I mean this in the best way possible, of course: I have an undeniable affinity for ridiculous things, and hope to be doing this particular ridiculous thing for the rest of my life, but when you stop and think about it—and believe me, it doesn't take too much thinking—you start to realize how batshit insane the entire concept is. Opera is like the Voltron or even the Captain Planet of the performing arts: all of these individual art forms come together to create something entirely unique. Theater, orchestral music, singing, even ballet—YOUR POWERS COMBINE.
You get the idea.
So, yes. If opera were a superhero, it would be Captain Planet—except with fewer heavy-handed environmental messages and more sex, murder, and tuberculosis. Lots more tuberculosis, in fact. You've gotta wonder what the hell all these sopranos are doing; they're all dying of debilitating lung disease (yes, all of them—if Tosca hadn't thrown herself from the top of the Castel Sant'Angelo, I'm sure she would have been coughing up blood by Act IV) but they're still singing beautifully even as their respiratory systems spontaneously combust. Not exactly realistic, I'll admit—but neither is Rodrigo from Don Carlo, who gets shot in the back and still sings an entire aria before he dies. And this is Verdi we're talking about, so of course it's not easy music. In fact, it's pretty fucking balls-to-the-wall for a guy who's already leaked several pints of O-negative on the prison floor.
This is where willing suspension of disbelief comes in. Like I said, opera is inherently ridiculous—and when you've seen enough operas, there are certain things that you learn to take in stride. The last thing the composer wants you to do is start being logical, because A) most composers of standard operatic repertoire are long dead and so they don't actually want anything anymore, and B) logic has no place in the world of opera. Seriously, don't even attempt to use critical thinking. It's useless here.
Take Don Giovanni, for example. At the beginning of the second act, the eponymous libertine switches clothes with his manservant Leporello with the intention of banging a hot chambermaid. Keep in mind that by “switching clothes,” I really just mean “they exchange cloaks and hats.” However, from the way the rest of the cast reacts, you'd think that the two of them were Nic Cage and John Travolta from Face/Off and had literally turned into each other. NOBODY can tell the difference, which becomes especially hilarious if you've seen a production where Giovanni and Leporello have drastically different physical characteristics. Donna Elvira's inability to recognize the only man she's ever had carnal relations with is even funnier if he's suddenly a different race. No, jackass, it's not the glow of moonlight that's making him look pale—he a cracka.
Even when we put the quirks of casting aside (because that can affect any opera at any time), the in-story implications are still pretty ridiculous. Yes, it's dark out. Yes, they're wearing different hats and cloaks. But come on. Elvira doesn't notice that Giovanni, the notorious seducer, is suddenly awkward as fuck and has a completely different voice than he did two minutes ago. Masetto, despite being the only character in the opera who's sharp enough to instantly and consistently recognize Don Giovanni as a threat, doesn't think it's suspicious that the Don's trusted servant is being uncharacteristically cooperative, or that said servant just sent the armed search party off in all different directions. And then Masetto gives this guy his weapons and promptly gets the shit beaten out of him. And he still thinks the cloaked figure was Leporello.
Jesus, Masetto. This scene right here is why no one takes you seriously.
But even though he's the only good guy who suffers intense physical repercussions for his idiocy, we have to remember that everyone else is being just as stupid:
Zerlina: Look, there's someone dressed in the Don's cloak and hat!
Don Ottavio: Despite the fact that he's not acting anything like Don Giovanni, I'm pretty sure it's him.
Donna Anna: How sure?
Don Ottavio: Like... ninety-eight percent.
Masetto: Good enough for me. Time to get my murder on.
Everyone: [curbstomps Leporello]
Leporello: Jesus! What the hell, guys? I'm totally not the man you're looking for.
Everyone: No, we're pretty sure you are. Like... ninety-eight percent.
Leporello: [takes his hat off]
Everyone: HOLY SHIT WHERE DID LEPORELLO COME FROM
Leporello: It's been me this whole time. Are you people retarded or something? This barely even qualifies as a disguise.
Everyone: WHAT NEW DEVILRY IS THIS
Leporello: [facepalm]
The best part is, I'm not even exaggerating that much. The lynch mob reacts with massive shock and disbelief when they discover Leporello, as if they were all laboring under the impression that clothing bonds with its owner for life (like the Venom symbiote from Spider-Man) and NO ONE BUT GIOVANNI could possibly be wearing that cloak. Really, the only explanation I can come up with for the confusion is that Don Giovanni is part faerie and he can cast glamours on himself and Leporello—and you know something’s wrong with your story when the inclusion of faeries actually makes it more believable. (I'm warning you, True Blood. Stop with that Queen Mab shit or I will cut you.)
The shenanigans don't stop with this opera, either. Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, Don Giovanni's librettist, collaborated on two other operas, as well—Le Nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte—both of which also involve disguises and mistaken identities. Since I haven't bothered to do any research as to why that might be the case, I'm just going to say that da Ponte probably had some sort of role-play fetish and pretend that it's an established historical fact. That's how musicology works, right?
The circumstances surrounding the disguising in Le Nozze are a little different—rather than helping someone get laid, the intention is to catch a philanderer. (It's basically your standard honeypot scenario, except it's not actually anything like that at all so shut up.) Count Almaviva has the hots for his wife's servant, Susanna, who just married the titular Figaro. (Honestly, whenever you see a nobleman in a Mozart opera, it's safe to assume that he wants to get his bone on with a peasant or servant—or anything that moves, in Giovanni's case. I guess lower-class women were less sexually frigid or something.) Anyway, the Count wants to get with Susanna and the Countess is understandably upset about this, so the two ladies devise a brilliant plan to catch him in the act: they arrange a meeting between Susanna and the Count that night in the garden, but then they switch cloaks so the Countess can impersonate Susanna and vice versa. In short, their plan is to make the Count unknowingly seduce his own wife. Da Ponte's reasoning here (or possibly Beaumarchais, since he wrote the play this opera was based on) seems to be that “All women look alike in the dark.”
I want this opera to be made into an episode of Divorce Court. It's so delightfully seedy, and there's just about as much singing.
Of course, neither the Countess nor Susanna find it necessary to tell Figaro that any of this is going on because they're bitches. Really. It's Figaro and Susanna's wedding night, and they're perfectly content to let the guy think that his new bride is about to get plowed by their employer. That rates about a 6.8 on the DNCI (Dude, Not Cool index), just below “knocking up your best friend's little sister.” So, Figaro hides in the bushes and gets to watch the Count put the moves on Fake!Susanna and try to get her into one of the pavilions. Fake!Susanna comments that it's too dark, allowing the Count to reply with my favorite line of the opera: “Tu sai che la per leggere io non desio entrar,” which loosely translates to “You know we ain't goin' in there to read, baby. Awwwwwwwww yeeeeeeeaaaahhhhh.”
It's fantastic. Stop judging me.
Anyway, Figaro finally figures out what's going on and helps Susanna complete her plan, proving that there was no reason at all to keep him out of the loop—aside from the previously mentioned “being a bitch” thing. The Count is exposed (not literally; that would be gross) but the Countess forgives him, and everyone lives happily ever after, except that they actually don't. Whoops.
In this case, the whole disguise thing is made more believable by the fact that Figaro can actually recognize the voice of the woman he's in love with. On the flip side, however, the Count fails to recognize the voice of the woman he's been married to for years—but that's somewhat justified by him being a really shitty husband. You win this round, Mozart.
That leaves us with Così fan tutte, which takes the idea of testing your partner's fidelity to all-new sociopathic highs. Or lows, really. Long story short, Ferrando and Guglielmo have a bet with the rich Don
Why Albanians, you might ask? Why the fuck not.
The premise of this opera is so batshit insane that I can't even bring myself to care about the believability of the disguises. Ferrando, Guglielmo, and Don Asshole are waging such intense psychological warfare against these poor women that they probably could have just put on Clark Kent glasses and the ladies would have been none the wiser. Why don't they recognize their lovers? A better question would be, “Why the fuck would they?” Ferrando and Guglielmo are supposed to be dead. Best-case scenario, they received proper burials and possibly even last rites. Worst-case scenario, they're rotting on a battlefield somewhere with their entrails being chewed out by vultures and wild dogs. And then the girls have to deal with these crazy fucking foreigners who are trying to get into their pants for no apparent reason aside from just being horny. Aaaaand then the Albanians threaten suicide if Dorabella and Fiordiligi don't give in to their advances. Oh, and I forgot to mention: this is supposed to be a comedy.
What is this I don't even.
Seriously, that shit is fucked up. That's the sort of thing that you could probably get thrown in prison for nowadays, but there really aren't any huge consequences here for the people involved in the systematic psychological destabilization of two innocent young women. The opera pretty much ends with Don Alfonso winning his bet and being all like, “Bitches, man. I told you; they're all sluts!” Because that makes sense.
So, yeah. Remember what I said about critical thinking? This is the point where you make like an opera character and just turn off your brain. Trust me; it's easier that way.
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