Mozart’s great romcom delivers a night of pure entertainment
Così fan tutte
English Touring Opera, Hackney Empire ★★★★
Although I’ve long laboured to subscribe to the fashionable view that Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto for Così fan tutte embodies profundities about the human condition and the paradoxes of our emotions, I have arrived at another conclusion: it is in truth just a rather silly and faintly misogynistic farce, running on standard 18th-century romcom lines and redeemed only by the genius in Mozart’s fabulously inventive score.
This delightful new production by English Touring Opera confirms my heresy. Despite some ambitious talk by the director and conductor about gender roles and the Enlightenment, it works best as pure message-free entertainment, charmingly sung and vivaciously played.
The nominal setting for Laura Attridge’s staging is Alexandria in the Thirties. In her programme essay, she references its louche émigré culture and suggests denizens such as the writer Lawrence Durrell and poet CP Cavafy as a source for the cynical Don Alfonso.
I couldn’t see much sign of that in this squeaky-clean setting, but the city and the period have happily inspired the designer Oliver Townsend to create a gorgeously gilded atrium and costumes out of the fantasy world of Hollywood screwball movies. With the bleak weather drizzling away outside, it looked jolly nice.
Attridge allows the story to unfurl easily and some freshly executed comic business provokes genuinely spontaneous laughter, abetted by the wit of Jeremy Sams’s excellent translation. Just enough emotional depth is hinted at in the second act “seduction” duets to stop the charade becoming psychologically implausible, but the mood is predominantly upbeat and uncomplicated.
Stephan Loges’s pallidly effete Alfonso aside, the cast offers vivid characterisation, attractive singing and firmly rehearsed ensemble. Joanna Marie Skillett sounds completely secure throughout
Fiordiligi’s two challenging arias, and Martha Jones is a warmly engaging Dorabella. Jenny Stafford and Frederick Long are both naturally ebullient comedians, cheerfully enjoying the chance to overact as Despina and Guglielmo. The outstanding voice, however, is that of the robust tenor Thomas Elwin.
Holly Mathieson conducts perkily; the orchestral playing is rough at the edges but always lively. This is a job well done, and the result is a show that will surely go down a storm on its forthcoming national tour.