Teenage Dream

Cherubino’s Act II aria, “Voi che sapete” (Track 6), contains one of Mozart’s most memorable—and singable—melodies. It is also an example par excellence of diegetic music, as well as a witty instance of dramatic irony. The scene takes place at the top of Act II, just after the Countess has lamented her loveless marriage to the Count in her own aria, “Porgi, amor.” The Countess summons Cherubino to her room, where she, Susanna, and Figaro have just agreed on a plan to disguise the young pageboy in Susanna’s clothing to ensnare the Count. Once he arrives, the Countess urges him to sing the “little song” he composed and offered to Susanna in exchange for a blue ribbon worn by the Countess.

Cherubino’s aria is thus one of several examples of diegetic music in Le Nozze di Figaro, whereby music is performed within the narrative world of the opera. When he sings “Voi che sapete,” the character Cherubino is literally singing to the Countess and Susanna, who accompanies him on guitar (as mimicked by soft pizzicato arpeggios in the strings). Mozart’s score and the action of the scene thus merge in a single musical gesture.

A fidgety, impish adolescent who confesses deep romantic love for the Countess—and pure physical infatuation for every other woman he lays eyes on—Cherubino expresses two contrasting emotions in this aria. The song’s tone, on the one hand, is philosophical, reflective, and sentimental, all aspects conveyed by its elegant and almost restrained primary theme. On the other hand, the performer is a mere teenager of low status who has been compelled to perform a love song in front of the very person to whom it is dedicated. This circumstance endows the aria with a persistent sense of nervousness, often evoked through staccato lines in the oboe and flute punctuating the end of vocal phrases.

Mozart’s score also brilliantly conveys Da Ponte’s text setting. Structured in conventional A–B–A form, the aria’s extended second section—twice the length of the first and third sections, respectively—illustrates Cherubino’s emotional confusion through multiple and unexpected modulations. Whereas the A section sits squarely in the key of B-flat major, the B section moves to F minor and then, using C major as a pivot chord, A-flat major. It is over this harmonic movement that Cherubino sings, “I have a feeling full of desire, which now is pleasure, now is torment.”

In the next line, “I freeze, then I feel my spirit all ablaze” (“Gelo e poi sento l’alma avvampar”), Mozart musically freezes the orchestral accompaniment in the new key of A-flat major as the woodwinds hold tied whole notes across multiple measures. At the conclusion of the B section, Cherubino’s emotional torment (“I sigh without meaning to. I tremble but don’t know why”) is further enacted through repeated, sputtering sixteenth-note groupings—a clear contrast to the simple, stately vocal lines found elsewhere throughout the aria. The trills in the flute and oboe at the song’s conclusion evoke the quickened heartbeat of a teenage boy hopelessly in love with an older woman.

“Voi che sapete” is, finally, a brilliant musical example of dramatic irony in an opera rife with surprises, conspiracies, and reversals. When Cherubino sings to the Countess, the audience already knows he is in love with her—but she is none the wiser (though she may have an inkling). At the same time, the audience has been privy to the Countess’s complaint about a life devoid of love in “Porgi, amor.” Cherubino, however, has little knowledge of her romantic distress. This aria, then, brings together two characters who seem not yet to know just how much they share, nor what might ensue when they ultimately realize it.