Music lounge (51)

There is very little left to write about Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, I guess. Even those who dislike it have seen it many and many times. Yes, it is a very popular opera – and, as much as I am a die-hard Mozartian – I wonder why. To be honest, it is my least favorite among Mozart’s mature operas. It feels long, especially if the cast isn’t uniformly excellent (and it rarely is). But my puzzlement has more to do with the libretto, which requires a certain level of awareness of how ordinary life was in Europe in the 18th century for someone to make complete sense of it. Directors have been busy updating it in all possible ways – but there is always something important left behind when you don’t understand the original context. There is also a structural problem – it is the middle item in Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais’s trilogy about how things were changing in pre-revolutionary France. The audience usually forgets that these are the same characters from the Barber of Seville – and nobody ever stages The Guilty Mother to understands what is finally going to happen with these characters.

For instance, although directors do not seem very keen on doing that, the audience can still find remains of Rosine in the Countess Almaviva. Even if she is depressed in her entrance scene, we soon realize she is still playful, scheming and not to be trifled with. It is the Count Almaviva, however, who is shown as an entirely changed person in most productions of Le Nozze di Figaro. We have seen him in the Barber of Sevilla as charming, congenial guy – he can sing, he plays the guitar, he has a terrific sense of humor, he runs under assumed names, disguised as a soldier or a music teacher. However, when we find him again, he is a philanderer, a neglecting husband and a spoilsport always in bad mood.

In The Barber from Seville, the Count was in love with Rosina, a rich beautiful orphaned girl practically kept as a prisoner in her own house by an unscrupulous guardian. He places all his energy in getting her – and he does get the girl in the end. At the same time, Rosina is a spirited, bright girl who wants freedom and to enjoy life and her only hope is the Count. She didn’t even know he was an aristocrat – only that he was in love with her and wanted to help her escape. In other words, these two people had very high expectations about each other, while what they really want was… adventure. But that was the 18th century, they were both well-born and marriage was the only possibility on the table. If you keep that in mind, there is far more depth Le Nozze di Figaro than at first sight. The Countess is not melancholic about the beautiful moments in the past – they were never there. They were just a promise “from those lying lips” (as we hear in her aria). The moment the Count got her, she lost all her appeal to him. He only wants what he doesn’t have. The libretto informs us he would be always chasing foreign beauties, until he found something really tempting – a girl truly in love with her fiancé (i.e., Susanna). The fact that both Susanna and Figaro are gladly giving up freedom to be together triggers all frustrations in the Almaviva household. The Countess and the Count don’t hate each other – and the beautiful forgiveness scene in the end shows us that. They are not bad people, they are just miserable, jail mates in their own golden cage. That is why it is important to know what happens in The Guilty Mother – all dark secrets are discovered (their only child is actually Cherubino’s son and the Count does have a daughter outside wedlock too), there is a lot of plotting, but in the end they forgive each other and bless the union of their children. So in Léon and Florestine’s wedding we’ll finally see a true union between the Count and the Countess Almaviva. They did not bring each other any kind of personal fulfilment, but they finally brought each other peace.

We have to be honest: Mozart does not help us connect the dots between the two plays. The part of the Count Almaviva is written in a way that brings out almost exclusively the bad side of the character. From his first entrance, he mostly blusters in angular lines, closer to recitative than to song, as we can hear in the terzetto with Susanna and Basilio in act 1, then in the act 2 duet with the Countess and then throughout the act 2 finale. He does mellow now and then – but even then Mozart does not want us to believe about his sincerity. For instance, in the act 3 duet with Susanna, Crudel, perchè fin’ora?, we hear these little bouts of laughter in the strings telling us not to take him seriously. When he believes to be wooing Susanna in the garden, there is some suaveness in his singing, but the sprightly rhythms in the orchestra show us that the whole thing is just staged. The single moment when we believe he is being sincere during the whole opera happens a little bit later near the end of the opera, as he asks for the Countess’s forgiveness. There Mozart clearly tells us that this is a moment unlike any other in the opera – we’re transported to the realm of sacred music, which is the trick he uses to shows that the character is being truly serious (as when he borrows the melody of the Agnus Dei in the Coronation Mass for the Countess’s big aria).

I have written all that to say that I really dislike when the baritone in the role of the Count portrays him as “evil and loving it”. I have to be honest, most baritones skate on the surface of the role and content themselves in working with what Mozart apparently gave them – all those nervous, blustery vocal lines. But aren’t they too nervous and too blustery? Doesn’t the gentleman protest too much? There must be some palpable vulnerability there. Susanna sees that when she pretends to accept his advances. That’s the beauty of their duet: she feels bad for tricking him, even if he has been a total a******, because she senses that deep down he is suffering. When we can, just like Susanna did, feel his misery, then the forgiveness scene in the end gains an entirely different meaning. But this week we’re listening to his big – and difficult – aria, Vedrò mentr’io sospiro. If we read the text, we’ll see that this no declaration of war, but a cry for help – he is literally saying: why do I have to be the only unhappy person in the end of the story? (Actually, there is the Countess too – but he only realizes that in the garden scene). Let’s read it: Hai già vinta la causa! Cosa sento!/In qual laccio cadea? Perfidi! Io voglio/ Di tal modo punirvi… A piacer mio/ la sentenza sarà… Ma s’ei pagasse/la vecchia pretendente?/ Pagarla! In qual maniera! E poi v’è Antonio,/ che a un incognito Figaro ricusa
di dare una nipote in matrimonio./ Coltivando l’orgoglio/ di questo mentecatto…/ Tutto giova a un raggiro… il colpo è fatto. ARIA: Vedrò mentre io sospiro,/ felice un servo mio!/ E un ben ch’invan desio,/ ei posseder dovrà?/ Vedrò per man d’amore/ unita a un vile oggetto/ chi in me destò un affetto/ che per me poi non ha?// Ah no, lasciarti in pace,/
non vo’ questo contento,/ tu non nascesti, audace,/ per dare a me tormento,/ e forse ancor per ridere/ di mia infelicità.// Già la speranza sola/ delle vendette mie/ quest’anima consola,/ e giubilar mi fa. (“I’ve won our case”? What have I heard?/ I was falling into a trap! Traitors, I will/Punish you in a way… To my own satisfaction/I’ll impose the sentence… What if he [Figaro] was to pay off/The old woman’s [Marzellina] claim?/Pay her? But how? And there’s also Antonio/Who is refusing to give his nice [Susanna] to a Figaro, a man whose family is unknown./ If I work on the pride/ of a man as stupid as him/everything favours my scheme:/ the blow is dealt!/ ARIA: While I languish and I sigh,/Am I supposed to watch the joy of a servant of mine?/Is he supposed to know/The joy I long for in vain?/Am I supposed to see the one who roused unrequited passion in me /united in love with a lowly vassal?/Oh, no, I won’t leave you in peace/I don’t want you to be content/An insolent fellow like you were not born/To bring me torment/or even to laugh/of my own unhappiness.//The very hope/of getting revenge/is a solace to my soul/and makes me rejoice!).

Yes, it is difficult to feel for the Count’s predicament. We have heard again and again this kind of “what about me?” growling from privileged men when, for a change, they are not the lucky ones. Especially here, when he is being particularly vicious and trying to ruin everyone’s lives. Yet Beaumarchais (and Da Ponte) are showing us that the Count is a walking cliché – he is miserable, he is in pain and it makes him hurt even more when he sees someone happy around him. In the aria, he is not referring to merely having sex with Susanna, but being in love, being contented by what one has, feeling well about him or herself. That’s what he envies. Those are not beautiful feelings to witness, but the singer has to be able to let us see the suffering in the bottom of all that ugliness. This makes the experience of listening to Verdrò mentr’io sospiro far more interesting. Again: Mozart waits until to the end of the opera to show us that the Count deep down is not a monster and here the music is all about cursing, complaining, threatening. And yet this is clearly an Ersatz for true satisfaction. By the end of the scene, he is enthusiastic about his plan, he acts as if he is happy about it: fake it until you make it.

The boundaries between recitative and aria are quite blurred here and I feel we could almost call it a scene. Although there is just one person on stage, it almost feels like a dialogue. To start with, it is almost entirely made of questions, mostly answered by the orchestra in the recitative. We hear the count pacing up and down in “Hai gia vinta la causa? Cosa sento! and then in the following plain loud chords, that swift gesture with the arm – In qual laccio cadea? Then the finger pointing, the punching in the air in Perfidi! Io voglio, io voglio… Then the musing, hand on chin in the dotted figures Ma s’ei pagasse la vecchia pretendente? Then we hear the laughing in Pagarla? In qual maniera? Then he feels more comfortable – there’s a plan being formed here. We hear that in the long chord that follows. He sits down. Then the orchestra is marked piano, there is a catchy, pleasant figure in the violins – he’ll convince Antonio do do whatever he wants, there is nothing to fear. The laughing figure is everywhere in the orchestra now – he’s got this under control.

The aria begins with a series of swift downward scales – the count punches the table – and there is a solemn figure, a trill, quite old-style, and an ascending sequence of plain chords marked forte. He gets up, in all his aristocratic proudness – Who does that fellow take himself for by trying his luck against (powerful, marvelous, formidable, handsome) me? As always, the Count’s vocal line are not truly Mozartian in a melodic, catchy way (as Figaro’s, for instance) – it is always recitative-like in style. The Count’s bravado does not last long – he soon has doubts. He starts to think about what could happen – Figaro and Susanna lovey-dovey right in front his eyes – the woodwind brings a certain harmonic tension, we have a series of nagging little figures, first many trills and then a provoking figure in the strings turning around second minor intervals. But the Count wants to believe he’ll succeed and, after an upward sweep we have the closest to a melodic line in the aria an up-and-down phrase on the words Vedrò mentr’io sospiro, infelice un servo mio and then E un ben ch’invan desio ei posseder dovrà. This is the very image of the Count’s state of mind – he is a bit down, but he’s acting out and trying to lift his mood (by making everybody around him as down as he is right now). Again it doesn’t last long – the nagging figures are all back when he figures Susanna and Figaro together. This time the whole thing is too much for him – he asks again and again Vedrò? (“Am I to see that?”) We hear short upward sweeps, almost as an engine whirring before it finally takes off. And it does – the count explodes from Ah, no, lasciarti in pace. We’re in a different tempo (allegro assai), the strings have a restless rhythm, the vocal line follows the text, we hear him shouting: audace! (“insolent!”), there is a chromatic line in “to bring me torment”, the nagging trills are all over the place, there is a laughing quality in the vocal line when he says che giubilar mi fa (“that makes me rejoice”). In the first time, it is a descending figure with slurs connecting notes two by two. In the end of the aria, it develops into a small piece of coloratura, quite challenging to baritones – mordente-like triplets up and down, a trill. The next phrase takes the baritone to a difficult high f sharp and that’s the end of the aria, the orchestra seems to be hysterically laughing with the singer.

How is the baritone supposed to make this tridimensional? Almost every singer goes to an all-out approach here, spitting consonants, snarling a lot, “acting with the voice” and going through the final coloratura in an almost impatient way, generally blurring the whole thing before he finally screams a high f sharp. First, this is Mozart. Yes, you can snarl, but you still have to keep the line, follow phrasing instructions, save energy for the difficult end of the aria – and, most important, take advantage of the downbeat moments (in which the character has doubts about himself and his plan) to show a more relaxed voice, some beauty of tone. We have to understand that the Count is not getting a machine gun and killing the rest of the cast in the next scene. It is a “what about me?”-moment, it’s a cry for help. You are right to feel annoyed by his tantrum and egocentrism, but you have to feel a bit sorry for him. You’re not calling the police, but rather searching for a psychotherapist’s visit card and saying “do yourself a favor and get an appointment”.

I first took notice of Boje Skovhus (his first name had four letters back then) in a Schubert recital on Sony. Back then, I found his voice beautiful and his phrasing sensitive. Then, he was cast as the Count in Claudio Abbado’s studio recording of Le Nozze di Figaro, a release not entirely well received by reviewers. As much as I can see why, I find Abbado’s conducting and the Vienna Philharmonic admirable. And Cecilia Bartoli is a vivacious, charming Cherubino. But there is also Skovhus – a replacement, if I am not mistaken – in the role of the Count. Although he recorded this part many and many times, he became increasingly heavy-handed and unidiomatic in it. That said, I consider him very well cast in the Abbado recording – and his Vedrò, mentr’io sospiro the most smoothly sung, richest in contrast – and he offers there the best rendition of the difficult final bars in the discography. It sounds what it is – a tantrum. He doesn’t seem dangerous at all, just overwrought, and there is still some aristocratic poise in his bullying. And Abbado is all the way with him, showing us all the detailed “stage action” and psychological variety in Mozart’s orchestral writing.