This is.... by some distance, the only recording I've ever heard that does complete justice to Cosi Fan Tutte. Of the three great Da Ponte operas, Cosi is the stupidest, but it's also Mozart's most beautiful operatic score. It's an impossible work: it's a celebration of the nihilism of love, simultaneously trivial and profound, beautiful and cynical, hateful and loving, exploitative and forgiving. In the face of an emotional burden that large, how does sitting through any performance not become a chore?
Last night I listened to Fritz Busch's '51 Cosi, and bad sound aside, it was extraordinary in a way I'd never heard Cosi be. It was not all that well sung except by Jurniac and Bruscantini, but it was suffused by grace, a thing of pure divinity that floated down a river of pure music. Of course, there are other Mozart recordings suffused by that delightful transcendence, but I'm not sure there is a Cosi that is quite like that.
The real music is not stuff we hear. Real music is made in the overtones, from which our amygdala responds physiologically on a level at which our ears are not really aware. The lower brain is where our emotional response is processed. You can't explain why the Busch/Jurniac Cosi is amazing, but you can feel it.
But even in the bad sound of the Cantelli, you can HEAR the upper octaves. Forget the precision here, which is breathtaking. Just listen to the blend between singers and orchestra. On the stage of La Scala where every major conductor from Toscanini to Abbado has tried to rein in singer egos, a singer as egotistical as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf matches perfectly to blend with the timbres of instruments, and the singers even go to great pains to blend their vibratos with each other. This is the 'gesamtkunstwerk' opera is always said to be, but never is. How different might opera be today if Cantelli took a different plane?
From Busch, it's as though we're listening to pure divine grace, but from Cantelli, it's as though we're experiencing divine revelation, as though the music is revealing to us the true world behind the world from which music originates. I don't know if we mortals are supposed to hear music on a level this deep without going mad, it's like eating from the Tree of Knowledge, but I do know that it's an unforgettable experience.
But my general problem with Mozart performance is still that, for all the change, we still think of him as Mr. powdered wig when he wanted to storm the Bastille. The real Mozart is one step from Beethoven, and most of his soul is what music was soon to become. While Mozart is not hypomanic like Beethoven, he is so much more than exquisite. His music is as vulgar, and cynical, and as disturbing as the personality in his letters. There's a place for the exquisite in Mozart, but ONLY when he writes 'mp' or 'p' or 'pp,' and then he shocks you, again and again, with giant fortes. He is the master ironist, and particularly in his greatest masterpieces, whatever Mozart sounds like he's expressing, he is usually expressing the opposite. He's Rousseau in music: you think he's completely comfortable in the world of rococo courts, but the truth is he wants to blow the whole society up. The WHOLE POINT of such exquisite beauty is that he views the world of powdered wigs with withering contempt. The slow music is usually taken 50% or more slower than Mozart's scores, the fast music 50% or more faster, and the dynamic contrasts... 200% smaller. The proper tempi change the entire pacing of works. The way he's played, you'd think that Mozart took a look at court life and thought everything was just fine.
Viva la liberta!
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