Outrage aside, this Così is mere simulation
One of those increasingly factitious operatic kerfuffles erupted over this production, after the Edinburgh Festival bigwigs saw its première at the Aix Festival this summer and felt moved to send out a nannyish warning to ticket-holders, in effect offering them their money back should they be scandalised by the presence of “adult themes and nudity”.
Adult – isn’t that the key word? And aren’t adults meant to take “themes” in their stride? Mrs Grundy is long dead. Everyone on all sides of this silly episode needs to grow up – audiences, directors, managements and the media. The only thing that worries me is whether the opera in question is intelligently and musically illuminated. Here, it isn’t.
On its own terms, Christophe Honoré’s staging is not without merit. It is set in a run-down back street in the Italian Fascist colony of Eritrea in the Thirties. Charged by a fetid atmosphere of exploitation, oppression and militarism, casual sexual violation of black women by white men is the norm (though simulated sex is as explicit as it gets).
Alban Ho Van’s sets, evocative of crumbling walls and intense heat, are subtly lit by Dominique Brugière, and members of the Cape Town Opera chorus lend authenticity. It’s all very intriguing.
Unfortunately, it bears no organic relation to Mozart and da Ponte’s opera. Honoré presents a cynical night-time drama of rampant lust and moral chaos, in which a nymphomaniac Despina teeters on a nervous breakdown and Fiordiligi finally prepares to kill herself.
Wow! If only the music and text didn’t inconveniently speak another language and tell a different story of a sunny garden caprice – a tease, a jeu d’esprit – that takes a realistically generous attitude to fallible humanity, gently questioning the sincerity of young love and reminding us that amusing games can end up causing real emotional pain. Mozart’s score – full of merriment and wit as well as romantic melancholy – makes this beautiful and therefore, as Keats insisted, true.
To make matters worse, Honoré can’t sustain his concept, and amid all the nasty bullying, stripping and taunting, there are scenes (such as the first act finale) when he lamely resorts to outright farce. It’s as though he wants to have his cake and eat it.
A strong cast enacts it all with commitment. The two richest voices were those of Joel Prieto, all melting ardour in “Un Aura Amorosa”, and Kate Lindsey, a Valley Girl Dorabella. Lenneke Ruiten’s soprano is a size too small for Fiordiligi – she sounded stretched in “Come Scoglio” – but she is a sensitive Mozartian. Nahuel di Pierro was a robust Guglielmo. I was marginally less keen on Sandrine Piau’s hysterical Despina and Rodney Gilfry’s rough-edged Alfonso.
What held the opera together – and Così does drag in the second act – was Jérémie Rhorer’s fleet and crisp conducting. Ensembles were sometimes too fast for precision, but if Honoré didn’t understand what Mozart was on about, Rhorer and the wondrous Freiburg Baroque Orchestra certainly did.