Andrey Zhilikhovsky as Guglielmo, Samantha Hankey as Dorabella, Federica Lombardi as Fiordiligi, and Duke Kim as Ferrando in Mozart’s “Così fan tutte.” Picture: Marty Sohl / Met Opera
Okay, they haven’t fairly nailed Don Giovanni. However in any other case, the Metropolitan Opera’s current productions of Mozart’s late operas — Richard Eyre’s Nozze di Figaro, Simon McBurney’s Zauberflöte, and Phelim McDermott’s Così fan tutte — have managed to translate Mozart’s magnificently unusual and sophisticated music dramas into trendy (effectively, Twentieth-century) drag to nice success.
The Met’s aesthetic program is essentially conservative, buying and selling capes and hoop skirts for neckties and cocktail attire, stirring in just a little further stage enterprise, however in any other case not taking any wild or complicated interpretive swings — leading to productions which can be, at their worst, tepid and weak, however at their finest, readily accessible and entertaining stagings like these. I’ve been lucky sufficient to see most of those productions carried out greater than as soon as, however Wednesday’s season premiere of Così fan tutte confirmed that it’s some of the satisfying watches out of the bunch.
Mozart’s most musically splendid opera, Così may additionally be some of the troublesome, out of all of the works in the usual repertoire, to stage persuasively — or, at the very least, out of all of the works in the usual repertoire that don’t have a dragon in them. The misogyny in Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto couldn’t be extra overt (It’s proper within the title! ALL women, the marquee proclaims, will allow you to down!), however as in, say, The Service provider of Venice, the work is so superbly unusual and nuanced that it appears to undermine the prejudices of its personal time.
So how do you let this plot play out in such a approach that its contradictions appear refined as an alternative of merely contradictory? How do you stage a narrative the place the ethical is so … amoral? How can we root for lovers who behave so hatefully?
Fast plot synopsis: Ferrando and Guglielmo assume that their fiancées, the sisters Dorabella and Fiordiligi, are completely devoted. Don Alfonso bets the boys that no girl is that devoted, and to check his concept, the 2 faux to go off to conflict and are available again in disguise to seduce one another’s woman. He enlists a chambermaid, Despina, to assist with their scheme, the boys faux to drink poison to win the ladies’ pity, and so they sustain the farce till they’ve the ladies signing marriage contracts to their new suitors.
It’s a pileup of perverse incentives; Alfonso has not solely manipulated the ladies into breaking their vows, however he’s additionally manipulated the boys into competing to cuck one another and lose the guess. It’s all rendered extra comedian, but additionally unusually transferring, by the intense great thing about the music. McDermott’s manufacturing responds by leaning into an aesthetic that embraces contradiction —glowing, low-cost, distorted, farcical, earnest, pretty, ugly — specifically, the carnivalesque spirit of a Coney Island-like seaside amusement park within the Fifties.
Gerald Finley as Don Alfonso in Mozart’s “Così fan tutte.” Picture: Marty Sohl / Met Opera
The time and place match completely with the themes of the piece: The mores of midcentury America erode on the wavering line the place land meets sea and sky, just a little trip spot the place the principles of on a regular basis life appear to have been suspended. The characters keep at a close-by motel, that place the place People can most simply disguise their identities or disappear fully. In probably the most hanging addition to the opera, this Don Alfonso instructions a sideshow troupe of supernumeraries, who assist him run the present he places on for us (transferring set items, and so forth.), in addition to the varied charades he places on inside the opera.
Between the puppetry in his pivotal manufacturing of Satyagraha, the juggling in his Akhnaten, and the sideshow performers on this Così, Phelim McDermott has a reasonably good observe document of utilizing “low” spectacle to enliven the solemn stage of the Met, and that is no exception. As classical comedy upsets the hierarchies of sophistication and gender, the bonds of monogamy, these performers — a bearded girl, a pair of contortionists, a pair of little folks, and so forth — recommend a world during which the very bounds of the human physique have been suspended.
Watching the efficiency this time, listening to the viewers snicker and cheer because the little folks emerge from Alfonso’s magic trunk at the beginning of the overture, I used to be additionally struck by parallels between the uneasy approach during which the spectator engages with a sideshow “freak” and the methods during which Mozart and Da Ponte toy with our sympathies. Twentieth-century sideshows may very well be websites of ridicule and exploitation, or properties the place individuals who would have been undesirable in accordance with the hypocrisies of well mannered society may discover work, dwelling, and neighborhood, the place as an alternative of outcasts, they may develop into celebrities to a paying viewers. Are you laughing on the variations of those sideshow performers, or are you celebrating them? When the characters in Così are heartbroken, are we laughing at their distress, or commiserating with them?
Samantha Hankey as Dorabella in a scene from Mozart’s “Così fan tutte.” Picture: Marty Sohl / Met Opera
As a result of that’s the factor about Coney and Così: The opera isn’t remotely believable; the characters are too imply or too silly to be remotely sympathetic… and but. It’s simply the way in which it feels once you go to noisy, greasy, vulgar Coney Island, and the solar begins to set on the cheesy, ugly decorations, and all of the twinkling multicolored lights come on within the dimming radiance of a protracted summer time twilight — you’re going to search out that stunning whether or not you wish to or not. The carnival rides additionally lend the stage tableaux a visible scale that an intimate piece like Così would in any other case lack beneath the large Met proscenium.
One draw back of creating Don Alfonso a seedy Coney Island character is that the opera’s class evaluation goes out the window. He’s not a decent aristocratic thinker right here; he’s just a few man in a Cab Calloway swimsuit — and whereas I’m at it, I ought to admit that Gerald Finley, who performed the function on Wednesday night time, is solely not a really humorous actor. However he is an excellent musician and a compelling stage performer, and his dark-hued voice and bodily gravitas carry out the sinister facet of what’s, finally, fairly a diabolical character. (This manufacturing even places him in a purple sequined swimsuit for the massive marriage ceremony finale!)
Simply because the Don Alfonso of Da Ponte’s libretto has, by advantage of his class, transcended typical morality, his associate in crime — the chambermaid Despina — is conversely liberated from respectability by the meanness of her personal station. Because the opera’s MVP, Despina is sensible, humorous, and likable, and Ana María Martínez managed to be all three, whereas lending the function an intriguing vocal shade I’d by no means fairly heard earlier than — shiny, however not brassy, extra like a clarinet — and naturally, she clowned it up with a shrill, reedy sound for her scenes the place she will get up in drag to play a quack or a notary.
Federica Lombardi as Fiordiligi, Duke Kim as Ferrando, Gerald Finley as Don Alfonso, Ana María Martínez as Despina, Andrey Zhilikhovsky as Guglielmo, and Samantha Hankey as Dorabella in Mozart’s “Così fan tutte.” Picture: Marty Sohl / Met Opera
On the entire, the solid was almost as enticing to the attention as to the ear, with the women sinking their enamel into the textual content and giving opera seria realness within the emotional weight of their vocal performances. Samantha Hankey’s Dorabella confirmed off an enormous, luscious instrument, and the flashes of brightness in Federica Lombardi’s Fiordiligi had been particularly interesting. As Ferrando, the shockingly good-looking Duke Kim married a candy, lyrical tenor, lately heard in his Met debut as Tamino, to an appealingly awkward stage presence — in any case, he’s taking part in an fool taking part in a lothario —, however I used to be most taken with Andrey Zhilikovsky, a Moldovan baritone heretofore unknown to me, and his hammy, attractive Guglielmo. Humorous, attractive, accountable for a variety of vocal colours, his efficiency was a bona fide star flip.
I gained’t shock anyone who’s ever heard the Met orchestra once I say that they gave us an beautiful efficiency, their well-balanced and -blended choirs of devices supporting the singers with billowing chords. Conductor Nimrod David Pfeffer, unknown to me regardless of his more and more frequent engagements as a Mozartian on the Met, leaned indulgently into the loveliness of the rating — not the screwball tempo I might often demand for a Mozart comedy, but it surely gave us the time to settle into the richness of Così.
As for this revival: does the manufacturing maintain up? Effectively, as with every enjoyable honest, a little bit of the glitter is certain to rub off. When Fiordiligi climbs into one of many vehicles on the Ferris wheel and rides up and down, just a little gentle shines on that automotive within the miniature Ferris wheel upstage, so we all know we’re seeing it in close-up—however on Wednesday night time, once I noticed the wheel once more later within the present, I observed that the sunshine was nonetheless on. Why? Was it like that in earlier stagings of this manufacturing, and I simply by no means caught it? Or was it a uncommon mistake by one of many Met’s good stagehands? Most of my complaints with the night had been like this — minor quibbles, the place one thing of the unique magic was misplaced together with the nice shock that had accompanied the premiere performances. However all in all, it was a present I used to be as joyful to return to as I’m to Coney Island on a summer time night time. Acquainted, sure, however a well-recognized delight.
