Ravinia 2026 Issue 1

ENNOBLED VIRTUES o en surpassing the quality of the available librettos. He maintained the centrality of the art of singing and drama, and gave them an immense variety. Equally import- ant, he injected the orchestra and its polyphonic/symphonic compositional character into a theatrical form that was to probe the potential of marrying those worlds. Each of Mozart’s operas looks at love and society, the tension between the classes, and the battle of the sexes. In e Abduction from the Seraglio , the composer, as he always will, ad- vocates for true committed love and stands against coerced relationships. He demonstrates the futility of jealousy and possessiveness. e symmetry is perfect: three “nobles”—Belmonte and Konstanze (Spanish; shipwrecked; Christian) and Pasha Selim (North African; exiled by Spanish invaders; Moslem)—and three servants, Pedrillo and Blondchen (Span- ish and English; shipwrecked; Christian) and Osmin (Turkish; Moslem). ere are also three pairs of characters, four Christian European lovers, and two Moslem men, living in Türkiye. Both Christian women, betrothed to Span- iards, are wooed by Moslems, each according to their class. Search and rescue is the skeletal structure of this opera. e element of rescue will expand on a growing genre of operas that involve one or more characters, usually the women, who are in need of liberation from an enforced servitude or prison. e Magic Flute is an example; Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio , turns that around in that the he- roic wife rescues her husband, a political prisoner. Mozart reshu es the cards and deals a new hand to his public. rough his character portrayals, he ennobles the servant class, not by changing their sta- tus, but by endowing them with a rich and complex humanity. He humanizes the nobles by removing them from their pedestals and divulging their aws. He RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 23