Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, Virtue, and Beauty in Mozart's Operas

Till, who has directed operas at the Glyndebourne Festival, approaches the interpretive difficulties involved in staging Mozart's operas by analyzing the works in relation to the social, political, moral, philosophical and religious climate of the late 18th century. In the early opera, La Finta Giardiniera , Till finds an expression of the moral sentiments of the bourgeois Enlightenment and the influence of Rousseau; Le Nozze di Figaro illustrates the importance of contractual relationships in bourgeois society; the character of Don Giovanni represents a destructive force threatening the codes of conduct that separated the Enlightenment from the supposed age of chaos that preceded it. Till draws on the authority of an impressive array of writers and thinkers to develop his ideas, but his excessive erudition and convoluted writing style obfuscates rather than resolves the problems he addresses. He also ignores the music, the component of opera that is fundamental to discussion of the drama. Illustrated. (Apr.)