please don’t leave – command and I’ll blindly obey”. Goldoni would call these comedies “dramma giocoso”, i.e., “jestful dramas”. Once you start to tear apart categories, it is difficult to stop, and Goldoni soon realized it was difficult to write a libretto (or a play) like a dramma giocoso with characters being either entirely serious or comic. That is when he started to develop characters that were a mix of both worlds – the mezzo carattere parts. Goldoni, however, was clever to realize that the concept was problematic in political terms – a mezzo carattere role would involve, on paper, an aristocrat with flaws found in commoners, and commoners with virtues of the gentry. That is why he solved this puzzle by means of disguise. Mezzo carattere parts originally involved people assuming identities: a servant posing as a mater or a master undercover as a servant. Goldoni was also particularly bright in the way he used language to show the audience that something was wrong with a master using coarse language or a servant with too fine a vocabulary.
Mozart – a man who would never undervalue the importance of theatre – first dealt with the complexities of dramma giocoso in La Finta Giardiniera. Although Goldoni didn’t write the libretto and the unknown librettist did not call it a “dramma giocoso”, the prima donna role, Sandrina, is a Countess disguised as a gardener after having being assaulted by her abusive husband (to make things worse, she is harassed by her new boss). If it is so, why am I saying that it was Mozart’s first experience with the new genre? The rules and formulae for playwrights applied to actors too – those specialized in serious roles spoke in lovely round voices and gestured and moved about in a dignified way, while the buffi (the comedy actors) would speak in an open tone, direct way, grimace and move in a vulgar way in comparison. In opera, this would mean that serious and comedy singers would also SING in a different manner. Serious parts involved long sustained lines in complex arias with a final mood shift when they would dazzle the audience with their bravura (valor – in 18th century represented by coloratura). Buffi would sing short lines, lower in tessitura with lots of staccato, patter in simple, direct arias, more descriptive of the action than of their feelings. This means, opera had an extra advantage on theatre – when the audience first heard Sandrina sing Geme la tortorella with its high tessitura, melancholy affetto and trills, they might have thought that the gardener girl was too ladylike.
When Mozart met Da Ponte, he found a man who had very little regard for conventions and social red tape (no wonder he ended up in the New World). In their three collaborations, both took dramma giacoso to its limits, first by adapting Beaumarchais’s revolutionary play Les Noces de Figaro and then by choosing to work in their only clearly labeled dramma giocoso – Don Giovanni*. In Don Giovanni, we have two serious roles (Donna Anna and Don Ottavio), three buffo roles (Leporello, Zerlina and Masetto) and two mezzo carattere (Donna Elvira and Don Giovanni). The curious thing is that neither Donna Elvira and Don Giovanni are assuming anyone’s identities (well, in the only scene in the opera they’re not fighting, he pretends to be Leporello and she is hidden under a cloak). They are just two aristocrats who indulge in vulgar behavior. That means – although the audience was informed that these people are of high standing, what they see AND HEAR shows that, in their own nature, there is nothing noble about them. And that was a hard agenda to sell those days… And Mozart did his part in it – Don Giovanni sings two buffo arias (if you compare them with Susanna’s Venite, inginochiatevi and Deh vieni in Le Nozze di Figaro, you’ll see the similarities) and Donna Elvira receives the musical treatment for “mentally instable” women – huge intervals, contrasted registers, almost masculine music. There is a particularly brilliant moment in the score – the quartet in act 1, when Elvira understands that she has to prove Donna Anna and Don Ottavio that she is their equal. She tries to sing “like” Donna Anna when she starts Non ti fidar, o misera, Donna Anna buys it and says “Look how dignified she is”. But Don Giovanni knows how to play her and unbalances Donna Elvira, who goes back to her usual singing style from Mentitore, mentitore on. Accordingly, the noble couple comments that there is something fishy going on there. It is fascinating to hear Donna Elvira trying to behave in a patrician way whenever Donna Anna is around – especially in their trio, when Mozart clearly shows who that the really serious lady is – the one with the highest notes and the coloratura.
It used to puzzle me the fact that modern audiences insist to look in Don Giovanni for something different from what Mozart and Da Ponte wrote. Yes, Donna Anna is a bit ambiguous toward Don Ottavio, but she is still “serious”. She is even remarkably honest with him throughout the opera about the ambiguity of her feelings, but directors like to show her as a deceitful two-timing bitch. On the other hand, Donna Elvira, carefully conceived as an unreliable and improper woman (in 18th century terms, of course) is always shown today as a sincere, wronged person. However, It is easy to see why – in real life people behave mezzo carattere rather than 100% serious or 100% funny. But that means that we never hear the role as it should be sung. I plead guilty here too – when I first listened to Della Jones in Arnold Östman’s recording of Don Giovanni, I thought “what is wrong with her?” and then I realized she was singing it as Mozart and Da Ponte intended.
* It is possible to find the elements of the dramma giocoso in Così fan tutte, but they are used in such an abstract way there that explaining it here would make this text too long.