MOZART AS DRAMATIST
29
for Da Ponte, here is a close enough translation of his libretto at
this point:
COUNT:
Forgive me, Countess!
COUNTESS:
I am more gentle
And answer you «yes."
ALL :
We all are delighted
To have it end thus.
With this miserable material before him, Mozart built a revelation,
and saw how it could be supported by other elements in Beaumar–
chais's scaffolding. In opera, the dramatist is the composer.
The success of
Figaro
was compounded of genius, skill, ingenuity,
good luck, and time. The last two of these ingredients were lacking
for Mozart's next two operas; neither
Don Giovanni
nor
Cosz fan
tutte
has the dramatic consistency and force of
Figaro
or the later
Magic Flute.
In fact, the two middle operas present an object lesson
in the range of frustration that librettos can cause a composer. Da
Ponte was of course a superior librettist, and his collaboration with
Mozart was enormously fortunate, whatever went wrong. But the
trouble as I guess was that he was too confident and facile and
famous a writer for Mozart to control, as he was later to control
Emanuel Schikaneder in
The Magic Flute.
In any case the libretto
for
Don Giovanni
was not well enough written, and that for
Cosz fan
tutte
was too well written. Mozart was equally at a loss.
Even the most devoted Mozartian will have to admit that there
is something unsatisfactory about
COSt fan tutte.
Certainly it
is
Mo–
zart's most problematic opera, a fact reflected by the curious history
of the critical attitude towards the story. Romantic critics considered
it outrageous, improbable, immoral, frivolous, unworthy of Mozart;
the last two charges are true enough, and will not be evaporated by
our pious horror, today, at the naive remedies attempted in the nine–
teenth century-such as adapting the music to a French version of
Love's Labour's Lost.
Today we insist on our works of art just as
they were originally presented; Lorenzo da Ponte's libretto must
remain, and it must be rationalized too. This is always done with
an air of injured ease, but I have never seen an explanation of any
