Playhouse Theatre, QPAC
October 19, 2018

Hats off, gentlemen, a feminist!

In thus adapting the first line of Schumann’s review of Chopin’s variations on the duet Là ci darem la mano from Don Giovanni, I am not referring to the director of this production, Lindy Hume, but to Mozart. For while the claims to feminism of the director, made explicit both in the program for the performance and in the scene with which she closed the opera, are undisputed, those of Mozart are perhaps not, and deserve some attention.

Andrew Collis, Shaun Brown and Duncan Rock. Photo © Stephanie Do Rozario

Mozart, I think uniquely among opera composers, was deeply concerned with the equality and the rights of women. In Idomeneo he replaces the tyrannical rule of a man with the Enlightenment ideal of an equal king and queen. In The Magic Flute he replaces the patriarchy of the freemasonry with the couple, Tamino and Pamina, so outraging the freemasons of Vienna that they murdered him for it. In The Marriage of Figaro a clever woman outwits a conventional tyrant. (Only in Così fan tutte can a charge of misogyny perhaps begin to stick). In Don...