The Risque Mozart : ‘Cosi Fan Tutte,’ Full of Fun and Innuendo, to Open in S.D.

Asked what Mozart found most appealing about Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto for the opera “Cosi Fan Tutte,” soprano Carol Vaness responded without hesitation: “Sex and the human aspect, absolutely!

“Mozart was a very lusty person, although that does not negate the deep feelings that are there also,” she said. The sexual innuendo, “coupled with their humanity, is what makes these characters so alive.”

Vaness will sing the role of Fiordiligi in San Diego Opera’s season-opening production of “Cosi Fan Tutte,” which opens tomorrow night at the downtown Civic Theatre. During a break between rehearsals last week, Vaness and three of her colleagues from the production, soprano Barbara Bonney, tenor Keith Lewis and baritone Hakan Hagegard, discussed Mozart’s most complex and controversial comic opera. Bonney, who sings the role of Despina, gave an example of the libretto’s sexual innuendo.

“There is a question asked about the two male leads that can be translated either ‘Do they have a lot of money?’ or ‘Are they well-endowed?’ ”

“Da Ponte played a lot of tricks like that, and this excited Mozart,” Vaness added. “They collaborated very closely.”

The music for “Cosi Fan Tutte,” arguably Mozart’s most fluid and artfully balanced score, has never been the object of controversy. But the libretto’s story frequently raised 19th-Century eyebrows: It is a tale of two young military officers who disguise themselves and woo each other’s fiancee in order to test the women’s fidelity.

Beethoven and Wagner thought the opera was unworthy of Mozart, and opera producers over the years have regularly doctored the libretto to conform with Victorian morals. One production scrapped the Da Ponte libretto entirely and retrofitted Shakespeare’s “Loves Labors Lost” into Mozart’s “Cosi” score in order to improve its moral tenor.

The most common accusation against “Cosi” is that the opera’s very premise is demeaning to women, a notion the San Diego cast dismissed out of hand. (The title is an Italian idiom that translates to “Thus do all (women behave.)”)

“The opera puts down men more than it puts down women,” Vaness said.

“It’s the women who are always on top and in control and powerful,” Bonney added.

“I think Guglielmo and Ferrando (the young officers) lose, just as the Don loses in ‘Don Giovanni,’ and I think the Count loses in ‘The Marriage of Figaro,’ ” said Hagegard, who sings Guglielmo in the San Diego production and who has recently recorded “The Marriage of Figaro.”

“Yes, they look dumber than we do,” Vaness said.

“What you have to remember is that Mozart loved women,” Bonney noted. “They get the most opulent music. It’s fantastic.”

The plot of “Cosi” was supposedly based on a series of amorous scandals that occurred in the Viennese court of Emperor Joseph II, who commissioned Mozart to compose the opera in 1790. Some historians contend that Mozart invited Casanova, a close friend of the librettist, to attend an informal preview of “Cosi” in order to obtain the notorious rake’s opinion of the opera.

But, if the opera’s plot is 200 years old, Hagegard observed that its significance is uncannily in tune with contemporary problems.

“Take it home, and you will recognize yourself immediately,” he said. “You have an affair, and then the question is, ‘Should you divorce or should you not?’ ”

“It’s the war between the sexes,” Vaness countered, “the difference (between the sexes) which will always remain a difference, which is the joy and the pain of it. It just goes to show us that everyone is fallible.”

Although San Diego Opera’s set for “Cosi” is a conventional period piece, the singers voiced widely differing opinions of recent efforts to update Mozart’s operas, especially Peter Sellars’ productions, which place “The Marriage of Figaro” in New York’s Trump Tower and “Cosi” in a diner.

Vaness expressed no tolerance for such tampering: “It stinks. It’s repulsive. It’s anti-Mozart. It takes away their responsibility to care about the opera. It’s like watching a music video.”

“I don’t agree,” Hagegard said. “After working with Peter Sellars, I do think that he is a force, that he allows himself to be very contemporary with a subject. I always have a feeling with opera that you have to make up your mind about performance. Either you decide to keep on doing it the way it was supposed to be with all the right research and be a museum. Or, we bring the opera up to date and bring it into our own reality. The third way is don’t perform it at all and only perform the music of today. But I believe that we won’t get better unless we let people like Sellars in.”

Hagegard also argued convincingly for the performance of Mozart operas in smaller, more intimate halls than in the typical 3,000-seat modern opera house. The Swedish baritone invoked his experiences singing and performing in the historic Drottningholm Court Theatre outside Stockholm. Built in Mozart’s time and carefully restored in the 1930s, the intimate 600-seat hall is used to perform period operas exclusively.

“At the Drottningholm Court Theatre, I learned the scale and the colors of singing Mozart, especially performances using period instruments. It was particularly rewarding to express myself without killing myself vocally. When I go with Mozart into bigger theaters, I always find that it’s a problem to fill the room with sound.”

Vaness came to the defense of singing Mozart in large venues.

“The greatest thing about Mozart is that it can fit in a big space. I have done a lot of Mozart in big theaters, and while there’s room for the intimate performance, I think that the grand Mozart pieces like ‘Don Giovanni’ and ‘La Clemenza di Tito’ can work well on a big scale.”

The San Diego Opera’s “Cosi Fan Tutte” will be presented at the San Diego Civic Theatre at 7 p.m. Jan. 19, 22 and 30, at 8 p.m. Jan. 25 and at 2 p.m. Jan. 27.