Anna Christy as English chambermaid Blonde shows personality becomes a gift for diplomacy around the harem
Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio seems to be an expression of independence for the young composer and the whimsical characters who find themselves in the throes of love. It's about finding the right way to live. The audience at San Francisco Opera on Sunday cheered spontaneously as it heard the moral of the story declared, about being set free from torment by repaying evil not with evil but with mercy.
The universal need for love
So, it's life affirming. The characters get past rage, revenge and lovesickness and find it in their hearts to forgive. All in the name of love, as everyone can sympathize with the universal if not desperate need to find the love of one's life.
Here's the quartet, the confrontation where the rescuers or abductors, nobleman Belmonte and his manservant Pedrillo, ask their beloved Englishwomen about fidelity after being sold into the harem.
Pasha Selim, the harem owner performed by the Bay Area's Charles Shaw Robinson, had been forced to abandon his old life in the West. He had voluntarily Easternized and exoticized himself to start a new life, collecting women to fill the void. Still bitter and enraged, he had not counted on finding true love again. Costanze stirs his emotions with her loyalty and devotion under fire.
Belmonte, the lovesick nobleman played straight and without melodrama by tenor Matt Polenzani, comes to rescue his beloved from the ex patriot. That's one serious kiss between Belmonte and Costanze as their young love turns into a death pact.
Osmin the gatekeeper performed by Brit Pete Rose jealously guards the booty nevertheless. His comic heavy-handedness, contempt and rightful suspicion of outside men comes with comic relief, in the form of a dance where he immitates women and their seductive hip swaying ways.
Even with such muscle to dominate, the Pasha to win did not have to keep the noblewoman Costanze. Costanze is sung with dignity, aristocratic restraint, poise and maturity by soprano Mary Dunleavy. So it's delightful when the free spirited chambermaid sees her lady's emotional torment, being torn between the two men, and quips
lighten up!
Nobody wants Costanze to suffer. Anna Christy's Blonde with her girlish spirit and joy of life proved to be a match for the melodrama. Indeed she proved to be quite Mozartian in her treatment of serious subjects with quick and comic disposal.
Similarly less is more with the orchestra. Although there is no comic narration by harpsicord as there was in this summer's Cosi fan Tutte, the orchestra was half the size of the recent Il Trovatore. Two flutes plus one piccolo, two oboes, three clarinets, two basoons, two horns, two trumpets, one timpani, three percussion and "reduced strings" for a total in the pit of fifty two.
But about Blonde's youthful will. She reminded me of my 86 godmother and her wisdom. You have to tell them when they are being silly, she advised me once about my marriage. She lives in Niagara Falls.
Meanwhile. The pasha just had to make Costanze fall in love with him and he was actually the one running out of time with Belmonte the rescuer lurking. Yet Pasha forcing himself on her would bring revenge but would not tear out his enemy's soul as stealing Constanze’s heart would have. His inability to force himself on her perhaps shows his deep rooted Western sensibility. It was something he had left from his old life, to violate Constanze would be to violate the last of his Western humanity. Seduction was the answer.
As for concessions to decency he does give Costanze the noblewoman and her chambermaid free rein rather than blindfolding and tying them together like the other captives . . .
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The confusion comes when instead of just being satisfied with his capture of a noblewoman, he falls in love with her. Instead of bullying her and acting like a drunken frat boy, he finds they actually have some attraction to each other. They go on an outing together. Now what?
To love and be loved in return
Is the point to find love rather than to engage in a power struggle? So for love to take shape all must forgive and reconcile and let go as love takes hold and solidifies choices and bonds. All must understand the higher calling of love, that this search justifies some confusion and jostling for position. It is possible after all to love more than one man. It's at least likely to be attracted to more than one at the same time, especially when they each offer a good life. Perhaps one is older, more experienced in life and with sex or even more of a father figure offering maturity and wisdom; The other may be younger, less demanding, more energetic, idealistic, unjaded and has one’s young heart.
Choosing and living with the consequences
How to choose? When to choose? Circumstances sometimes dictate. Moreover being able to choose seems to be a sign of maturity in itself. It shows one can accept the whole package of a person, the upsides and downsides instead of just skimming the surface and gleaning just the good times, remaining childlike forever.
Just what makes one choose? With Mozart in Abduction it’s an ultimatum that’s enforceable from one of the candidates, the pasha has physical domination to impose his will. Indeed even the young lovers, Belmonte and Costanze with Blonde and Pedrillo, the lovers find freedom in their choice to love each other only even in the face of execution.
In Mozart’s own life, time probably played a factor in forcing a choice between loyalty to his father and to his beloved wife-to-be Costanze. The newly independent composer was maturing personally and socially as well as chronologically. It was time to get married. If he chose Costanze over his father’s objections, he had biology working as he needed to have a child while Costanze was young enough. Plus parents get older, we all know we cannot keep them forever as we do our children if there are any. It's a universal.
Growing up and showing some class: Making one's own choice
If Costanze had more humble circumstances than Mozart’s father wished for his prodigy, I would have to applaud Mozart for having the cajones to choose somebody who would be constant. That shows integrity. That’s what class is. Not selling out. Not wasting one’s life being status conscious, trying to marry an heiress. A prodigy could just as well have been a spoiled brat. However. Just because one is born to certain circumstances doesn’t mean one cannot have noble characteristics or baser tendencies. Birth and external trappings are not necessarily destiny. I admit being poor doesn't make one noble nevertheless.
Yet to forgive is Mozartean. To love, divine.
As for the performances, the two remaining will be conducted not by Cornelius Meister the young German but by Italian Giuseppe Finzi. The two performances, Saturday, October 17 at 2:00 p.m. and Friday, October 23 at 8:00 p.m. will be at a special family discount of 50% off for adults and 75% off for children. San Francisco Opera says this is to introduce families and young people to the magic of world class opera. This offer is only available on line and is recommended for children age ten and up.
See www.sfopera.com/familymozart for tickets and information.
SFO presented an insight panel recently with the cast, conductor and director: Abduction Insight Panel.
For more info: www.SFOpera.com
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