Cosi Fan Tutte
Mozart’s COSI FAN TUTTE, his final opera written in collaboration with Lorenzo da Ponte, has had a checkered performance history. In the decades after Mozart’s death puritanical attitudes kept the opera from finding its place in the canon. (Beethoven famously found the plot immoral.) Also, like certain late Shakespeare plays, the opera defies easy classification. COSI confounded the public by seducing them with the exterior trappings of frivolous farce, then slyly demanding that they face uncomfortable questions about fidelity and the nature of the sexes. Performances of the opera didn’t become common until after the middle of the 20th Century.
For their second outing of the 2011- 2012 Season, LA Opera is presenting a sparkling realization of COSI imported from Glyndebourne. Originally directed by Nicholas Hytner and staged for Los Angeles by Ashley Dean, the production is witty, sophisticated and free of a shoehorned directorial “concept” designed to help the plot along. Hytner and Dean take the opera seriously, while never missing a laugh. The evening is filled with intelligently telling details, from the coffeehouse which starts the action to Fiordiligi fumbling in her bag for the cameo of her fiancée. The result of these details is to emphasize the humanity of the characters and allow us to see ourselves in them.
Da Ponte’s libretto explores the fluctuating relationships between two soldiers, Ferrando and Guglielmo who are engaged to sisters, Dorabella and Fiordiligi. The men’s friend, Don Alfonso, scoffs at their belief in the fidelity of the ladies and devises an elaborate scheme to prove his point that all women are fickle. The men disguise themselves and each woos the opposite sister with surprising results all around.
The quartet of lovers proved musically strong and dramatically provocative. Ildebrando D’Arcangelo made a dashing and sexually charged Guglielmo who sang with the kind of large and darker-tinged sound which is rare in Mozart, outside of Giovanni. With less steel in both voice and manner than many other Fiordiligi’s, Alexandra Kurzak chose a more girlish interpretation which suited the production perfectly. As Ferrando, Simir Pirgu sang with sweet sincerity and seemed to be having a wonderful time, while Ruxandra Donose proved a generous-voiced and ebulliently adorable Dorabella.
Typically Don Alfonso is played by an older performer, but Lorenzo Regazzo’s youthful and somewhat anarchic performance was refreshing and lacked nothing in authority. Roxana Constantinescu was a fetching and eminently practical Despina who coped easily with the role’s vocal demands while managing to wring every laugh from the absurd situations in which she found herself.
James Conlon led the orchestra with buoyancy and verve through three hours of music which felt like one. And, after all the plot machinations, we found the couples facing each other without disguise or pretense. In Hytner’s ambiguous final tableau we find no clear-cut answers. Somehow that feels like the perfect ending to a truly memorable production.
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion September 18 – October 8, 2011 www.laopera.com