COSI FAN TUTTE
Classic opera proves it’s still got what it takes,
Cosi fan tutte
K (out of 4) By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte. Directed by Atom Egoyan. Bernard Labadie, conductor. Until Feb. 23 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen St. W. coc.ca or 416-3638231
It may be 229 years since Cosi fan tutte ( Women Are Like That) opened in Vienna, but its message of people needing to get over themselves when it comes to romantic love is as fresh as our friends’ last swipe left on Tinder.
The curtain went up at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on Tuesday night on a remount of a visually stunning 2014 Canadian Opera Company (COC) production. Director Atom Egoyan has played with his concept a little bit, but it still remains a staging that doesn’t always mesh well with the original plot.
Fortunately, the music itself could not have been rendered any better on any stage. Leading the COC orchestra, chorus and singers is Quebec Mozart maestro Bernard Labadie. He brought out every nuance in Mozart’s rich score. The sound was light, rhythmic and evocative.
All of the singers were a treat, starting with our own baritone Russell Braun, who brought a compelling mix of madman and doting father to the role of Don Alfonso.
Egoyan has turned that role into a sort of scientist who is instructing his pupils on the perils of trusting the fires of love too much. The 180-minute opera’s action unfolds under their watchful, notetaking gaze, which is at once inventive and unsettling.
The subjects of all this attention are sisters Fiordiligi (fabulously sung by soprano Kirsten MacKinnon) and Dorabella (Toronto mezzo Emily D’Angelo who acted as well as she sang), who are engaged to Guglielmo (baritone Johannes Kammler in great form) and Ferrando (tenor Ben Bliss at his lyric best).
Don Alfonso makes a bet with the boys that their girls won’t stay faithful if they go away. They then indulge in all sorts of underhanded shenanigans with the help of their maid Despina (soprano Tracy Dahl at her comic best) to get the women to stray.
And they do. Don Alfonso declares the lesson well taught and the lovers are reconciled. The emotional children have grown into maturity and all may have a better chance to live happily ever after.
Egoyan triple-underlines every point Lorenzo Da Ponte’s witty libretto tries to make. That gets a bit annoying at times. What felt worse is how, after 18 months of the #MeToo movement in full flight, we still have to see men groping and holding down women who really don’t want any part of them onstage. And then we have to see the women submit and be blamed for being fickle.
There are more sensitive ways to handle the romantic intrigue in this opera and this would be a good time to explore them.
Fortunately, there is a lot to please the eyes elsewhere onstage. Debra Hanson’s sets and costumes are gorgeous, and Michael Walton’s lighting is masterful.
Mozart and Da Ponte wanted to teach their audiences a lesson about being rational when it comes to human emotions. It’s the incredible craft of the words and music coming together to create something greater than the parts that really tells the tale — even more so when the singers are this good.
We’ll have to forgive the director for thinking this isn’t enough.
Classical music writer John Terauds is a freelance contributor for the Star, based in Toronto. He is supported by the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @JohnTerauds