Review – Mozart’s abandoned opera L’Oca del Cairo
I am dozing on a sun lounger; under a Carob tree; in the Algarve; overlooking the Ria Formosa Natural Park and a glittering sea beyond.
I am dreaming. A Daily Telegraph sketch writer has just become Prime Minister; England has won the cricket World Cup; I am about to watch a Mozart opera, “The Goose of Cairo”.
Memo to self: must give up oysters at lunchtime. They provoke dreams. Oysters are served, fresh from the lagoon, in the local marisqueira, Fialho; delicious, but bad for seamless sleep. Once, when I ordered half a dozen ostras, Fernando, the fisherman whose family has owned rickety Fialho for as long as memory serves, slipped off to the lagoon in his waders to hoik out my lunch.
So, can’t be a bad oyster creating these visions from hell, so, what? … Hang on. I’m actually awake! This is all happening!
Nurse Strong and Stable, wearing Marigolds and brandishing a “My deal or no deal” enema, sporting her rictus smile, bears down no longer. The blond Owl of the Remove is in No. 10. The White Drawing Room is, even now, probably awash with red wine stains. And, “The Goose of Cairo” – whatever that is – is really playing tonight, on OperaVision.
Warning. Don’t join us on holiday if you don’t like opera. We are Glyndebourne on a patio. Portuguese internet permitting, I set up a faux theatre in the sitting room. Magnums are available. Last year we watched “The Whirling Dervish of the Buffering Circle”. This year download speeds have improved.
OperaVision is an EU funded boondoggle, supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe Programme, a six year device for spending Euros 1.46 billion of other people’s money, on art stupid people should watch in the theatre, but don’t. It’s carbon neutral. Opera from across Europe is available at the flick of a remote, without troubling Ryanair. Greta Thunberg is a fan.
OperaVision is superb. It’s free! Currently it is hosting eighteen productions, ranging from a conventional Royal Opera House “Marriage of Figaro,” Mozart, through Kuuisto’s “Ice” by Finnish National Opera and Ballet to …. yes, you’re ahead of me, Mozart’s, “The Goose of Cairo”.
Well, actually, “L’oca del Cairo, ossia Lo sposo deluso”, to feather it in its full pomp. And, the devil being in the detail, Mozart didn’t actually write it. He wrote some of it. Not a lot of it. Seven arias; perhaps nearly all of the first act. No more.
This production, by The Hungarian State Opera, is the brainchild of General Director, Szilveszter Ókovács, who has, unexpectedly, cherished the idea of completing Mozart’s minimus opus for 25 years. In his spare time he makes model buses in his sitting room. Sorry … that’s someone else.
Not content with simply fattening his “Goose”, Mr. Ókovács has cross-bred it with another unfinished Mozart work, the even more fragmentary, “Lo sposo Deluso”, (The deluded Husband). As the “Goose” features two deluded husbands, this clearly makes perfect sense.
So far this sounds like a recipe for incoherent disaster. In the 1970s I had a Glasgow engineering graduate friend with a passion for Citroens, racing 2CVs at Knockhill Circuit. He welded two front ends back to back and the opposition never knew if he was coming or going. If he had been into opera instead of Citroens he gladly would have raced “The Goose of Cairo” jumelé avec “The deluded Husband” around Knockhill.
Here’s the synopsis. Remember, it’s opera buffa! This is at length, I’m afraid, as the plot is otherwise unknown.
Act I
In the castle of Ripaseccha, – the picky will note, sod all to do with Cairo – the no-longer-youthful and miserly marquis, Don Pippo, is preparing for his wedding, to the great amusement of his secretary, Calandrino. Don Pippo’s ward, Celidora, demands her guardian keep his promise by finally giving her away in marriage to the young man she loves, Biondello, who has been hanging around the house of the marquis for a year.
Don Pippo tells her, in fact they will be celebrating a double wedding that evening. But, it won’t be Biondello that Celidora is marrying, because Don Pippo is giving her to a wealthy Roman count as old as he, whose own ward he himself is preparing to marry.
Biondello looks woefully at the marquis, who laughs and dismisses him: the impoverished lad can have Celidora “when the singing of the goose of Cairo makes dollars rain down from the sky”.
Here comes the big plot problem. As originally conceived by librettist, Giovanni Batista Varesco, the plot was to be resolved when Biondello smuggled himself into the castle, concealed in a mechanical goose. As Inspector Clouseau might say; “Ah, Cato, the old “Goose of Troy” ploy”!
In Mr. Ókovács’ re-writing the goose is reduced to a metaphor. And I so wanted to see a mechanical goose. It was replaced with stuffed toys brandished by the chorus and Lionetto, wearing a hat with a big beak. But, hey! It’s opera buffa. Get over it.
Calandrino racks his brains to figure out how he can help Biondello recover his beloved, but Don Pippo locks the girl in the castle tower.
The marquis happily welcomes Roman – nota bene, not Egyptian – guests as they arrive in the house: they are his veiled bride and his future father-in-law/son-in-law, the noble-spirited, sophisticated Lionetto, who sports a pointy, ice cream cone wig.
As Don Pippo accompanies the count to the castle tower to introduce him to his future wife, Celidora, Calandrino is forced to entertain Don Pippo’s bride. The woman removes her veil, and the secretary is astonished to behold Lavina, his beloved. He immediately resolves to spirit her away. When Don Pippo returns to find the two lovers in each other’s arms, he has Lavina locked in the tower together with Celidora and entrusts the key to Auretta, the chambermaid.
Calandrino mockingly woos Auretta and pinches the key from her neck. The scene is witnessed by her lover, the stable-boy, Chichibio, who is instantly jealous.
The “big meeting” between Count Lionetto and Celidora eventually takes place: it turns out that Don Pippo has sent the love letters that Celidora wrote to Biondello to Lionetto, who for some reason addresses the girl as “Clarice”. Unexplained. Maybe dodgy handwriting.
Celidora bitterly announces that the old man will only be her husband when “the singing of the goose of Cairo makes dollars rain down from the sky”. There goes that goose again!
Act II
After his afternoon nap, Don Pippo feverishly instructs Auretta and Chichibio to prepare everything for the double wedding. The chambermaid and the stable boy, however, decide that the lovers should be together and resolve to help the youngsters avoid the forced marriages.
In great secrecy, Calandrino brings the girls down from the tower. Celidora and Biondello fall into each other’s arms, and the lad produces money to help his lover out of her predicament. Lionetto surprises them and, left alone with Celidora, objects that she is not the same person as Clarice, whom her “father” said so many good things about. She is neither learned nor even virtuous.
Celidora bitterly explains to Lionetto that she has always been in love with someone else and that her guardian has a heart of stone. Finally, she tosses the money in front of the older man and hurries off. After some moments of thought, Lionetto addresses Chichibio, who is by now sneaking around the area in a goose costume, and tells him to inform his master that the two lovers are getting ready to abscond right now.
Lionetto decides to put an end to the drama; he gathers up the money from the floor, along with the goose costume that the stable-boy has left there, and hurries off to fulfil the metaphorical prophecy.
The four lovers are prevented from fleeing by the river in front of the castle, so they summon workers to quickly build a bridge over the water. The work is feverishly being carried out when Auretta and Chichibio bring news: Don Pippo is approaching!
The marquis arrives, and in a terrible rage is about to throw the entire company in prison. Suddenly, Count Lionetto appears in the tower dressed as a goose and tossing gold dollars to the ground. He attempts to appeal to Don Pippo’s better nature, saying that everyone should marry only for love and declaring himself to be both the Goose of Cairo and the Deluded Bridegroom. Don Pippo joins him in the tower, accepting that his goose has been well and truly cooked. The end.
The production was brilliantly executed, especially the slick meshing of action with music. Every gesture, down to the presentation of Don Pippo’s wardrobe in the opening scene, was matched with a musical phrase. Visual expressions – even of characters peripheral to the main action – were comical.
The amended Da Ponte/Varesco libretto, “supplemented” – there’s an understatement if ever there was one – by Éva Lax, a Hungarian mezzo-soprano – contained some memorable one-liners: Celidora, the bride, in what can only be described as a “Fury” aria; “I was born on the glorious ground of Rome’s Capitolium – and there is still nobody to help me down the stairs”. Then, when still thwarted; “I am taking the first carriage back to the Tarpeian Rock.”
Some presentational tricks worked. Others did not. Celidora venting her frustration in a Kung Foo routine was visually hilarious. The builders of the escape bridge, featured in the second Act, wearing modern high-viz yellow jackets and orange hard hats simply grated.
There were successful running gags. Ineffectual Don Pippo – “Where’s my sword?” – never got a servant to produce it. But hats off, cue applause for the most triumphant put down of the marquis, not just of this opera, but the era – “Patchouli-scented buffoon”. I had to dig around to discover that Patchouli (Pogostemon cablin) a.k.a. “Stinkor”, is a fragrant oil, once favoured by hippies.
Was “The Goose of Cairo” worth the effort? Yes, it was. True opera buffa needs no logic. This production was a hoot. Without the detailed attention to farce and perfect execution of Hungarian opera it would have been a bore.
I am dozing on a sun lounger; under a Carob tree; a Patchouli-scented buffoon has just entered No10. We shall achieve Brexit when the Goose of Downing Street sings – and the Bank of England rains £s from the sky. That will be October 31st. Zzzzzzzzzz.