HEATHER MAcIX>NAID
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unity of sound and sense. The result is an acute dissonance between what
the ear hears and what the eye sees.
Things look ominous from the very beginning of the video version
of
Figaro .
Sellars accompanies the swelling brilliance of the overture with
footage of Christmas shoppers scurrying along Fifth Avenue and Fifty–
seventh Street freighted with designer shopping bags. The one sentiment
this glorious musical torrent definitely does not convey is the injunction
to "shop until you drop."
The defining moment in
Figaro,
however, occurs in Cherubino's
first aria,
Non
So
Piu Cosa Son.
Susan Larson, in oversized hockey jersey,
shoulder pads, low-slung jeans, and high tops, delivers the aria on her
stomach from Figaro's rumpled sofa-bed. Singing from a prone position
is quasi-trademark of collaborations between Sellars and the other
enfant
terrible
of the avant-garde - the choreographer, Mark Morris. This time,
however, the gesture contains a new element: Larson accompanies herself
by humping rhythmically like a neurotic poodle.
The moment is one of utter horror. No gesture could be more in–
imical to the spirit of the aria than this crude sexual dumbshow. Had
Cherubino felt free to hump in public, he would not "speak of love" at
all, or if he did, it would be in the violent monosyllables of Luther
Campbell, not in the pastoral imagery of Petrarch.
Sellars clearly intended to "demystify" the aria by exposing the
ani–
mal lust that lurks beneath Cherubino's breathless invocation of "water,
shadows, and mountains." Besides insulting the intelligence of the audi–
ence, such a purpose misses the point entirely. The demystifying impulse
regards convention and formal control as defenses against eroticism. But
the formality, the precarious equipoise between passion and decorum, in
18th century music are the source of its erotic tension. Mozart's operas
fairly explode with the power they barely constrain. Likewise, the code
of courtly manners intensifies the erotic power of the most subtle gesture,
by checking the body in the expression of desire.
Sellars's locker-room staging of
Non
So
Piu
was deaf to both the
musical and literary imperatives of the aria. Not only do the rushing cas–
cades of notes suggest a still innocent confusion and an emotional
anticipation wholly at odds with the rutting behavior of Sellars's
Cherubino, but the aria, itself written, is as much about the rhetorical
conventions of love as about its hormonal underpinnings. Cherubino is
moved by
words
of love, and responds as any good pastoral poet must:
with more words, addressed to "flowers, grass, and fountains."
The effect of Sellars's dissonant stagings is often surreal. During the
ballet in the double wedding scene, for example, the dancers writhe to a
silent rock beat, while the orchestra performs a stately march.
Don Giovanni
is Sellars's one unmitigated disaster. The world of
