The Canadian Opera Company has very wisely revived Atom Egoyan’s 2014
production of Cosi Fan Tutte to go along with Richard Strauss’s Elektra
for its winter season. It is a highly enjoyable and brilliant production and
the only thing for you to do is high-tail it to the Four Seasons Centre for
tickets. However, I will make a few comments on it.
There are two images that will mark this production in seeing it and in
memory. The first is a large reproduction of Frida Kahlo’s surrealist painting The
Two Fridas and the other is the setting of the opera in a school for
lovers.
Cosi Fan Tutte is
about love, fidelity, treachery and reconciliation. You remember Ferrando and
Guglielmo are in love (that does their passion an injustice) with Dorabella and
Fiordiligi. They will not brook any doubt about the depth and constancy of
their loves. Needless to say, the young ladies reciprocate in equal measure. Are
women fickle? Don Alfonso bets that they are and to prove his point he has the
men appear disguised as Albanians and woo the women. Guess what?
Johannes
Kammler as Guglielmo, Emily D’Angelo as Dorabella, Kirsten MacKinnon
as
Fiordiligi and Ben Bliss as Ferrando. Photo: Michael Cooper
Love is a matter of the heart and the lovers in Cosi talk of broken hearts and ripping out hearts at the thought or
fact of infidelity. Kahlo’s Two Fridas
is a double self-portrait of the artist wearing a European dress, with an
anatomically visible heart and a vein dripping blood on one side and of herself
wearing a traditional Mexican dress, perhaps a broken heart and holding a portrait
of her estranged husband in her hand. .
The two sisters of Cosi are very much alike but they are also very
different and one can draw parallels between them and the two Fridas. You can make whatever you want of the
portrait as it relates to the production, but Egoyan makes sure that you pay
attention to the details of the painting.
Rather than a café, Egoyan with Set Designer Debra Hanson, sets some of
the action in a school for lovers. The “students” will make up the chorus and
provide some humorous appearances. And you will see numerous large size
butterflies and they can mean whatever you want but you may wish to think of
them as symbols of freedom.
If you want to ignore all the above, you will still enjoy an
effervescent, marvelously sung production. Start with soprano Kirsten MacKinnon
as Fiordiligi, the sister who refuses to fall for the pursuing “Albanian.” She
tells us she is solid as a rock in the octave-leaping aria “Come scoglio immoto
resta” only to live to sing the gorgeous “Per pieta” asking for forgiveness.
Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo as Dorabella is more easily convinced to
fall for the Albanian visitor but we like her for her practical and perhaps
even modern thinking about love. All protestations to the contrary, she
understands human nature and the attraction of love at hand over love in the
absence of a lover. Well sung, well done.
Tenor Ben Bliss and baritone Johannes Kammler as Ferrando and Guglielmo respectively
are classic lovers, full of passion, hot wind, irrational thinking and splendid
singing. Baritone Russell Braun who sang
Guglielmo in 2014 takes on the role of the philosopher Don Alfonso.
No Cosi is complete without a very good Despina. She is the
sisters’ maid and plotting partner of Don Alfonso. Soprano Tracy Dahl is a
spitfire of a singer and performer in the role. She is funny, sings with great
verve and moves with amazing speed. A delight to see and hear.
Bernard Labadie conducts the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra and Mozart’s
music is a sheer pleasure to hear.
With Egoyan at the helm, you may want to describe the production as the
thinking man’s Cosi Fan Tutte but that may discourage some people from seeing
it. Like the lovers at some point, you can enjoy the opera without thinking, if
you so choose.
_____
Cosi Fan Tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte opened on February 5 and will be performed eight times
until February 23, 2019 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. Tel: 416-363-6671. www.coc.ca
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