I’m listening to the Elisabeth Schwarzkopf recording of Così fan tutte and am struck by the same thought I always have when hearing or seeing this opera: How is it that Mozart’s greatest music belongs to his most hateful plot? An interesting conundrum.
About
I decided to start a blog for three reasons:
1) People felt that there should be a part of the Threepenny website that was available only online, not in the printed magazine.
2) Some of the things I wanted to write about seemed as if they would benefit from a slightly more timely response than our usual quarterly publication permitted.
3) I was seeing and hearing so much interesting art — especially in the areas of dance and music, though also in literature, theater, and the visual arts — that I couldn't fit everything I wanted to say into The Threepenny Review without taking over the whole publication. And if you are not Diderot or Karl Kraus (and I am certainly neither), it is never a good idea to write the whole magazine yourself. But I figured the rules of blogs would allow me to monopolize one of those.
I struggled to come up with a good title for the blog and at first resisted using my own name, feeling (as those named Lesser are bound to feel) that diminishment is not necessarily a selling point. But then I figured that if people named Grudge or Drudge can use their names on websites, I should certainly not be abashed at calling this The Lesser Blog. So here it is, and I hope you enjoy it.
Wendy Lesser
Editor, The Threepenny Review-
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The past is a different country, filled with people just like you & I would have been, had we lived then. Don’t kid yourself that you would not have shared the prejudices of the past, had you lived then, just as you share the prejudices of the present by living now.
In short, don’t dilute your present enjoyment with problems that don’t exist.
I don’t believe in blanket approval of all the past, just as I don’t believe in blanket disapproval. Each case has to be taken on its own. Artists older than Mozart — Handel, Shakespeare, Cervantes, to name just a few — were at least as aware as we are of the emotional complications of love. The plot of Così seems wilfully obtuse in this regard. But (to give Mozart credit) perhaps even the obvious discomfort has a purpose — in which case it would be condescending to Mozart if we just ignored it.