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5 The Hidden Center 199 The three comedies Mozart wrote with Lorenzo Da Ponte are the largestscale deployments of Mozart’s basic ideal of bipartite symmetrical balance. Each opera is divided into two halves,the first ending with a finale that brings dramatic tension and confusion to its highest pitch, the second half’s finale bringing resolution to all the accumulated tension.The close correspondence between scenes and events of the two acts of Così fan tutte, in particular, has long been admired by connoisseurs of formal perfection. Mutatis mutandis, this is true also of the way Mozart shaped many individual numbers in his operas. They are often governed by the same ideal of bipartite balance that forms so many of the instrumental movements. Not that the text and dramatic action are ever negligible factors: Mozart’s arias and ensembles are far from simply being sung sonatas. Text and action affect the form in two fundamental ways. First, they profoundly affect the way the listener interprets the significance of the form: comparing the form of two pieces that, if read without regard to text and dramatic function ,would seem to resemble each other,might reveal diametrically opposed significance once text and action are restored to the reading.Second,because text and action affect the listener’s understanding of musical form,the composer can depart from conventional patterns more freely than is possible in instrumental music. How text and action affect form can be exemplified by two justly celebrated ensembles, both formally close to the instrumental sonata but interpreting that form in two very different ways, as well as by three equally celebrated ensembles that show how far behind a composer will leave traditional formal patterns when the dramatic occasion so requires— to show, that is, that a composer can give linear, future-directed time a variety of highly individual shapes. If the point of a simple sonata without a development is to present the same story twice, resolving the problems of the first presentation in the second, this point is exemplified to perfection in the Sextet (No. 19) of Le nozze di Figaro.1 In reshaping Beaumarchais’s triumphantly successful and politically scandalous recent comedy, Da Ponte shrewdly used the recitative preceding the Sextet to dispose of the main dramatic business of the trial scene—the revelation that Figaro is the long-lost child of doctor Bartolo and his old servant , Marcellina, which meant that Figaro could no longer be the object of Marcellina’s matrimonial ambitions. Traditional eighteenth-century operatic dramaturgy dictated that action be moved forward in recitatives; closed musical numbers were reserved for the characters’ static, passionate reactions to changes in their situation brought about by the action. Accordingly, the Sextet might well have been reserved for presenting the reactions of those who had heard the startling revelation. And indeed,the ensemble contrasts the rapturous joy of the three litigants—Marcellina, Bartolo, and Figaro , just turned into a happily reunited family—with the stupefied irritation of Figaro’s master, the Count, acting as the judge in his feudal domain, and an assistant judge wholly under his thumb,Don Curzio:the Count,who desired to make Figaro’s betrothed, Susanna, his own mistress, had hoped to use Marcellina’s legal claim on Figaro (who had promised either to pay off a debt or to marry her) as an instrument of blackmail or, failing that, vengeance. But giving voice to these two contrasting emotions is just part of the Sextet ’s function.The ensemble also introduces new action, thus exploding the limits of traditional dramaturgy; there, any new action would have been reserved for the recitative to follow. Instead, Susanna enters with money for the debt, sees Figaro embracing Marcellina, misinterprets what she sees as faithlessness, prepares to leave, boxes his ear when he tries to detain her, and finally,once the situation is explained,reconciles with him and his newly found parents. No praise is too high for Da Ponte’s clever decision to set the revelation of Figaro’s parentage as a recitative and hold off on showing how Susanna learned of it until the ensemble has begun.To be sure,the dramatic and musical points of gravity do not coincide in the trial scene: what is musically most substantial—the ensemble—is subordinate dramatically. But the crucial difference between the business of the revelation and that of Susanna ’s brief misunderstanding is that the former requires many words to be made...

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