Book Review, Part One: "The Republic of Love"; Nussbaum on "Le Nozze di Figaro"

I purchased this book from Eighth Day Books. It's from Oxford University Press:

In The Republic of Love, philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum argues that opera engages in political dialogue with the other institutions of public life. Opera interrogates the underlying political culture: what human beings have to be like to sustain different political institutions. Opera’s central contribution, buttressed by the powers of the chorus and the nuances of musical expression, is its exploration of emotions in the structuring of public life, including the role of gender, rank, and class. Nussbaum argues that a distinct Mozartean strand of opera embodies the political project of the Enlightenment. These operas, starting with those of Mozart himself—The Marriage of Figaro, Idomeneo, The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and La Clemenza di Tito—portray an egalitarian vision, not just of republican political institutions, but of emotion. This vision calls for the rejection of feudal hierarchy based on retributive anger and fear, and an embrace of love. This project has faced complications from the power-politics, tyranny, and oppression of the modern world, and so Mozart’s heirs considered how the Republic of Love can exist despite evil. Nussbaum traces the development of the Mozartean vision from Beethoven’s Fidelio and Verdi’s Don Carlos to Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and Adams’s Nixon in China. Contrasting with this hopeful tradition, Nussbaum considers one antagonist, Richard Wagner, who envisioned a closed and unaccepting society, fearful of strangers, and with eyes forever cast backwards. Ending with hope, Nussbaum examines Verdi’s Falstaff and its joyful and humorous depiction of human frailty.

Eighth Day Books stocks several of her previously published books.

Her focus on Mozart's operas was one of the main reasons I wanted to read this book. I've especially relished the chapter on Le Nozze di Figaro. Nussbaum wrote an essay for Chicago Lyric Opera in 2024 that is very similar to this chapter in The Republic of Love:

1. Equality and Love at the End of "The Marriage of Figaro": Forging Democratic Emotions

    "Happy in That Way"

    The Ancien Regime and the Male Voice: Shame, Disgust

    Females: Fraternity, Equality, Liberty [Liberté, égalité, fraternité]

    Creating a Man: "Mischievous Look," a "Good Outside Myself"

    Cherubino, Rousseau, Herder: Spaces for Craziness, "Dispositions of Peace"

    Transcending the Everyday? [Martha] Nussbaum contra [Charles O.] Nussbaum

After reading that chapter, I watched (again) three videotaped productions of that opera, one from the Glyndebourne Festival directed by Sir Peter Hall (1973)*, one from the Paris Opera directed by Giorgio Strehler (1980)*, and one from the Metropolitan Opera directed by Jean-Ponnelle (1985)#. I also watched one staged by Sir Thomas Allen (who sang the Count in the Met version above) with a young cast at the Royal College of Music and a couple of others online. I'm very familiar with the first three and as I read the chapter I recognized some of the ways their directors' interpretations and Allen's differed or matched Nussbaum's view of the opera, particularly the difference between the male characters' rivalry (the Count and Figaro/Bartolo and Figaro (still smarting over how Figaro helped the Count marry Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia) and the female characters' partnership of equality and sympathy (the Countess Rosina and Susanna). 

In between these two contrasts, Nussbaum poses Cherubino, the young page, who moves between the two poles of the opera but identifies more with the women (in her view), certainly in his expressions of love and desire in his two arias as she contends--in both the Lyric Opera essay (and the book)--because "he has been educated by women and by music":

He talks about love. He is the only male in the opera (before the last act, at any rate) who has the slightest interest in that emotion. Certainly, the breathlessness of "Non so più" expresses the promiscuous quality, as well as the confusion, of adolescent infatuation. But it also contains romantic and poetic sentiments. The musical idiom, breathless and yet tender, is utterly unlike the tense accents of the adult males. When we reach the Countess's chamber, Cherubino's difference from other males becomes even more evident. Deeply infatuated with the Countess, he has decided to make her a present. What sort of present? What naturally occurs to him is to write a poem, set it to music, and sing it himself.

The content of that passion (in the beautiful aria "Voi che sapete") is remarkable for its utter difference from the arias of all the other males. First of all, Cherubino simply talks about love, and about its beautiful female object. He has nothing to say about other men, and he seems utterly impervious to questions of honor, shame, and competition. Second, he is eager to learn something, and he is eager to learn it from women: "You who know what sort of thing love is, women, tell me whether that is what I have in my heart." Third, unlike all the other males, he is utterly vulnerable, and he makes no attempt to conceal his vulnerability. Finally, and most remarkably, he locates what he is pursuing in a place outside of his own ego: "I seek a good that is outside myself." Hearing these words, we realize that no other male in the opera deigns to seek a good outside himself: all are preoccupied with winning a competitive victory, or shielding the ego from shame.

Cherubino, traditionally, is sung by a woman, a mezzo-soprano (although some recent productions I've seen online cast a male counter-tenor! How horrible; ruins the effect of the character's persona.), so that his natural community does seem to be among the women--the Countess and Susanna, Barbarina and the girls before the wedding, etc. He looks to Susanna and the Countess for protection; he certainly does not want to leave the Countess or go to war; as he tells Susanna, he really respects the Countess ("Ah, che troppo rispetto ella m'ispira!") He wants to stay where it's safe, with the women. As Beaumarchais wrote him, he's vulnerable.

Nussbaum offers a detailed analysis of the famous dressing up scene, as Susanna sings “Venite inginocchiatevi,” and certainly the Glyndebourne and Paris productions follow her lead (at the Met in the Ponnelle production Cherubino is behind a screen and we never see him in a girl's dress at all). Cherubino is happy to cooperate with Susanna and and she and the Countess in the first two productions are both amused and admiring of his transformation--since the Countess never sees Cherubino dressed as a girl in the Ponnelle, the scene relies on Susanna's aria alone. It seemed to me that the production by Sir Thomas Allen and a few others coarsened the character of Cherubino, depicting him as randy and rude, so that some of the charm Nussbaum looks for in this scene is absent.

Nussbaum emphasizes how different Cherubino is from the other men, but she does skip a crucial line during the last scene, when he is flirting with the Countess (thinking she's Susanna): why can't I do what the Count does everyday?: "E perche far io non posso/quelche il Conte or or fara?" He's learned something from the Count that the ladies won't appreciate. Nussbaum does admit that at the end of the opera when the Count has apologized and the Countess has accepted his apology, knowing his contrition will not last long:

Indeed, it seems far more likely that Cherubino will be corrupted by the male world around him than that the other men will drop their quest for honor and status and learn to sing like Cherubino.

Nor does Nussbaum contend with Barbarina's disrespectful conversation with the Count in front of the Countess in Act III, Scene 12 when Cherubino is discovered among the maidens at Court, not having joined the regiment, but dressed like one of the peasant girls. Barbarina reminds the Count that he promised her anything when they were kissing and cuddling. She wants to marry Cherubino, but she promises the Count that she'll still love him like a kitten:

BARBARINA Eccellenza, eccellenza, voi mi dite sì spesso, qual volta m'abbracciate e mi baciate: «Barbarina, se m'ami, ti darò quel che brami».

CONTE Io, dissi questo?

BARBARINA Voi. Or datemi, padrone, in sposo Cherubino, e v'amerò com'amo il mio gattino.

Poor Count; now he's a kitten? Barbarina seems more like the Count than the Countess or Susanna. And if Cherubino goes along, this a very different sort of reciprocity than Nussbaum is suggesting (is he willing to share Barbarina with the Count? That's not the kind of love either Susanna or the Countess want from their husbands). 

Nussbaum's other detailed analysis of Mozart's musical setting of Da Ponte's libretto (part of her argument is that Mozart sometimes emphasizes these ideas of fraternity, equality, and liberty musically more than Da Ponte does literarily) is of the duet between the Countess and Susanna in Act III, "Canzonetta sull'aria". She comments: "Their musical partnership expresses a kind of friendly attunement that is, we might say, an image of mutual respect, but also a reciprocal affection that is deeper than respect." She does refer to the scene in the Shawshank Redemption movie when Dufresne plays the duet over the prison loud speaker and Red describing the impression of beauty and freedom the prisoners experienced in spite of not understanding the words.

Nussbaum comments also on the finale with the Count's apology and the Countess's acceptance of it, noting that she knows he'll not reform. For the sake of at least some happiness, she accepts, after a pause, when his answer had been "no, no, no, no, no!" Thus, "Ah! Tutti contenti saremo così." "We'll alll be happy that way!"

Questo giorno di tormenti, 

di capricci e di follia, 

in contenti e in allegria solo 

Amor può terminar. 

Sposi, amici, al ballo! al gioco! 

Alle mine date fuoco, 

ed al suon di lieta marcia 

corriam tutti a festeggiar. 

This day of torment,
Of caprices and folly,
Love can end
Only in contentment and joy.
Lovers and friends, let's round things off
In dancing and pleasure,
And to the sound of a gay march
Let's hasten to the revelry.

[During this ensemble in the Ponnelle/Met Opera production, the men go to one side of the stage and the women on the other--and Cherubino's with the women!]

Thus she concludes: 

What that seems to mean is that all present say yes to a world that seeks and aims at reciprocity, respect, and attunement without being starry-eyed about perfection, a world in which people commit themselves to liberty, fraternity, and equality, while understanding that these transcendent ideals are not to be attained by exiting from the real world into a pristine world, but rather by pursuing them in this one . . .

And I would conclude that this is why the French Revolution devolved into terror, violence, and cruelty: the leaders did think they had to create a pristine world for their ideals to succeed--thus this week we'll mark Bastille Day (today) AND the feast of Carmelites of Compiegne (July 17), martyred because they wanted to practice their Faith and their vocations freely. Now there's an operatic finale (especially the 1987 performance from the Met of Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites with Jessye Norman, Maria Ewing, Betsy Norden and a slashing blade in John Dexter's production! Readily available on line.)

Nevertheless, it does seem appropriate to post this today since it's Bastille Day. Beaumarchais's play had been banned in France because of its revolutionary tendencies. The Emperor Joseph allowed its performance and Da Ponte (not Mozart as in Amadeus!) assured him that the opera would not encourage those ideas.

I'm not commenting on the two more historical or philosophical chapters because this post is already long and my main interest is in Nussbaum's interpretation of the opera (the libretto and the score) not so much the background to Mozart's interest in this view of the society of the Almaviva household. I think that will be different in the next chapter about the influence of Freemasonry on Idomeneo and Die Zauberflote.

I might just comment on the Mozart chapters on this blog. 

*These two performances are available on YouTube.

#The Metropolitan Opera performance is available for rental or with a membership at Met on Demand 

Image Credit: Fair Use of Cover in a book review.