Fan Tutte Research Articles

Vocal Trills: 18th-Century Performance Practice Considerations Viewed Through the Lens of 19th-Century Methods

Abstract: Eighteenth-century vocal literature abounds with trills, so approaching this skill methodically is advised. This article includes a literature review of four eighteenth-century vocal treatises (Tosi, Agricola, Mancini, Hiller), which agree about the importance of mastering the trill, but neglect practical suggestions about how to develop it. Four nineteenth-century vocal methods (Vaccai, Panofka, Lütgen, Marchesi) are discussed, including plans for how to practice the trill. Mozart's opera Così fan tutte is utilized as a case study in the synthesis of vocal treatises and vocal method books. Musical examples from each role are complemented with links to recordings of well-produced trills.

An unrealistic and undesirable alternative to the right to be forgotten

In their “Così fan tutte: A better approach than the right to be forgotten”, Martha Garcia-Murillo and Ian MacInnes (2018) present an alternative to the right to be forgotten. It mainly consists of changing social norms to a more open and transparent society and improving anti-discrimination laws. In this reply, I challenge their suggestions both empirically and normatively, arguing that they cannot achieve what they set-out; that their analysis of privacy and the right to be forgotten misses important aspects that go beyond discrimination; and that we have a shared interest in allowing individuals to live a partly opaque life.

"Thus Do All Women": Comedy, Sentimentality, Ambiguity, and a Così fan tutte for the #MeToo Era

"Thus Do All Women"Comedy, Sentimentality, Ambiguity, and a Così fan tutte for the #MeToo Era Camille Rogers (bio) Content warning: sexual assault and coercion, attempted suicide Misogyny and Ambiguity in Così fan tutte In 2018 actor Molly Ringwald published an essay in response to the #MeToo movement in which she reevaluated the ethical implications of classic 1980s films such as The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Sixteen Candles.1 While understandably reluctant to condemn movies that were not only formative to her career but also exciting at the time because "no one in Hollywood was writing about the minutiae of high school, and certainly not from a female point of view," she acknowledges that in hindsight, many of the interactions between male and female characters were highly problematic, depicting sexual harassment and, in some cases, assault. She describes a famous scene from Sixteen Candles, which today feels profoundly disturbing: The dreamboat, Jake, essentially trades his drunk girlfriend, Caroline, to the Geek, to satisfy the latter's sexual urges, in return for Samantha's underwear. The Geek takes Polaroids with Caroline to have proof of his conquest; when she wakes up in the morning with someone she doesn't know, he asks her if she "enjoyed it." (Neither of them seems to remember much.) Caroline shakes her head in wonderment and says, [End Page 45] "You know, I have this weird feeling I did." She had to have a feeling about it, rather than a thought, because thoughts are things we have when we are conscious, and she wasn't. And yet, despite many problematic elements, through interactions with fans Ringwald has found that these movies were powerful for many teenagers at the time, including those in marginalized positions. She writes: "How are we meant to feel about art that we both love and oppose? … Erasing history is a dangerous road when it comes to art—change is essential, but so, too, is remembering the past … so that we may properly gauge how far we have come, and also how far we still need to go." Such a powerful statement could be made about many genres of art, but I find it particularly relevant to opera, which concentrates much more heavily on historical works than most other entertainment industries. Over the last few years, the opera world has been rocked by its own #MeToo scandals, and coverage of the movement has reached mainstream media outlets.2 This in turn has led to increased scrutiny of the physical and sexual violence often enacted against female characters onstage.3 With a wider conversation about gender-based harassment and violence in opera emerging, scholars are now questioning more broadly what can—and should—be done with operas that contain themes of sexual violence. In a 2018 colloquy on sexual assault in opera, Suzanne G. Cusick and Monica A. Hershberger suggest that "when we stage, perform, or teach that repertory without explicitly engaging its imbrication with sexual and gender violence, we risk unwittingly sustaining a part of its tradition that we now find morally repugnant."4 Bonnie Gordon argues that teaching opera in a more ethical way can have a profound effect on students, potentially encouraging them to be more critical not only of historical texts but of modern media as well.5 Further, Micaela Baranello comments on the possibility of staging these depictions of sexual assault with more care, in particular attempting as much as possible to situate them in their original context. At the same time, Baranello cautions against productions emphasizing the more brutal aspects of sexual violence to "trade on women's bodies for symbolic currency."6 With this increased awareness of gender-based violence, many centuries-old [End Page 46] operas are now being reevaluated, some for the first time. As far back as 2000 scholars such as Liane Curtis highlighted how the brilliance of Mozart's music could distract from the blatant misogyny and gender-based violence of Don Giovanni.7 However, more recent scholarship has gone beyond the score to focus on the agency of directors to affect audiences' perceptions of well-known operas. For example, in her 2021 dissertation "Regarding Rape: Representations of Sexual Violence on...

“Madamina, il catalogo è questo”. Did Lorenzo Da Ponte Play with Numbers in Leporello’s Catalogue?

Lorenzo Da Ponte is recognized as one of the greatest librettists of all times. To opera lovers, his name is worldwide related to Mozart’s three immortal Italian operas: Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così Fan Tutte. In Le Nozze di Figaro and in Don Giovanni, there is the curious presence of numbers—namely integers—arranged in lists, “catalogues”. I try to answer the question: Were these numbers chosen just by chance and only to fit Mozart’s music, or did they hide some covered message? Because of his Jewish origin and culture, never mentioned in his Memorie, Da Ponte was acquainted with Gematria, a numerical coding technique used in the Jewish Torah. By applying the Gematria of the Italian alphabet, I show that a random choice of the integers listed in the two libretti must be excluded, therefore, I conjecture that Da Ponte did play with numbers by hiding them in his names (Emanuele Conegliano, Lesbonico Pegasio, Lorenzo da Ponte), in agreement with his high self-esteem.

Letter from the Editors

Letter from the Editors Lisa Barg, Vanessa Blais-Tremblay, and Kimberly White We are honored and delighted to assume the editorship of Women & Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture. We are indebted to Emily Wilbourne for her inspiring leadership, work, and vision during her tenure as editor in chief, and we thank her for her expert guidance and consul over the past year. We also thank the selection committee, Suzanne G. Cusick, Olivia Bloechl, and Yun Emily Wang, for their encouragement and support. Our collective represents diversity in music research and language, as well as in professional and institutional affiliation, bringing together scholars working in traditional and nontraditional positions in Anglophone and Francophone academic spheres. As an editorial collective, we are committed to continuing the important critical and feminist work of the journal under the inspiring editorial leadership of Suzanne Cusick, Ellie Hisama, and Emily Wilbourne. We will prioritize inclusivity and diversity on all fronts. In addition to seeking out submissions on a wide variety of topics and across disciplinary and methodological perspectives, we strive to encourage and support early career scholars alongside established scholars. We also are excited to continue organizing special issues led by guest editors. The articles in this issue engage productively and imaginatively with themes of race, sexuality, and motherhood in a wide range of temporal and geographic fields. Francesca Inglese explores the role of women—particularly mothers—in klopse practices in post-apartheid Cape Town; Annie Kim considers how Camilla Williams used the disruptive potential of the phonograph to resound Black female subjectivity in her performance of Porgy and Bess; and Camille Rogers opens a conversation about comedy, sentimentality, and sexual violence in Così fan tutte. We are thrilled to be joined by Erin Johnson-Williams and Michelle Meinhart, who have coedited a partial special issue on sound studies and maternity. These [End Page vii] four articles delve into sound and birth during COVID-19; musical interventions in gestational labor; soundscapes of settler-colonial medicine; and stagings of maternal suffering on the operatic stage. Women & Music warmly welcomes innovative work, in both traditional and alternative formats and from diverse disciplinary perspectives, that focuses on gender and sexuality. We look forward to reading your submissions and thank you all in advance for considering Women & Music as a home for your work. [End Page viii] Copyright © 2022 Suzanne G. Cusick

Operatic Albanians and singing Turks in the age of enlightenment and revolution

ABSTRACT This article considers Albanian subjects in European operas of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, discussed in the context of the broader phenomenon of operas about Ottoman Turkish subjects and also with regard to more general European cultural perspectives on Albania and the Ottoman empire. The principal operas discussed include Antonio Vivaldi’s Scanderbeg, performed in Florence in 1718; a completely different treatment of that subject, Scanderberg composed by François Francoeur and François Rebel for Paris in 1735 and revived in 1763; Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, with its mock-Albanians, composed for Vienna in 1790; and Albert Lortzing’s Ali Pascha von Janina, performed in Münster in 1828. The article discusses how issues of Ottoman despotism on the operatic stage intersected with musical and dramatic representations of the subject peoples of the Ottoman empire, especially the Albanians. The eighteenth-century Skanderbeg operas are particularly interesting for reflecting on the ways that Albanians were distinguished from Turks and the ways in which they resembled Turks on the operatic stage. This study of operas about Ottoman Albanians further contributes to understanding the complexity of perspectives on the Ottoman empire in the Enlightenment.

Mozart's Operatic Embellishments

AbstractAlongside the model embellishments Mozart composed for various keyboard works, he also wrote embellishments for contemporary arias including ‘Ah, se a morir mi chiama’ from Lucio Silla, the concert aria ‘Non sò d'onde viene’ K.294 and ‘Cara, la dolce fiamma’ from J.C. Bach's Adriano in Siria. Although these have been overlooked in the critical literature, they shed light on many aspects of Mozart's art of melodic decoration. In this article, I begin by examining these notated operatic embellishments: their textual histories, the styles of elaboration they evince, the pacing with which they unfold, and their motivic construction, as well as their relation to broader trends in Mozart's style. I then explore the embellishments Mozart composed into the texts of his other operas, arguing that these served not only a musical but also an aesthetic purpose, furthering elements of characterisation and drama, particularly in Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. I end with brief remarks on the challenges facing modern-day interpreters who wish to embellish Mozart's operas.

Opera House

Opera House Robert Stothart (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Bill Rand [End Page 42] Everything seemed married to everything else. —Gustave Baumann, printmaker, Santa Fe [End Page 43] Overture A mere 7,918 miles in diameter, Earth, our home together, travels a minuscule distance in relation to all that we see on clear nights, light years away out in the stars. The core of our globe is a mix of iron and nickel, solid like a cherry pit. That solid inner core is wrapped in a liquid outer core, and around that a mantle eighteen hundred miles thick, about the distance from New York to Denver. This mantle—solid in parts, liquid in places, plastic in others—roils in convection currents under a relatively thin fourteen-mile crust, a vulnerable skin of sorts that weathers all seasons while holding on in a tenuous relationship with the globe's deeper workings. That crust beneath our feet is constantly buckling, cracking, spreading, wrinkling, and pouring forth to reveal, as a face reveals, what goes on inside. Earth is face-all-over, and its insides are hot, reaching in places eight thousand degrees Fahrenheit. In a similar way, all of us on Earth are hot under our skins. We stay around ninety-eight degrees inside, like a sultry August afternoon. Besides that, our inner emotional temperatures swing wildly. As with our globe, contained though we are, each of our faces displays what's going on and has gone on inside. Look at photographs of Abraham Lincoln through the course of the Civil War. Look at Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother, 1936. No matter our cosmetic preparations or our plastic surgeries, our inner churning will mark us in one way or another, and Earth is our stage. We are held in its gravitational clutches under its shifting atmospheres. Earth takes its toll on our inner burnings as we fashion entrances and exits through scenes, strutting and fretting our hours together on this little stage in cosmic space. Certain places on Earth give dramatic views of the globe's inner life: geysers and chromatic pools in Yellowstone's caldera; Spider Woman's perch eight hundred feet above the floor of Canyon de Chelly; Mount Monadnock's bare metamorphic pinnacle out of New Hampshire's woods. We travel for the sublime perspective gained when we visit geologic wonders, even those that take us to the brink of the cataclysmic. The opera house works in much the same way, by giving stage and voice to plays of our inner lives and the way those lives sing to each other through comedy and tragedy. Against the dark, opera stages construct islands of light for the likes of the Dutchman's ghostly ship or the Paris garret shared by a group of poor Bohemians. Technicians, like acrobats high in the rafters, have set and focused lights while timing and blending colors for a concentrated three hours through which our inner [End Page 44] lives play out before us. In lonely arias, tender duets, contentious trios, and exultant choruses, the opera house brings specimen worlds to life in harmonies and dissonances through a marriage of music and words, voices and instruments, texts and scores, costumes and wigs. We buy tickets to view these skillfully constructed worlds where we witness our own faults and eruptions, our deceptions and jealousies, our weddings, our deaths, even our journeys to the underworld: Otello, Così fan tutte, Carmen, Death in Venice, Orphée et Eurydice. Into Opera Each August when my wife, Margot, and I leave our home in Wyoming for the opera, we drive east on Owl Creek Road out to Wyoming 120, then head for Cheyenne and Denver on our way to Santa Fe. The road west of our house disappears up in the mountains. We live in a sheltered angle where two mountain ranges meet. The Owl Creek foothills descend in smooth alluvial fans down to our back pasture. The Absaroka Mountains stretch north and south along the western horizon, a more distant, jagged, granitic ridge. Our road crosses ranchland—neighbors' holdings, large and small. Some raise sheep, but most run cattle. All around us, the landscape...

Così fan tutte: Some Comments on Austria’s Draft Communications Platforms Act

Austria’s Communications Platforms Act (KoPl-G) provides for a multi-stage procedure for content moderation, put-back rights and a stronger cooperation between platforms and supervisory authority. It is in some respects better than Germany’s NetzDG. There remain, however, a number of flaws. In remedying them, Austria could extend its reporting obligations to include soft content moderation measures, algorithmic tools, and advertising rules.

Contessa perdono! Mozartian sexual betrayal and forgiveness

The dramatic and musical climax of 'The Marriage of Figaro', perhaps Mozart’s operatic masterpiece, is famously marked by the unexpected forgiveness of the Count by the Countess, whom the count has infamously refused to forgive earlier in the opera. This article will explore the musical and psychological ramifications of forgiveness and the refusal to forgive within couple relationships, not only in this opera but also in two other great Mozart operas, 'Don Giovanni' and 'Così fan tutte', in which issues around forgiveness are also implicitly central. It will be argued that Mozart’s very differing and contrasting realisations of this core human and couple dynamic through his unique dramatic, verbal, and musical talents may partially account for the reputation of these operas for depth and universality.

The problem of genre in mozart (on “Cosi fan tutte”)

The problem of genre in mozart (on “Cosi fan tutte”)

«Io ho bisogno di animali teatrali»

«It is not enough that they sing well [...]. I need theatrical animals». So, Giorgio Strehler, in 1997, gave indications to the musicologist Carlo de Incontrera for the distribution of Cosi fan tutte, a production that in his own mind should have marked the crossing of the boundaries between straight and opera theater, by creating in the new headquarters of the Piccolo Teatro the «lyric theater of art» he had been pursuing for a large part of his career. Although Strehler dies after only eleven days of rehearsal, the production is crucial for rethinking the relationship between the director and the opera theatre: at the very end of his career, Strehler is finally inspired by the models of the German Regietheater and in particular by Felsenstein’s work, which he aims to adapt in “his” Piccolo Teatro. The research develops from the rich and unpublished private correspondence between Strehler and Carlo de Incontrera, courtesy of the musicologist.

ПЛАСТИЧЕСКАЯ РИТОРИКА И ПРИНЦИП ПАРОДИРОВАНИЯ В ПОСТАНОВКЕ ПИТЕРА СЕЛЛАРСА “COSÌ FAN TUTTE” МОЦАРТА / ДА ПОНТЕ

In the article, the use of the method of parodying in the TV version of Peter Sellars’s production of Mozart’s opera “Così fan tutte” is analyzed. The main objects of consideration are the rhetorized conditional actor’s plasticity used by the director, with the help of which the social-critical aspects of the plot are emphasized, and also the connection between the dramaturgic logic of the performance with the libretto and the correlation of the narrative and metaphorical planes. Parodying acts in Sellars’s production as a sign of the social conventionality of the characters’ behavior, and as a means of the embodiment of the media aesthetics.

Cosi (non) Fan Tutte: women’s football ‘made in Israel’

This paper, based on field work, focuses on the relationships between football, femininity and gender, specifically on how an Israeli female footballer describes, evaluates and interprets her status. The underlying assumption of this study is that in accordance with the status of women’s football, female players enjoy ‘relative autonomy’ dictated by their surroundings. In practice, their surroundings are male dominated: football institutions (local and international) are predominantly dominated by men, and female players are subjected to the daily operation of their relative autonomy. The female players that were interviewed in this study are conscious of the critical impact of gender, and the restrictions that are imposed upon them because football is ‘a man’s game’. Although they are partially satisfied, at present they do not have much hope regarding their football when compared to their male counterparts: the anticipated future is similar to the present.

Così fan tutte: A better approach than the right to be forgotten

In this article, we argue in favor of a macro-societal approach to protect people from the potential harms of personal information online. In the tension between information and privacy, “the right to be forgotten” is not an appropriate solution. Such a micro, individual-based answer puts the burden of protection on each person instead of on external entities that can abuse such knowledge. The personal responsibility to delete personal data is challenging because of the leakage of data that happens through the connections we have with others, many of whom do not share the same privacy preferences. We show that effective deletion is almost impossible (the eternity effect), and is unfair due to the resource burden it entails when users try to achieve it, while at the same time ensuring the potential benefits we can derive in the future from having personal information online. In addition, deletion requests can negatively affect other people who are in the same location and time frame and may not want to have their information deleted. Collectively, we argue also that society is worse off because these circumstances lead people to construct sanitized personas while perpetuating a culture of distrust. Given that the harm is real, we describe technology, societal norms, and the implementation of an anti-discrimination directive for the right to a personal life, and we provide evidence on how anti-discrimination efforts in the past have succeeded when legislation leads to the development of infrastructures that help to enforce them. The dissemination of personal information through public sites and social media is, as Mozart suggested in Cosi fan tutte, gradually educating humanity about human weaknesses.

In Need of God: Mozart, Faith, and Così fan tutte

This article offers readers a theological entrée to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s comic opera, Così fan tutte, written in collaboration with Lorenzo da Ponte in 1789. It engages the opera as a means of social and theological criticism. The opera presents Mozart’s understanding of love through a critical engagement with the late Enlightenment and French materialism. While da Ponte’s libretto may well endorse materialism’s attack on the church and on Christian anthropology, Mozart’s music is more ambiguous: on the one hand, it demonstrates the weakness of Baroque Catholicism to withstand the rationalist criticism of the Enlightenment; on the other hand, it exposes the sobering reality which such rationalist materialism itself produces—a reality marked by strained and ultimately impoverished human relationships.

Charles Mackerras ed. by Nigel Simeone, John Tyrrell

CONDUCTORS AND SYMPHONIES Charles Mackerras. Edited by Nigel Simeone and John Tyrrell. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2015. [xxii, 298 p. ISBN 9781843839668 (hardcover), $45; ISBN 9781782044895 (e-book), $34.99.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, discography, index.Celebrated Australian conductor Charles Mackerras (1925-2010) was known throughout his long career for his probing musicianship and insightful performances of works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Benjamin Britten, George Frideric Handel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giacomo Puccini, Arthur Sullivan, and Giuseppe Verdi. But it was his discovery and promotion of the works of Leos Janacek and other Czech composers that helped to mark his legacy as one of the most important conductors of the twentieth century.A musical polymath, Mackerras began his career as a professional oboist, but early on turned his attention to opera and conducting. In 1947, he was awarded a scholarship to study conducting in Prague with Vacklav Talich, which provided his first exposure to the music of Janacsek. Mackerras and his wife Judy returned to England after the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, and soon thereafter he was appointed to a post with the Sadler's Wells Opera Company (which would become English National Opera). He eventually rose to the position of Music Director at Sadler's Wells and was later associated with the Welsh National Opera, all the while expanding his international reputation as a conductor.The collection titled Charles lovingly edited by Nigel Simeone and John Tyrrell, presents Mackerras's life and legacy through a carefully selected collection of essays and tributes by many who worked with him. As the editors state in their preface, the volume neither a conventional biography, nor is it a symposium, but it aims to combine elements of (p. xi). Mackerras's widow Judy, who provided the editors with access to the extensive family archives, encouraged the publication. In their collection, the editors aim to enhance coverage of the last part of the conductor's life, but they also take note, and make appropriate reference to, the only other major book on the conductor, Nancy Phelan's Charles Mackerras: A Musician's Musician (London: Victor Gollancz, 1987), which was published more than a quarter-century prior to his death.While a symposium (or Festschrift) type of approach allows a number of different figures to discuss an individual's legacy, it also presents a disadvantage to readers who might prefer a single narrative discussion of the musician's life and works. In this volume, the main chapters on Mackerras's career by Nigel Simeone (An Immense Stylist Evolves: 1947-87; The Musical Values of Opera: WNO, 1987-92; Triumphs and Tribulations: Opera, 19932001; Rethinking Old Favorites: Opera, 2002-10) are interspersed with tributes and commentaries by others, including David Lloyd Jones (A Portrait of Charles Mackerras) and Patrick Summers (The Lion: Charles Mackerras).Of particular note in Simeone's chapter, An Immense Stylist Evolves, is the section on Mackerras's interest in historicallyinformed performance practice (Mozart and Handel: Figaro and Fireworks, [pp. 16-27], which includes copies of the conductor's annotated scores. In the 1950s, Mackerras was an early adopter of eighteenth-century vocal ornamentation (notably appoggiaturas), a practice that was widely accepted at that time. This chapter includes excerpts from Mackerras's own writings about his musicological research and implications for performance practice, along with reviews, both positive and less than positive, about the resulting performances.In his own Personal Portrait of Charles Mackerras, David Lloyd Jones recounts the response to Mackerras's performance of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte with the Hamburg State Opera in 1965. When Mackerras complained that there was not one damn appoggiatura the whole evening, the reply was, Herr Mackerras . …

Da Ponte in New York, Mozart in New York

One might be surprised to learn that relatively few of Lorenzo da Ponte's letters have been preserved. In one of these, written in New York in 1824 to an unknown recipient, Da Ponte names what he considered to be five of his most important and successful libretti: La cosa rata, L'arbore di Diana, La capricciosa corretta, Le nozze di Figaro, and Don Giovanni. Cosi fan tutte is not mentioned, nor does he name the composers of the stated titles--Martin y Soler and W. A. Mozart (Zagonel 1995:228ff.). When I quote this letter today in order to describe Da Ponte's self-regard, I am always asked the same two questions: Who is Martin y Soler? And why does Da Ponte's letter come from New York? I answer that Martin y Soler was born in Spain, and in the mid-1780s he was, next to Mozart and Salieri, the most successful opera composer in Vienna. Then I am asked whether Da Ponte did not also write libretti for Salieri, or why Da Ponte did not include any libretto for Salieri among his most important and successful. Indeed, he did write libretti for Salieri, and I do not know why he did not mention these. Finally, whereas Da Ponte lived in Vienna for ten years and in London for twelve, he spent thirty-three years in the United States. In fact, he lived one year longer in the US than in Italy, where he was born. It is not just the fact that Da Ponte spent so much time in New York that surprises even educated music lovers and listeners today--it is also that, contrary to popular belief, Da Ponte did not devote himself to making Mozart, his friend and artistic partner, famous in North America. (1) In fact, the sources show us an entirely different picture. Lorenzo da Ponte Allow me to summarize the most important biographical facts in an overview: Lorenzo da Ponte was born Emanuele Conegliano in 1749 in the ghetto of Ceneda (now Vittorio Veneto), near Venice. (2) After his family was baptized in 1763, he called himself Lorenzo da Ponte. He studied theology, became a Catholic priest, and taught in a theological seminary. In 1779 he was anonymously accused of leading a lifestyle unfit for a priest. He fled the region and in his absence was sentenced to prison. In 1781 he settled in Vienna. In this city of enlightened absolutism, no one was interested in why he continued to use the title Abbe. In 1783, Emperor Joseph II appointed Da Ponte to the position of court theater poet. It was in these years that Da Ponte famously collaborated with Mozart on Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Cosi fan tutte (1790). After several theater scandals--jealousies, intrigue, love affairs, and prima donna behavior (see Nettl 1953 and 1966)--the police banished Da Ponte from Vienna. Despite petitioning Emperor Leopold II, he was ultimately banished to Trieste (though his debts and travel expenses were paid by the imperial court). In Trieste, Da Ponte continued to fight for his rehabilitation, but when it was granted he decided not to return to Vienna. Da Ponte married Nancy Grahl in 1792 in Trieste. He and his wife travelled via Prague to London, where they settled and began to raise a family. In time, two daughters and a son were born. Da Ponte worked for the Italian opera in the King's Theatre as a poet, translator, and editor, and he also worked as a bookseller. In 1800 he declared his bookseller's business bankrupt and was arrested. His Italian relatives came to his rescue: his brother Paolo came to London and opened a printing business and bookshop, which the brothers ran under Lorenzo's name. Eventually Da Ponte was again overwhelmed by unpaid debts and London became very uncomfortable for him. In 1804 his wife and their children travelled to the US, where his wife's mother and other family members lived. On April 7, 1805, Da Ponte himself followed on the freighter Columbia. After a crossing lasting fifty-seven days, he set foot on American soil in Philadelphia. He reunited with his family in New York and opened a grocery shop, but, after only three months, he fled. …

First results from the new double velocity–double energy spectrometer VERDI

The VERDI spectrometer (VElocity foR Direct mass Identification) is a two arm time-of-flight spectrometer built at the European Commission Joint Research Centre IRMM. It determines fragment masses and kinetic energy distributions produced in nuclear fission by means of the double velocity and double energy (2v–2E) method. The simultaneous measurement of pre- and post neutron fragment characteristics allows studying the share of excitation energy between the two fragments. In particular, the evolution of fission modes and neutron multiplicity may be studied as a function of the available excitation energy. Both topics are of great importance for the development of models used in the evaluation of nuclear data, and also have important implications for the fundamental understanding of the fission process. The development of VERDI focus on maximum geometrical efficiency while striving for highest possible mass resolution. An innovative transmission start detector, using electrons ejected from the target itself, was developed. Stop signal and kinetic energy of both fragments are provided by two arrays of silicon detectors. The present design provides about 200 times higher geometrical efficiency than that of the famous COSI FAN TUTTE spectrometer [Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research 219 (1984) 569]. We report about a commissioning experiment of the VERDI spectrometer, present first results from a 2v-2E measurement of 252Cf spontaneous fission and discuss the potential of this instrument to contribute to the investigation prompt fission neutron characteristics as a function of fission fragment properties.

Arias for Stefano Mandini, Mozart’s First Count Almaviva ed. by Dorothea Link

Reviewed by: Arias for Stefano Mandini, Mozart’s First Count Almaviva ed. by Dorothea Link Magnus Tessing Schneider Arias for Stefano Mandini, Mozart’s First Count Almaviva. Edited by Dorothea Link. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 97.) Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2015. [Table of contents, p. v–vi; abbrevs. and sigla, p. vii; acknowledgments, p. viii; introd., p. ix–xxxvii; texts and trans., p. xxxviii–xlv; 1 plate; score, p. 3–118; crit. report, p. 119–27. ISBN 978-0-89579-825-1. $154.] Dorothea Link’s collection of arias sung by the famous buffo baritone Stefano Mandini—the first Count Almaviva in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro—is the fourth volume in her series of collections devoted to original Mozart singers, all published in piano reductions by A-R Editions in the series Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era. Previous volumes have featured arias written for Nancy Storace, the original Susanna (2002); Francesco Benucci, the original Figaro and Guglielmo in Così fan tutte (2004); and Vincenzo Calvesi, the original Ferrando (2011). Like the earlier volumes, this one may serve not only as inspiration for performers who want to explore the repertory surrounding Mozart’s masterpieces, or the artistic personality of one of the great singers of the past. Not least thanks to Link’s rich scholarly introduction, full of excerpted material from historical sources, it is also valuable as a reference book for scholars and students of eighteenth-century opera and vocal performance practice. Link’s list of roles that Mandini sang between his debut in 1774 and his disappearance from historical records after 1799 [End Page 339] (p. [xxiv–xxx]) shows that music was written for him by Pasquale Anfossi, Domenico Cimarosa, Giovanni Paisiello, Stephen Storace, Antonio Salieri, Vicente Martín y Soler, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Leopold Koželuch, Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi, Niccolò Piccinni, Giuseppe Sarti, and a host of lesser-known maestri di cappella. In fact, Link lists no fewer than thirty-eight works, in which a role is known to have been written for him: a rich bank of material, surely, even if many of the scores are lost or lack extractable arias. So how does one make a representative selection? One option might have been to select arias from across Mandini’s long and illustrious career, which took him to Vienna, Paris, Madrid, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and all the Italian centers, and during which he mainly sang in opera buffa, but also in other genres, such as oratorio, cantata and opéra comique (I find it particularly intriguing that Martín y Soler wrote a role for him in his 1796 opéra comique, Camille, ou Le souterrain, an early romantic rescue opera in which Mandini was required to sing and speak in French). The apparent drawback of this approach is that the drammi giocosi, intermezzi and farse composed for Italian theaters were churned out at an excessive speed, to the detriment of dramatic and musical complexity and innovation. This may be one reason why the arias in Link’s volume are all from operas Mandini sang between 1783 and 1788, roughly coinciding with his employment in Joseph II’s opera buffa company in Vienna, which arguably marked the highpoint of his career. Not only did the emperor and his advisors have the funds and the insight to employ the best librettists, composers, and singers available, and to offer them superior working conditions, but Vienna also boasted the most cosmopolitan and discerning opera audience in Europe, which prompted artists to develop, experiment, and generally give their best. While this high artistic level is reflected in the selected arias, Link may also have chosen to focus on this period in order to establish an immediate context around Mandini’s creation of Count Almaviva in 1786. In fact, five of the thirteen arias in the volume were not even written for him, but are taken from roles in which he was particularly admired during his first year in the city. So who was the performer for whom Mozart wrote one of his most famous male roles, and of whom Arias for Stefano Mandini can...