“Between April 1786 and January 1790 Mozart collaborated with Lorenzo da Ponte to produce three operas - Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan Tutte - which have become close to the heart of Western high culture. Mozart responded to the libretti’s increasingly single-minded concerns with female moral frailty by using the full force of his compositional virtuosity to represent women rendered helpless by their own desire. These erotic cameos are striking similar to the basic stuff of the glossy images that our culture seeks to marginalise in an act of chronically transfixed fascination. Whilst what we call pornography provokes this systemic confusion of rejection and preservation, Mozart’s music is generally thought to transcend all such moral ambiguity, and even all dramatic exigencies, in its absolute expression of universal human nature: Cosi fan tutte indeed! The implicitly violent idea that women must fall victim to sexual flattery by virtue of their nature, and its articulation by means of the most beautiful music, renders such moments deeply unsettling and provocative”
Cosi fan Tutte is indeed an unsettling opera. The libretto’s overt misogyny, and it’s treatment of the notions of fidelity and romantic love still provoke a strong response from modern audiences. The opera is largely without context, and the characters behaviour is never explained - for instance it passes without comment in the libretto that the women cannot recognise their fiancés in fancy dress!
It is particularly the finale of the opera that captured our attention. At the conclusion to the opera, there is the obligatory ‘happy ending’. This is a comedy, after all. But the wedding which provides the conclusion of the opera is ambiguous- the libretto does not specify exactly who marries whom. Is it conceivable that all of the characters marry each other in random pairings? Or to take a position of absurdity, that man marries man and lives ‘happily ever after’? It is from the notion of interchangeability inherently present in this scene that particularly suggests the idea of the ‘generic lover’ - around which we have constructed this performance. We have created a performance spectacle in which all of the roles and performers are interchangeable, where actual and performed identity is constantly in flux. Any role in the opera, or in the theatrical performance devised from the opera, can be and is performed by any member of the group, or even occasionally assigned to inanimate objects. Anything or anyone can be positioned as the object of desire, or to use Barthes term, “the loved object”.
Where the garment gapes is an experiment in creating an engaging performative critique of an operatic narrative. Through this performance we have attempted to illustrate this operatic narrative through a number of methods of representation, both textual and musical, while simultaneously generating a series of interludes which provide commentary on the source material and on the performative act itself. Of primary concern throughout this piece is the pleasure of the audience. Stylistically, we would position the work of version 1.0 somewhere between Frumpus and The opera Project, while acknowledging our enormous debt to the performance making strategies of Chris Ryan, with whom all of us have worked at some point. Thanks to all of you, and I hope you enjoy our small contribution to the culture.
David Williams and Jane Parkin 1999
A menacing comedy of interchangeable desire, identity crisis and gender trouble. Mozart’s morally ambiguous opera ‘COSI FAN TUTTE’ is savaged by aesthetic terrorists whose sweating bodies penetrate the gaps in the operatic product.
Where the garment gapes… is an hilarious and irreverent reconstruction of Cosi Fan Tutte utilising the musical abilities and demonstrating the idiosyncratic physical language and abstract imagination which are the hallmarks of version 1.0’s rapidly evolving style - highly energetic, visually stunning innovative live performance. Combining physicality, musicality and textual deconstruction, version 1.0 seeks to create an exciting theatre of synthesis, collapsing false distinctions between theatre, dance, performance art and opera.
The work weaves together disparate notions of disposable fashion, interchangeable identities, voyeurism, sexual violence, and pedestrian fascism into a provocative reading of Mozart’s morally ambiguous chamber opera Cosi Fan Tutte. Created by David Williams in collaboration with performers Damon Young, Jane Parkin, Angie Macnevin, Keith Kempis and Chenoeh Miller, this work was initially developed during a creative development residency at The Centre for Performance Studies, Sydney University.
Production History:
First performed at PACT Theatre on 4th June 1999.
Devised and performed by:
David Williams
Jane Parkin
Damon Young
Keith Kempis
Angie Macnevin
Chenoeh Miller
special guest appearance by:
Craig Anderson.
Lighting by:
Craig Anderson
From a scenario by David Williams.
Sound by:
Tania Payne.
House Management by:
Rebecca Wilson.
Music by:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Madonna
Faith No More