Così fan tutte

Mozart’s risqué tale of two soldiers who place bets that their fiancées are forever faithful is, in this revived production, aptly set in Naples. The weather is hot and steamy, the Mediterranean laps beyond the balcony and locals speak endlessly of love. Promiscuity here in louche Naples seems an easier option than in Vienna where Così fan tutte premiered in 1790.

Director David McVicar sets his version a decade before World War I when innocence is about to crumble – but the men with swords still look dashing in uniform and the women sumptuous in long dresses.  McVicar is masterful at directing grandiose, compelling operas but always enlivened with naturalistic and here comic detail, but avoiding the easy temptation of silly buffoonery and face-pulling.

Nathan Lay as Guglielmo and outstanding New Zealand tenor Filipe Manu as Ferrando lay their bets and agree to play the game of Don Alfonso (OA stalwart bass Richard Anderson). Pretending to be called into battle, they take leave from their hysterical fiancées, but later return to woo them exotically disguised as vaguely Turkish nobles.

Matching his rich costuming, designer Moritz Junge houses the action in a soaring time-stained palace sweeping to that sea view, and also serving as a Moroccan styled love nest. It’s home to the two women, sisters, who are encouraged by their uppity maid, (a deliciously comic Alexandra Oomens as Despina) to have fun while their soldiers are away.

The wit is sharp and, like the foibles of love, splendidly served by sublime music. And Mozart as usual creates full bodied and irreverent servant characters like the maid Despina (just as the French Revolution is taking to the streets)

The sisters are intensely wooed by their foreign charmers. Dorabella (Helen Sherman) soon falls for Guglielmo’s fun and laughter, and finally the moral upright Fiordiligi (beautifully performed by Britain’s Nardus Williams) almost tragically gives over to Ferrando’s intensity. 

It ends with a Shakespearean shrug of peace and resolution. The love game has left them far better matched for the future than they were before.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Keith Saunders