Recognition in Mozart's Operas

Jessica Waldoff is an Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Department of Music at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

• Table of Contents ; Introduction ; Recognition: An Introduction ; Recognition as a New Perspective ; Figaro's "Scar" as the "Signature of a Fiction" ; Chapter 1: Operatic Enlightenment in Die Zauberflote ; Enlightenment as Metaphor ; Tamino's Recognition: "Wann wird das Licht mein Auge finden?" ; Pamina, Papageno, and the End of the Opera ; The "Scandal" of Recognition ; Chapter 2: Recognition Scenes in Theory and Practice ; Recognition in Classical and Contemporary Poetics ; Recognitions of Identity in Mozart ; Disguise and Its Discovery ; The Quest for Self-Discovery ; What Recognition Brings in the End ; Chapter 3: Reading Opera for the Plot ; Plot in Contemporary Poetics and Opera ; Plotting in Le nozze di Figaro ; Mozart and the Plot that is "Well Worked Out" ; Chapter 4: Sentimental Knowledge in La finta giardiniera ; La "vera" and la "finta" giardiniera ; Reading Opera "for the sentiment" ; Sandrina as "Virtue in Distress" ; Count Belfiore, Madness, and the Restorative Recognition ; Chapter 5: Don Giovanni: Recognition Denied ; The Problem of the Ending ; Denouement and lieto fine ; Recognition Prepared and Denied ; "Life without the Don" ; Chapter 6: Sense and Sensibility in Cosi fan tutte ; Resisting the Ending ; Reading Cosi "for the sentimen" ; The Language of Sentimental Knowledge ; "Vorrei dir," "Smanie implacabili," and Questions of Parody ; Positions of Knowledge ; Chapter 7: Fiordiligi: A Woman of Feeling ; The Ideal of the Phoenix ; Fiordiligi, Ferrarese, and "Come scoglio" ; "Per pieta": Recognition Denied ; The Triumph of Feeling over Constancy ; Chapter 8: La clemenza di Tito: The Sense of the Ending ; The Language of clemenza and pieta ; The Politics of Tyranny ; Vitellia's Transformation ; Sesto's Conflict ; Tito's Clemency ; Afterword ; "I called him a Papageno" ; Beyond Mozart ; Works Cited