Mozart, as a young child, had been paraded by his father from one end of Europe to the other as a novelty act. He could barely reach the keyboard but played as a virtuoso. He was, in fact, an extraordinary pianist. So extraordinary that he was able to draw crowds of people to hear him play into adulthood, well after the novelty of seeing a young child play had worn off. 

Yet he deeply resented being pigeonholed as “merely” a player. In his mind being a composer held much a higher status. So, even though he wrote masterwork piano sonatas and concertos, he felt the public saw him strictly as a skilled manual laborer.

With this in mind we can see why he was so drawn to composing operas. Here he would be solely a creator of music with no taint of being just a technician. There was also the considerable secondary benefit of finally being free of his father’s heavy-handed control of his career. Thirdly, operas had the potential of generating considerable income.

From the moment Mozart arrived in Vienna he was looking for opportunities to write operas. Then, as now, opera was an expensive undertaking. So he devoted considerable effort into cultivating contacts that would enable him to achieve his goal.

This course will concentrate on his three greatest operas: The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte. These are often referred to as the Da Ponte operas because the librettos for all three were written by Lorenzo da Ponte. 

Ordinarily, in these courses I let the operas speak for themselves. But here the operas stand also as works of literature, staking out positions regarding class and interpersonal relationships. We will see that these are often difficult to present on stage as many of the issue they raise are still active today and directors struggle with how to confront how audiences will respond to what are still highly charged issues.

It is my hope that I will be able to provide sufficient guidance for you to see that all three of these operas are transcendently great works of art. You need not agree on some of the conclusions drawn by Mozart and Da Ponte, but will at least concur regarding their significance. 

Pietro Masscagni – Cavalleria Rusticana (Rustic Chivalry)

This is a one-act opera with (almost) uninterrupted action on a single set. It takes place in a Sicilian village on an Easter morning. The almost refers to an intermezzo played during the Easter mass. The intermezzo is justly one of the most famous compositions in the history of Western music. 

Pietro Mascagni had a foundering career as a composer. In what might have been a last-itch effort to gain notoriety he entered a contest to write a one-act opera. Cavalleria Rusticana  was the result.

The Bad Boy in this opera is Turiddu. At first Turiddu, a peasant, may seem to have little in common with Duke from Rigoletto. But women seem to find both Duke and Turiddu to be irresistible, despite their manifest dishonesty and duplicity. Both seem to parade their infidelities as almost a badge of honor–look what I can get away with!

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Performance recorded 1978

Turiddu – Plácido Domingo

Santuzza – Tatiana Troyanos

Lucia – Jean Kraft

Alfio – Vern Shinall

Lola – Isola Jones

Conductor – James Levine

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus

Thinking about Rigoletto

The Duke is the Bad Boy of this opera, but for all his villainy and mistreatment of women, he is a rather shallow character. His power and stature as a Duke allow him to live out his lustful fantasies without fear of interference or retribution, but there is never any hint of introspection on his part. 

One interesting aspect of the production we are seeing is that power and privilege are now depicted as deriving, not from a sort of royal inheritance, but rather from fame and fortune that permit the Duke to grab women’s nether regions without reprisal. 

Those familiar with Mozart’s Don Giovanni may notice plot similarities. Both the Duke and the Don are able to easily have their way with multiple women. In each opera there is a secondary character or sidekick, Rigoletto and Leporello, who assist them in perpetrating their misdeeds. But there is an inversion of outcomes. In Mozart’s opera the perpetrator is punished. In Verdi’s opera the enabler is punished.

The character Rigoletto is filled with self loathing. In traditional productions it is linked to his obvious physical deformity. In the Met production his self disgust seems to arise from knowing that he is cravenly going along with the Duke’s exploits. Rigoletto knows this is wrong but goes along to maintain his position in the Rat Pack. You get the idea that in this production he is keeping Gilda hidden so she can’t see what a toady he is.

To me this puts a different spin on Monterone’s curse. It is not a conjuring of otherworldly occult forces. It is rather the moment when Rigoletto realizes just how pathetic and weak he is. This is brought back to him at the end of each of the acts. At the end of Act 1 when he realizes he has been duped into aiding in his daughter’s kidnapping. At the end of Act 2 when he realizes that his bungling attempt at revenge has cost his daughter her life.

Giuseppi Verdi – Rigoletto

Throughout his career Verdi had recurring problems with censorship. This was amplified by the fact that he had to contend with two different types of censors.

Although we think of Italy as an ancient country, it has only existed as a unified political whole for about 150 years. When Verdi was born in Parma near Milan in 1813, it was a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Many of Verdi’s operas were subjected to political censorship by Austrian officials because they were seen as critical of Italy’s subservient status. 

Another form of censorship came from the Catholic Church who  knew Verdi was notoriously anti-clerical and were looking for anything in his operas that could be construed as irreligious.

Verdi based Rigoletto on a French play by Victor Hugo whose title translates roughly as The King’s Amusement. Verdi’s censors immediately forbade anything that would picture a king as being immoral. Political censors objected since this could lead to questioning authority, church censors objected because, since kings were divinely selected, depicting their immorality might call into question divine judgement.

So in Verdi’s opera the king is downgraded to the Duke of Mantua. Evidently Mantua has an unsavory reputation so suspicious goings on there would surprise no one. 

The production we will see attempts to capture the idea of the story taking place in a place of dubious morality and sketchy reputation by setting it in 1960s-era Las Vegas. The Duke becomes a mob-connected lounge singer who may be modeled after someone like Frank Sinatra. Rigoletto becomes an insult comedian who may be modeled after someone like Don Rickles. 

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Performance recorded February 16, 2013

The Duke – Piotr Beczala

Rigoletto – Zeljko Lučić

Gilda – Diana Damrau

Sparafucile – Štefan Kocán

Maddalena – Oksana Volkova

Conductor – Michele Mariotti

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Chorus, and Ballet

Bad Boys (of Opera) is a sequel to the earlier course Bad Girls (of Opera). For the most part the Bad Girls were bad in the sense that they had chosen to assert themselves in a way that transcended the prevailing views of what a woman’s place in society should be. In contrast, most of the Bad Boys are truly reprehensible.

In Puccini’s Tosca Baron Scarpia is the evil chief of police installed in Rome by the conquering Napoleonic army. Verdi’s Attila is about the infamous King of the Huns as he plans to sack Rome. In Rigoletto, another Verdi opera the Duke of Mantua rapes the wives and daughters of his courtiers while his court jester Rigoletto mercilessly mocks his victims. 

Some other Bad Boys are arrogant cads. In Mascagnani’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Turiddu abandons one woman he has gotten pregnant to carry on an affair with a married woman. Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin leads on a peasant girl and rejects her; then flirts with his best friend’s fiancee, leading to a duel in which the friend is killed.

There will be one additional opera once I decide on which of several promising candidates to use.

We will watch full-length videos of each of these operas along with some additional videos and lecture material. As each class approaches I will post cast lists and information on the performances.

Last	First	Title	Date	Publisher
Aliber	Robert	Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, 7th Edition	2015	Palgrave Macmillan
Baptist	Edward	The Half Has Never Been Told	2014	BasicBooks
Beard	Charles	An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States	1913	The Free Press
Beckert	Sven	Empire of Cotton: A Global History	2015	Vintage
Beckert	Sven	Slavery’s Capitalism	2016	Univ Pennsylvania Press
Berry	Daina	The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: the Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave	2017	Beacon Press
Berry	Daina	Enslaved Women in America: an Encyclopedia	2012	Greenwood
Blight	David	Race and Reunion: the Civil War in American Memory	2001	Harvard University Press
Chang	Ha-Joon	23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism	2010	Bloomsbury Press
Conason	Joe	It Can Happen Here	2007	St Martin’s Press
Diamond	Jared	Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies	2007	W. W. Norton
Diamond	Jared	Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed	2004	Penguin
Dineen	Jacquline	Cotton and Silk	1988	Enslow Publishers
Ehrenreich	Barbara	This Land is Their Land	2008	Metropolitan Books
Foner	Eric	Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party	1995	Oxford University Press
Freeman	Joshua	Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World	2018	W. W. Norton
Genovese	Eugene	The World the Slaveholders Made	1988	Wesleyan University Press
Genovese	Eugene	Roll Jordan Roll	1974	Random House
Goldstone	Lawrence	Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution	2005	Walker Books
Goodheart	Adam	1861: The Civil War Awakening	2011	Vintage
Griffin	Patrick	American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutiary Frontier	2007	Hill and Wang
Hall	Kermit	The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, 2nd Edition	2005	Oxford University Press
Hanson	Victor Davis	The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece	2009	Univ of California Press
Hobsbawm	Eric	The Age of Revolution 1789 -1848	1996	Vintage
Horne	Gerald	The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance of the Origins of the United States	2014	New York University Press
James	Margaret	Social Problems and Policy During the Puritan Revolution	1966	Routledge
Kolchin	Peter	American Slavery: 1619-1877	1993	Harper Collins
Levine	Bruce	The Fall of the House of Dixie	2013	Random House
Levine	Bruce	Half Slave Half Free: the Roots of the Civil War, revised edition	2005	Hill and Wang
Manning	Richard	Against the Grain: How Agriculture Hijacked Civilization	2004	Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
McCoy	Alfred W.	In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power	2017	Haymarket Books
McCurry	Stephanie	Confederate Reckoning	2010	Harvard University Press
Piketty	Thomas	Capital in the Twenty-First Century	2014	Harvard University Press
Pomeranz	Kenneth	The World Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy	2005	Routledge
Pomeranz	Kenneth	The Great Divergence	2001	Princeton University Press
Preston	Diana	The Dark Defile: Britain’s Catastrophic Invasion of Afghanistan 1838-1841	2012	Walker and Company
Remini	Robert	The Life of Andrew Jackson	1988	Perennial Classics
Remini	Robert	Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union	1991	W. W. Norton
Rifkin	Jeremy	The End of Work	1995	G. P. Putnam and Sons
Roberts	Alasdair	America’s First Great Depression	2012	Cornell University Press
Rosenthal	Caitlin	Slavery’s Scientific Management: Masters and Managers	2018	Harvard University Press
Sublette	Ned and Constance	The American Slave Coast: a History of the Slave-Breeding Industry	2016	Lawrence Hill Books
Williams	Eric	Capitalism and Slavery	1994	Univ of North Carolina
Wills	Garry	The Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power	2003	Houghton Mifflin
Wills	Garry	Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence	1978	Doubleday

We all know there was an industrial revolution. And if we know nothing else, we have a sense that it involved steam engines and manufacturing and was at first centered in Great Britain. But there is a prevailing view that the Industrial Revolution happened somewhat spontaneously. There were some people in Britain tinkering with gadgets and machines and before long there were lots of gadgets and machines. 

But this explanation relies on a central misconception. The people who invented the machines were not aristocratic hobbyists. They were workers. Each machine addressed a specific job requirement.They were not doing abstract research. They were looking to make money. Another key requirement is that the machines would not only produce something that could be sold for profit, but this would be a product that could be manufactured and sold on a scale more vast and immense than had previously existed.

The amazing thing is that, above all else, virtually all of the key industrial inventions were intended for the processing of a single substance that was the driving impetus of this world-changing sequence of events. It is somewhat shocking then to consider that the essential raw material of this industrial expansion was something so small and insubstantial as cotton.

Cotton is now plentiful and inexpensive, but in the past it was a luxury good. Cotton textiles were so costly that they were not worn as clothing but were used as wall hangings in the homes of the wealthy. 

The Empire of Cotton follows the story of cotton from small-scale home production to the world’s first gigantic factories powered by steam engines and employing hundreds or thousands of workers–many of them young children–laboring 12 hours a day, six days a week. We also consider the ways in which the factories’ insatiable hunger for raw cotton created an empire of slavery across the New World the consequences of which we still must face.

See the Empire of Cotton Bibliography post for a list of books read in preparing this course.

In class three we will start out discussing the idea of a Liederkreis (song cycle), a group of songs linked together by a common story line. We will discuss the event in Mahler’s life that prompted him to write Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer).

There is a vital link between Mahler’s songs and his symphonies. Two of the four movements of his Symphony Number 1 are based upon songs from the Wayfarer cycle. A third movement is based upon another song, a folk song commonly sung by children.

We will hear the first two Wayfarer songs, see videos where Michael Tilson Thomas discusses the symphony, and the class will conclude with videos of complete performances of the first two movements of Mahler’s Symphony Number 1.

In class four we will consider the surprisingly common usage of the linden tree as a symbol and metaphor in European writing; specifically the occurrence of a linden tree in the fourth of the Wayfarer songs.

We will hear the last two Wayfarer songs, see videos where Michael Tilson Thomas discusses the final two movements, view complete performances of the last two movements of Mahler’s Symphony Number 1, and look at some contemporary reviews of the first performance.

Bibliography for Gustav Mahler: Songs and Symphonies
Last	First	Title	Date	Publisher
Ariès	Philippe	Centuries of Childhood	1965	Vintage
Blaukopf	Kurt	Gustav Mahler	1973	Allen Lane
Carr	Jonathan	Mahler: A Life	1997	Overlook Books
Evans	Richard	The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914	2016	Viking
Feder	Stuart	Gustav Mahler: A Life in Crisis	2004	Yale University Press
Fischer	Jens Malte	Gustav Mahler	2011	Yale University Press
Hurwitz	David	The Mahler Symphonies: an Owner’s Manual	2004	Amadeus Press
King	David	Vienna 1814	2008	Harmony Books
Lebrecht	Norman	Why Mahler?: how one man and ten symphonies changed our world	2010	Pantheon Books
Moreton	Frederic	Vienna: A Nervous Splendor 1888-1889	1979	Little, Brown
Painter	Karen	Mahler and His World	2002	Princeton University Press