Lessons in love that bristle with dramatic tension
Così fan tutte Royal Opera, Covent Garden
Mozart’s compassionate insights into the human heart make the misogynistic title of his most perfect masterpiece as hard to accept as to translate, but Così fan
tutte is usually rendered as “Women are like that”. For the director Jan Philipp Gloger, making his Royal Opera debut with a new production of
Così – this tale of two officers who are goaded into testing their fiancées’ fidelity – it is the work’s subtitle that seems to interest him more. “La scuola
degli amanti”, actually favoured by the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, means “The school for lovers”, and indeed for much of the evening Covent Garden feels like a lecture theatre. Yet when Gloger’s series of sketches do finally come into dramatic focus, the production’s effect is potent.
Happily, while these lessons in love threaten to drag on, Semyon Bychkov gives an enthralling lesson in Mozart from the outset. Conducting his first Mozart opera in 20 years, he has a style that might be said to belong (in the best sense) to the old school. But Bychkov draws glowingly warm playing, and the textures are lithe and lively. The score’s darker colours are all brought out in a performance that bristles with dramatic tension.
The overture is somewhat upstaged as what appear to be the six principals (falsely, it turns out) take numerous curtain calls in 18th-century costume. Unexpectedly, the lovers then enter through the auditorium, dressed like late-arriving audience members heading for their seats, and once on stage the girls take selfies on their phones. Gloger’s regular designers Ben Baur (sets) and Karin Jud (costumes) certainly freewheel through time, via a 1940s, Brief
Encounter-like railway station for the farewell to something resembling the Garden of Eden for the Act 1 finale. It is not until the old manipulator Don Alfonso emerges as a theatre director – the second-act sets are ingenious – that the staging’s cleverness really registers.
That impact is diluted a little by a non-vintage cast. Even though all roles here are equally important, Fiordiligi ought to hold the key, and Corinne Winters hardly delivers a Covent Garden-level performance, her “Come
scoglio” in particular betraying a lack of the low notes. Angela Brower is a charming if light Dorabella and Alessio Arduini an adequate (and occasionally bare-chested) Guglielmo, so it is Daniel Behle’s Ferrando who scores most strongly with his introspective
“Un’aura amorosa”. Johannes Martin Kränzle makes a wonderfully cynical and well-sung Alfonso, and Sabina Puétolas a lively Despina. But Così is the ultimate ensemble opera, and on that level – with everyone finally unsettled by their emotional experiment – it works very well.