Dinis Sousa conductor; Phelim McDermott, director; Tom Pye, designer; Laura Hopkins, costumes; Paule Constable, lighting. Lucy Crowe, Fiordiligi | Taylor Raven, Dorabella | Joshua Blue, Ferrando | Darwin Prakash, Guglielmo | Andrew Foster-Williams, Don Alfonso | Ailish Tynan, Despina plus circus skills ensemble
I had heard good things about this production – 19th century Naples translated to 1950’s Coney Island, unlikely as this seems – and having Lucy Crowe in the cast was another big draw – she must be the UK’s finest soprano in this sort or repertory at present.
In fact (not that I have seen that many productions – traditional Covent Garden and ENO ones in the 70’, the recent Covent Garden one, that’s about it) this must be the finest and most enjoyable production and performance I have ever seen of this work.
It helped of course (but with some other productions could have hindered) that I was sitting in Row B of the stalls, thus unusually near to the stage and so could see very clearly the quality of the acting close up. But my reasons for this assessment are based on a range of considerations:
- The Coney Island/motel concept was in no way distracting.. Compared to the Marriage of Figaro Cosi is a much more static work, with less recitative, and the sense of one aria after another can induce boredom if not carefully handled. The Coney Island concept gave an opening to the circus skills ensemble, and the tacky motel after a while seemed entirely appropriate – both helped to engage the audience. Some of the backgrounds of a rollercoaster, a big wheel and a helter-skelter were quite haunting. The design concept allowed Don Alfonso to be a more rounded figure than he is sometimes portrayed, engaging with people and not just being a puppet-master. The circus performers were a brilliant idea, and they do a range of tasks – holding placards which describe the main themes of the piece, doing their tricks (but not too often – a fire eater, a sword swallower, acrobats, the strong man and so forth); and they also shift scenery and are part of the crowd reacting to the story. All this engages the audience and keeps us alert even during a sequence of arias;
- The actual construction of the set was clever. There were moveable fairground dodgems, horses and other rides, pushed around by the circus people and stage hands, and a floating balloon for Fiordiligi. There was a drop down set of the motel rooms where Fiordiligi and Dorabella were staying, that had both exteriors and interiors, which could be shifted quickly from one to the other, again helping with pace and audience attention (plus a set of windows and a pane of glass in the doors, which people looked through or even sung through at various points (helping with the length of arias like ‘Come scoglio’), Incidentally, Wikipedia reports that “”Mozart had an extreme dislike for Ferrarese del Bene, for whom he first created the role of Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte. Aware of her tendency to drop her chin and throw back her head while singing low and high notes respectively, Mozart chose to fill her showpiece aria (“Come scoglio”) with continuous harmonic leaps to force her to bob her head “like a chicken”.. The truth of this is questioned by Wikipedia but it’s a nice story and fully in keeping with what we know about Mozart’s humour.
- The translation, again by Jeremy Sams, I thought was excellent – no jarring notes and very singable too. It was also very funny at points and got a lot of audience laughs, aided by the clarity of diction of almost everyone on stage. I appreciated particularly the translation of ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ – ‘That’s human nature’ – which gets round some of the objections this piece can attract when done less absorbingly and sensitively.
- The quality of acting and inter-acting on stage by the principal singers was outstanding. All of them were utterly believable, even the two soldiers, who can seem a bit wooden in some productions. This allowed Don Alfonso to be a warmer, less cardboard figure. Lucy Crowe, and to not quite the same extent Taylor Raven, both showed us the extent of the distress they felt in gradually succumbing to the two ‘strangers’.
- The quality of singing. I have to say it – I have heard nobody live since Margaret Price and Kiri Te Kanawa 50 years ago singing Fiordiligi quite as well as Lucy Crowe, who has everything for the role – good diction, a beautiful sound whatever the volume or height/depth of the note, some meltingly lovely phrasing, and complete control of the coloratura elements. This was an utterly outstanding performance. Ailish Tynan as motel chambermaid Despina again was just about the best Despina I have seen – never hamming it up, but performing with a kind of wide-eyed madness that was very funny. She sang her two big arias with deftness and again with some lovely phrasing – as an aside the director gave her the best and least winceable/ silly disguises I have ever seen for doctor and marriage lawyer. Andrew Foster-Williams – not a name I’ve come across – was utterly believable and with a warm bass-baritone sound. The other three principals – again, all new to me – were never other than very good, but perhaps less distinctive. Taylor Raven was a particularly effective actor, drawing out the early attraction she felt for the disguised Guglielmo very believably
- Dinis Sousa gave the music time to breathe and the right sort of Mozartian bounce – nothing seemed rushed or over-excited, but had its internal energy brought out with vivid orchestral playing (including no horn mis-behavings in Fiordiligi’s big Act 2 aria, and a wonderfully perky oboe in the overture and Come Scoglio)
I avoided this production in 2022 (and I think before Covid) feeling it was likely to be a bit of a disaster. The very opposite is true – it’s an ENO triumph of a classic kind, up to their highest standards of years gone by. That they can put on a show like this (and in the same week as a very effective ‘Mahagonny’) at a time of such financial crisis and dislocation / unemployment for them is remarkable
John's musical journey 