Problems of Listening to Mozart
Pandelea: You once called Mozart a Romantic compaser. Could you explain this classification which, at first glance, seems somewhat bewildering?
Harnoncourt: Actually I would not describe Mozart in general as a Romantic composer. But certain of his vvorks and certain sounds I do feel to be romantic, and I also believe that from an historical point of view this is not wrong, because the idea of romanticism comes from literature and was already present in Mozart's generation. Some authorities on literature take the view that Romanticism begins with “Wilhelm Meister” or with “Werther” and I agree with that.
I find, for example, many romantic elements in Mozart's first mature opera “Idomeneo” - in his attitude to nature and in the orchestration. And remarkably enough it is precisely the combination of horns and clarinets which creates a very tender and romantic sound - although of course "romantic" is not an accepted term tor a sound. It is the manner and the situations in which Mozart uses these sounds that I call romantic. That is why, soon after Mozart's death, the symphonies which were written for the classical combination of wind instruments (two oboes and two horns) were played with clarinets instead of oboes, because the Romantics considered the sound of the oboes to be too obvious and too direct, not mysterious enough. Clarinets were better at expressing mystery, which was very important for romanticism.
There is a very good example of this in “Così fan tutte”. In the first three numbers, when the men are discussing the constancy of their women, we have a concrete, mundane scene in an interior and this is set for the standard orchestra Then the scene changes to the garden by the sea, where the women are enthusing over the pictures of their absent lovers or fiancés. It ought really to strike every listener that the sound of this first entry, before the women begin to sing, is completely new. This is a very old trick (which to my knowledge Monteverdi used right at the beginning of the l7th century) of setting the stage with sound, to create, so to speak, tonal scenery. The ladies, who are out in the open rather than indoors, are placed in the context of nature and a feeling of mystery Mozart achieves this with the entry at the clarinets and horns. That is what I meant by "romantic".
It is also the case that, for example, many turns of phrase which we describe as “Schubertian” are first found in Mozart. But in Mozart's case, it is one of a thousand phrases and one marvels; "Ah, Mozart is already writing like Schubert.” - But that is only because we know Schubert. Somehow or other the roots of this highly romantic musical language that Schubert employed 20 years after Mozart’s death is already present in Mozart.

We know fairly precisely how Mozart himself did not want to be played. But do we also know just as precisely how he did want to be performed?
I believe that, being unable to ask him, we shall never know that. When we consider the history of penormances over the last 200 years, we can see that virtually every generation has tried to perform and understand Mozart as he would have wanted it. And each generation has corrected the previous one and said that they did it all wrong. I believe that this really is the case and that it will happen to us in exactly the some way.
It may sound funny to talk about fashion, but music has many parallels with fashion; what is enjoyed and thought correct today will be laughed at in a few decades’ time. This happens today when Mozart interpretations recorded, say, in 1908 are played to contemporary “experts” One can recognise clearly what the performers were trying to achieve, and that they performed with great love and great professionalism. I marvel at their technical mastery, which is often superb. I would immediately engage some of the singers on these records, just because they are so good.But they do things which, when played to a wider forum of experts, make people laugh. I think this is most unfair. It also makes me realise that what we are doing today will, after an appropriate interval, let us say of 80 years, certainly reduce people to laughter. I believe we recognise the mistakes made by the musicians who immediately preceded us and we do not repeat them. We make new mistakes.
Mozart is simply so great that he can stand up to every re-examination of his compositions. We believe that we know more than our predecessors. We believe that we have a closer understanding of his markings. We believe that we have a feeling for his musical language. But, measured against the total rightness of the work, what we do can only be to shine some sort of searchlight on a single point. I once used the comparison of a beetle or an ant crawling about on a hill. That's what we are, Mozart being the hill. We could only get the really correct interpretation if we stood at two metres distance from this hill and saw the whole hill. That would represent the totality of the work, that would be everything. (Maybe that is how Mozart performed his own works.) If we crawl about on this hill, all we can see lies in a radius of a few centimetres; that is all we can recognise, and we neglect everything else.
Of course this means that the next person who comes along crawls around in a different place and illuminates something else. Of course nothing is more important to me than to understand as much as possible of what the composer is trying to say. I believe that the love that a performer brings to the composer's works is also a means by which he can appreciate as much as possible of what he is trying to say.
It is also still an open question whether it is really all that wrong to go along with fashions in music. It may well be that if we were to do everything absolutely correctly we might not be able to communicate with people who have no feeling for the earlier period. The way people hear today is completely different from 200 years ago and perhaps they understand the essence of the music much better if it is performed with objective faults. There are many sides to this question.

Language and truth in “Così fan tutte”
The first act of “Così” is often thought of as joyful, almost boisterous, the second as sad. You yourself once said that “Così” is the saddest opera in the history of music. Is that true?
Yes, I still think that. But I don't see this division between Acts One and Two. I think the socalled Farewell Quintet, which Mozart did not call a Quintet but a Recitative, is one of the saddest pieces that I know. That is one of the moments in which one realises what Mozart was getting at in "Così". The two girls are devastated because their fiancés have got to go away, but the men know that it is all just playacting. They sing a quartet in which they just stammer the first thing that enters their minds: “Please write to me every day and don't forget me.” The verbal high point is the word “Addio” that they say to one another. There is no distinction between those who mean what they say and those who are playing a part. (The only one who says what he feels is Don Alfonso, who is speaking as an outsider and is laughing at the insiders on what one might call quite a different level.) Evidently Mozart stepped completely into the shoes of his characters: at that moment not even the young men are lying, because their own words of farewell really make them feel that it is a farewell.
I believe that the repercussion of speech on the speaker is one of the more profound levels of the background to the piece. Present-day psychology is familiar with the situation in which a sad person becomes cheerful by speaking cheerful words and a cheerful person becomes sad by speaking sad words. That something becomes true because it has been uttered. There are things that ought not to be said, because they can never be unsaid. In the foreground of this piece is the declaration of love. Each of the young men declares his love to the other’s fianéee, without meaning it while they say it. But one cannot use language like that without paying the price. If you say three or four times to someone “I love you", then the phrase “I love you" becomes so powerful that you and the other person are transformed merely by that phrase. For that reason it is not only playing with fire, but the destruction of feeling.
One of the things which I find extraordinarily fascinating is that every word which has been set to music means a little bit more than if it were merely spoken. There are often in fact two or three texts which can be heard at the sametime. An example is the tenor aria “Un aura omorosa” before the Finale to Act One. Anyone hearing this aria hears a great Love Aria. Guilelmo's text which precedes it, however, is “And don't we get anything to eat today?" No doubt people laughed because the young men were simply talking about eating. Ferrando answers: "What is the point? After the battle dinner will taste all the better.” And after this joke about eating he sings: “The loving breath of those we adore will give our hearts sweet restoration. A heart which is strengthened by love’s expectations of better refreshment then has no more need.” Just looking at the text by itself, this could have been turned into a joke on the lines of "there's nothing to eat except air". Making it into a declaration of love to his real fiancée, as early as the middle of the opera, is surely a very ambiguous affair. What is sung and what is spoken here are not one and the same thing. What is sung is love and what is spoken is really just a joke ...
Or let us take as another example the Trio "Soave sia il Vento". The text reads: “May the wind... respond with kindness to our desires.” lf I read it or perform it in a play it means: "Let there be no shipwreck, let the ship not sink and let the wind bring them back again as soon as possible.” But the text does not know that Mozart is writing a totally dissonant, magical harmony on the word “desires", which tells an entirely different story. The listener hears a big, truly magical discord which says: there is something not quite right with our wishes. But it gives no details.
The girls want their fiancés to return - But something happens, there will be something, perhaps they will came back changed or perhaps... Perhaps in the next two hours we shall be terribly deceived in our wishes. This magical harmony may also mean: perhaps we don't wish what we wish. At the moment there is no way of telling. But there is this "second text" like a devil behind an angel, both speaking the same words but meaning something entirely different.
I believe that one should not interpret with prior knowledge of the work. This opera is written for people who hear it for the first time. If I already know what is going to happen and how it is going to be worked out musically, my interpretation is too far-reaching. Mozart uses none of the old forms in the traditional manner, but always adds something which brings it up to date. Fiordiligi’s aria “Come scoglio”, for example, could never, as it stands, have been part ot an earlier opera. (It is often called “baroque”.) An essential feature of a baroque aria is that the singer’s words are reinforced by the music; thus we have the Revenge Aria, the Love Aria etc. But for me “Come scoglio" is a perfect example of the music saying the opposite of what the singer is singing.
First of all we are shown the rock. Fiordiligi says: "Come scoglio immota resta" - as the rock remains unmoved, thus stands my faithfulness. The listener is reassured up to a point. There is nothing that can change a faithful heart. And then there is the shock of the storm which arises in the orchestra. This is no mere question mark; in the musical vocabulary this is a catastrophe. Everybody knew what it meant: this is where the rock collapses. And in the very moment when it is toppled she says: “Just as the rock remains immovable." Musically there is no longer any question of "immovable", the rock has already fallen. None of those taking part notice anything. Only the listener notices it: “She who speaks most convincingly about her faithfulness is already doomed." This aria makes a terrific impression on Ferrando, he hears for the first time how Fiordiligi reacts to a declaration of love. He can never have heard anything like that from Dorabella. He probably falls in love with Fiordiligi at this point and realises "I may have chosen the wrong one". He sees a woman who rebuffs every suitor. His Dorabella is certainly quite different. But what this aria communicates to the audience is: a magnificent woman, but already doomed.

Who exactly is Don Alfonso? Is he something like a puppeteer from the commedia dell’arte?
There are six characters in this opera, and I can sympathise with any one of them or I can be hostile towards any one of them, according to my personal tastes. I can say that Alfonso is a terrible fellow, he is a cynic, he is a wrecker. Therefore he is more than just a puppeteer. His wager is a terrible game.
One feels that something very fine in the friendship of these four young people is being put at risk.
In terms of Mozart's age he is certainly a philosopher of the Enlightenment who does not believe in eternal values, who has personally been very disappointed and turns that disappointment into cynicism. But once again that is almost too much interpretation One could see him in a different light without a single word or a single note being altered One might also see htm as someone who wants to open men's eyes and stop them going blindly through life. I don't see him in that way. In my view he is a cynic and I have no sympathy for him. I can, however understand listeners who find Don Alfonso very sensible and very sympathetic and say: people wallow in their unhappiness as long as they are ignorant. That is an entirely feasible interpretation. And one can say the same about virtually every single character. I can get cross at Guilelmo and say: ha is a very vain ladies' man and when he is affected personally he is pathetically full of self pity. And one can do the same with each individual character...

I can find nothing negative about Ferrando, who is very sensitive and very sentimental.
The fact that he seduces Ithe fiancée of his best friend by lying to her is not exactly an attractive trait.

But with wonderful music. Mozart always gives him the most romantic, the most beautiful, the most tender, the most expressive arias.
The Duet between Guilelmo and Dorabella is the only true love duet in the whole opera. Even though they have not yet discovered their love, it is already a love duet from the very beginning. It is most strange that precisely this couple -I might almost put it in inverted commas, the "light-hearted” Dorabella and the “frivolous” Guilelmo, who boasts of his success with women - should suddenly sing a love duet. The Duet between Ferrando and Fiordligi, on the other hand, ist no love duet but represents a process which leads from mutual fear and very strong mutual rejection to “I cannot help it” and to their coming together.

That is Fiordiligi's doing; she is the most uncompromising of the four of them. Right until  the end there appears to her to be only one course.
I suppose you could say that. The characters are really like ordinary people. Those who love them like them and those who do not love them dislike them. And I could, if I wanted to, also stand on its head the accepted view of Fiordillgi and Dorabelia - that Fiordiligi is the steadfast one and Dorabella the frivolous one. Neither Mozart nor Da Ponte commit themselves ta their characterisation of the parts. They commit themselves in the moment when each character speaks. But usually the music contains another text, which puts in question what is being said. It is as though we were meeting living people of whom we can never be quite certain. One cannot look into other peoples souls, everyone is a secret to others. However sympathetic we may find them, it is possible that they will be responsible for the most terrible disappointment. That possibility always exists, particularly with the characters in "Così fan tutte”. Nothing is actually said, nothing is cut and dried, they are real, pathetic human beings. There are no heroes in this work.

How irreparable is the smash-up in the end?
In the context ot what I said just now, it can certainly be viewed in very different ways.

And how do you see if?
I regard it as totally irreparable. I think that the cynical element in Don Alfonso, who cannot bear to see happiness around him, is given great prominence by Mozart. And I cannot imagine any of the four people involved having an innocent relationship with any new partner - nor with the old partner. I can well imagine that they will return to their previous partners and will live together like a crafty old married couple, without illusions and without the innocence of their earlier relationship. But their ideals are gone. I see dreadful sadness in this.

I also see sadness in the fact that betrayal can co-exist so closely with love.
Of course. And this contrived cheerful ending, the excitement at the end, makes it seem all the more ironic - as it they were philosophising about the future.
I do not think that we have yet mentioned Despina. Her role provides some particularly fine examples of the way in which the music can supplement the text. One is struck by the fact that her two arias are real Austrian folk music. This tells me, just as it probably told the original public, that she was from the country, as were most servants, perhaps from this or that particular village where this music was played. The imitation of rustic instruments such as the hurdy-gurdy and the bagpipes is obvious, as is the use of the waltz, which at that time was only danced by people of the lowest class.

Realism in “Così fan tutte”
Although “Così” is considered the most arificial of Mozart's operas, I also consider it to be one of the most realistic. Is “Così” perhaps the opera in which Mozart reveals most about himselt?
It is the most realistic in the sense that the characters are portrayed as having many different facets. Mozart can only depict people as he knew them, as he saw them. Here there are six many-sided characters, six people who have totally fluctuating personalities. Each of them has mankind's puzzling characteristic: basically one never knows how they are going to react to the next situation. Evidently this genuine spontaneity is achieved by the way in which Mozart identities with the character on whom he is working at any particular moment. After “Così fan tutte” one feels one knows more about Mozart, because he has had to tell us so much about himself when he describes each individual character, and yet at the same time one knows absolutely nothing. One just cannot get hold ot Mozart’s character. White he is writing an aria for Guilelmo, he is Guilelmo; he can make him neither more nor tess sympathetic, because he is not constructing him from without but from within.
That is one of the reasons, in my view, why there are no truly unsyrnpathetic characters in the Da Ponte operas. If you read the text of “Don Giovanni", you would gladly kill the protagonist and say: that rnan is the greatest scoundrel and criminal evcr. But if you hear “Don Giovanni”, as un opera, he wins the sympathy of the audience. That can only be because the composer - perhaps subconsciously - has identified with this character and hirnself says what the character says. To this extent I believe that one can never comprehend Mozart as a person. He is always concealed behind his characters.

Why did "Così" initially have so little success in comparison with Mozart's other operas, particularly the Da Ponte operas? Can the public not cope with things like lies, deception and irony?
“Così” does not follow the normal pattern of a play or an opera. Here there is no hero, no character with whom one can identify. Normally the public likes to bestow its sympathy on someone. That is fine in "Figaro" with Figaro and Susanna, and it is alsi quite clear in "Don Giovanni". The hero is certainly a scoundrel, but people somehow find him fascinating. In "Così" there is no leading role, but an interplay ot six characters who all lay their cards on the table.
The idea of performing something like that was new at that time. And one can understand that it had no great success with a wider public. I consider the piece basically moral, in the sense that it makes people think and makes them better. There is no question of evil being overcome by good. Everyone who has seen the work is bound to think afterwards about many questions which concern him personally. Everyone sees himself in a giant mirror and feels that he is addressed quite personally. And he may come out ofthe play a changed man. To that extent it must at first have shocked the audience. That also explains the trequent remarks that this work has wonderful music, but...

A bad libretto.
Really, that cannot be called a bad libretto!

But it has been said so often that this "masquerade” that no one could believe in...
Whether the masquerade is credible or not is not the question at all. If one gets involved with this work, one has to accept the premise that Guilelmo and Ferrando must remain unrecognized. They don't have to stick on lots of beard, they simply are not recognized. We do not have to make it either probable or improbable.

What is new in this score in comparison with "Don Giovanni", in the orchestration, in the treatment of the instruments? Is it the trumpets, which are used more extensively?
Only the details are new. I would not like to claim that one hears anything completely novel from a technico-instrumental or musical point of view; the whole concept is new. It is an entirely new form of opera in its portrayal of the changing relationships between six people. I can only state that each of the three Da Ponte operas has its own sound. There is a “Figaro” sound, a “Don Giovanni" sound and a "Così fan tutte” sound, and each opera spans the gamut of emotions from the simplest and most intimate to the most dramatic and savage. This range is exploited to the full, and yet one can say: this particular number only fits into this particular opera.

You once told me that the spelling of the Name "Guglielmo” is wrong.
It is simply a modernisation of the name. Da Ponte wrote “GuiIelmo”, the old italian form of William which Da Ponte and Mozart gave him, so let us not modernise him to “Guglielmo”. Da Ponte wrote in an italian dialect originating in Friuli, where he came from. Hence also the many plays on words and puns in “Così”, the double entendres which cannot be translated and which are better not translated because some are very obscene. - We have used all the plays on words which are in the original. For example, we did not correct “Astrolicarti” to “Astrologarti”, because we know that Mozart thoroughly enjoyed these little jokes. Astrolicarti is quite meaningless, it is cobbled together from astrology and “carta” (chart) to denote palmistry...
 
Questions of casting
“Così” is essentially an ensemble opera and its real protagonist is not an individual but o sextet. I believe that it is very important, particularly in a recording of "Così", that the same cast has also performed it on the stage, that the singers have worked together on these roles.
Yes, the temperaments and the vocal peculiarities must be matched in such a way that each solo and each ensemble is naturally relevant to the relations between the characters.
I believe it is very difficult to produce an opera of this kind in the studio alone. The relationships must actually be tested. One must feel the many-sidedness of each utterance. The characters in “Così” are ambiguous. They are not A or B, yes or no, buf always everything at the same time. But that must be tested on the stage, the various possible reactions must have been experienced. Our recording is based on a staged production in Amsterdam.

In your recording you rather surprisingly cast Thomas Hampson as Don Alfonso. Normally one would have expected an older singer and a lower baritone for this wordly-wise vecchio filosofo.
I was most anxious to cast the baritone and bass parts in such a way that Don Alfonso was a high baritone and Guilelmo a dark one. That is quite obvious from the score. All the low passages are sung by Guilelmo and he always has the bottom line in the ensembles. There are passages, for example in the Trio "Soave sia il vento”, where Don Alfonso has to sing with a delicate mezza voce. The general idea nowadays is: the older the person, the lower the voice. Therefore a low voice is used for Don Alfonso. But in the ensembles they often change places. Only in those passages where Don Alfonso has to sing his own part because Guilelmo and Ferrando have already gone away, he has got to sing the high notes and has a hard time of it... Mozart gave Don Alfonso the higher part; in Mozart older men have higher voices. Figaro, Leporello and Guilelmo have one type of voice and the Count, Don Giovanni and Alfonso have another type of voice. Unfortunately the title part in “Don Giovanni” is also frequently taken by a bass, which does not correspond to Mozart's intentions.

The “Mozart Style”
Finally I would like to revert to the matter with which our interview began. This year in particular there is much talk of the "Mozart Style". How would you define the Mozart Style?
I believe that it is truly incapable of definition. Mozart was stylistically no different from his contemporaries. He employed the musical language of his period. He just did everything a little bit better. He wrote in the same style as Haydn, he wrote like Dittersdort or Salieri. In many specific points other composers were much more "avant-garde” than Mozart. Salieri wrote pieces, phrases and groups of bars which point the way to the young Verdi; in terms of bel canto and in their orchestration they are forty years ahead of their time. In Haydn there are truly bold touches which point the way well into the 19th century. In purely technical and stylistic terms Mozart was like Bach; he did not depart from the musical idiom of his time. In the emotional field, on the other hand, he went far beyond it. Where he depicts emotions, the breadth and depth of experience, from the simplest to the most profound, no one can touch him. That, in my opinion, constitutes the timelessness of Mozart.
It is quite extraordinary that Mozart's music never dates. I do not believe there is any other composer to whom each generation so clearly finds a direct approach. One gets the impression that Mozart is still alive and has something to say to us in our own language. Perhaps the reason is that he is not so stylistically set in his ways. He always does what we least expect. Whenever we think of him as being particularly bold, then he is not bold at all, or only in minute passages. He never does too much and he never does too little. I believe that he is such an unfathomable figure, such an unfathomable gift from God that he defies analysis. We have no yardstick with which to measure his genius.