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PARTISANREVIEW
is our best repository of the past. It preserves different ways of construct–
ing the world and different possibilities for being human.
In erasing everything specific to the original settings of Mozart's
operas, Sellars destroys a window into the eighteenth century. While
Mozart's music transcends its time, it also perfectly expresses the ideals of
its age. One can tell from his music alone that it is an age not yet afraid
to use such terms as "greatness" and "beauty" outside of scare quotes. If
no other historical evidence remained for the decorum of the court, it
could be induced from the music's balance and poise. But Mozart pre–
sents majesty and nobility as attributes not of a particular social class but
of the human spirit. Not only do servants such as Barbarina voice their
feelings in melody that could ravish a God, but the listener, too, takes
on, and is transformed by, the music's power, like Leda swept up by the
Swan.
Even as the music embodies the universal ideal of nobility, however,
the da Ponte operas explore its far less glorious reality.
Don Giovanni
and
Figaro
in particular are rooted in Mozart's contemporary world. Their
plots are driven by the interplay between desire and the rules of class. The
relations between the characters could not exist outside the web of those
rules. Unlike the dispassionate rulers and lords of opera seria,
da
Ponte's
leading noblemen exploit their aristocratic privilege in the pursuit of
sexual dominance.
Sellars's productions violate both the reality and the idea of nobil–
ity expressed by Mozart's operas. You cannot take characters whose
relations are based on strict social hierarchy, move them to a democratic
society, and expect that their behavior will continue to make sense.
When Sellars is unable to find a contemporary analogue for a plot de–
vice, he simply cuts it from the opera. Rather than rethinking
his
project
in the face of obstacles to dramatic translation, he rethinks Mozart's.
Sellars was apparently stymied by the "droit du seigneur" in
Figaro,
for
instance, and so made do without it. As a result, the plot - a minor de–
tail - was left unmotivated, and the finer comic moments, such as the
peasants' song of praise to the Count,
Giovani Liete,
were lost com–
pletely. Likewise, moving
Don Giovanni
to the ghetto completely under–
mines the plot. Don Giovanni's power over the other characters is based
in large part on his social rank; it cannot be explained, as it must in a
modern setting, wholly in terms of charisma.
The most jarring aspect of Sellars's Mozart, however, is not the
damage done to plot and character, but rather the betrayal of the spirit
of the music. Mozart is too splendid to belong in an age distracted
by
shopping malls and video games. But Sellars seems to choose images that
deliberately heighten the incongruity. Where the music speaks of grace
and politesse, he shows us crudeness and despair. He breaks apart opera's
