Schillertheater
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| Images: Monika Rittershaus |
Fiordiligi – Penny Sofraniadou
Dorabella – Susan Zarrabi
Guglielmo – Hubert Zapiór
Ferrando – Caspar Singh
Despina – Alma Sadé
Don Alfonso – Seth Carico
Sempronio – Amer El-Erwadi
Tizio – Goran Jurenec
Implementation of direction, choreography – Evgeny Kulagin
Staff director (Spielleitung) – Martha Jurowski
Co-costume designer – Tatyana Dolmatovskaya
Assistant set designer – Nikolay Simonov
Dramaturgy – Beate Breidenbach, Maximilian Hagemeyer
Lighting – Olaf Freese
Video – Ilya Shagalov
There should never be a run-of-the-mill Così
fan tutte: Mozart’s most exquisite opera, arguably his profoundest, and
perhaps ultimately his greatest. (It is, at any rate, my current favourite, and
not only because I heard it last.) This was certainly not it, whether in origin,
direction, or performance. Indeed, this staging from Berlin’s Komische Oper is
an outstanding achievement in almost every respect, giving one much to think
about, much to relish, and much by which to be discomfited. On top of that, it
is a long time since I have seen and heard so thoroughly accomplished a cast.
Kirill Serebrennikov’s production was first seen in Zurich in 2018, albeit under highly unusual circumstances stemming from the director’s house arrest. His choreographer and assistant Evgeny Kulagin, here credited with ‘Umsetzung Inszenierung,’ took Serebrennikov’s place in person, passing to Serebrennikov’s lawyer film recordings of what was developing in rehearsal for the director in turn to comment on via video message. Hence the somewhat involved list for the production team, which I thought important to include as a whole and with as clear a translation of terms as I could. Following several extensions to his house arrest, followed by conviction for fraud, probation, dismissal from the Gogol Centre, and bans on travel and leadership of any cultural institution in receipt of government support, Serebrennikov’s suspended sentence was eventually cancelled by another court on account of good behaviour and the travel ban lifted. Having been permitted to travel to Germany in 2022, he was able to direct the Berlin incarnation of the production, of which this is now the first revival. It would be difficult to deny that these circumstances make the production’s achievement all the more impressive; it certainly suggests some truth may yet lie in the double-edged, Romantic adage that adverse circumstances can foster great artistic achievement.
Onwards, in any case, to the production ‘itself’.
It has already begun when one enters the theatre. A horizontally split set (levels
1 and 2) reveals at this stage – it remains, whilst the settings it reveals
change over time – two gym settings, male and female, extras working out. Exercise
of a different kind, orchestral tuning, provides the accompaniment. The more
physical variety onstage continues into the Overture, skipping noises proving something
of an aural irritant, albeit a minor issue in the greater scheme of things. Guglielmo
and Ferrando arrive, and eventually Don Alfonso, with much stereotypically,
indeed performatively masculine behaviour to be observed as the stage is set. It
soon becomes clear, though, that whilst Alfonso has some sort of hold over the
men at the gym – not only our pair of lovers – he is also a deeply damaged
person, broadening and deepening his characterisation from the typical
stock-character cynic. This may be connected with war, which looms eerily large
for a production conceived in 2017-18; I could not help but wonder whether some
changes had been made in light of the invasion of Ukraine, which Serebrennikov
publicly opposed. For, when Guglielmo and Ferrando are sent off to combat – it
is unusually clear what might be involved, coffins and all, the women in
mourning – the military video game whose control Alfonso is trying, indeed
struggling, has him shaken, traumatised. Is that merely a metaphor? Perhaps. We
may remember Monteverdi’s Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi and any number
of other literary and artistic connections and constructions. Revelation of the
betrayal or defeat he has suffered in battles of the heart, via a display of
text messages, offers further context but does not exclude something darker and
deeper still. My sense was of a veteran of both types of conflict—and more.
For when the opposing ‘team’ takes stock, led by Despina, now not a servant but a therapist, she shows Fiordiligi and Dorabella slides of typical male behaviour, especially in the armed forces. What better way to show her patients – the word is actually used in the subtitles, which alternate as faithful translation and guide to the production – what their lovers will really be up to, if they are still alive? Her visual aids pursue a number of lines, some frankly feminist, some more cynical. The therapeutic turn that has informed many of Dmitri Tcherniakov’s more recent productions (e.g. Carmen, Les Troyens, and the Ring; as well, I am told, as his own Così, which I have not seen) is first brought on board but also brought into question. If anyone is perpetrating a hoax here, it is arguably Despina, who also, far from coincidentally, seems the most resilient of the lot.
Clichés that elsewhere have become tired, for instance the use of mobile telephones, both for messages and pictures, are for once used to genuine dramatic ends. This is, after all, how modern communications work—and modern relationships, even sex, too. Nowhere is this clearer, yet also more genuinely complex, than when Guglielmo and Ferrando are replaced by their ‘Albanian’ – in this case, first Arab – counterparts, Sempronio and Tizio, here played by actors (Amar El-Erwadi and Goran Jurenec) whose time at the gym seems to have been still more successful. The ambiguity over whether they are actual, hired replacements – I think they almost certainly are – is such that one can take different views. ‘Different views’, though, may be understood in a different sense, action (of various kinds) being viewed from another level via video link (not necessarily ‘inspired’ by the director’s treatment, but gaining greater meaning nonetheless through that connection) or even ‘in person’ but as ghostly presence, apparently unseen by and indeed deceased for Fiordiligi and Dorabella. There are especially cruel touches, such as thinking all is well, only to hear the lavatory flush from the en suite bathroom: all very much in the spirit of those extraordinary horns of cuckoldry Mozart employs at crucial points in the score. Actual horns are donned by both ‘Albanians’ at one point, suggesting an assumption of quasi-divine status, Dionysus or even Zeus, enabling and initiating congress and conquest.
For men now are as objectified as women. As
a gay man, Serebrennikov will know this all too well, but so do many younger heterosexual
men too. This remains a heterosexual opera on the most fundamental level,
without say the step into overt lesbianism taken by Stefan Herheim in his
reimagination of Die Entführung aus dem Serail as an exploration of love
between and beyond the sexes. On the other hand, the bodies of all concerned, but
especially Sempronio and Tizio, are so resolutely in the gaze of us all that boundaries
blur and dissolve whether we like it or not—and the implication would be that
most, perhaps all, of us do. We are all actors, playing roles here, Ferrando
explicitly in assuming the metatheatrical, ambiguous with respect to diegetic
status, role of ‘a singer’ in ‘Un’aura amoroso’, ‘credited’ at its close by Don
Alfonso. That extends, moreover, to gender roles, surely a tribute to the
much-maligned yet ever-relevant Judith Butler. It ultimately comes as no
surprise, perhaps even as a strangely satisfying fulfilment, that the title scrawled
at the back by Don Alfonso is corrected to ‘Così fan tutti,’ tellingly ‘girlish’
hearts atop the ‘i's a further turn of the dialectical gender-screw (as it
were).
And yet, this remains a deeply disillusioning experience for all, the modern anomie of what are either hotel rooms or a modern apartment so fashionable it might as well be, not the least of the bridges constructed between deeper meanings to be drawn from Mozart (to a lesser extent, Da Ponte too) and Serebrennikov’s conception. Both women have incomplete, neon-lit crucifixes above their beds: probably only a ‘design feature’, but extending into something more in Fiordiligi’s case, allied to her little shrine (to what, though?) assembled for ‘Per pietà’, when she drags it across the floor, failing twice to maintain the electric connection. For Mozart, these parodies of opera seria have a message that is, among other things, deeply theological; that may or may not be the case here, but it is certainly not to be excluded. This is, after all, a Passion of Passion to rival – to my mind, even to surpass – Tristan und Isolde.
Credit should again be accorded the company’s extras (Komparserie) who had much to do throughout and did it well, not least dressing the two brides in full traditional Russian wedding dress – they might almost have been auditioning for Les Noces – only to have to undress them once again in acts of inflation, deflation, and revelation. In a brilliant coup de théâtre, we turn suddenly to an interpolated musical reminiscence – or premonition – of Don Giovanni’s Stone Guest Scene. The Albanians, seizing hold like twin Commendatores of ‘their’ women’s hands, may be standing in judgement over them or may simply be trying to keep them. It is a disruption that can doubtless only be visited once, unique to this production, but a highly productive one, reminding us that even in the most hedonistic, secular, ‘sex-positive’ society, the question of sin, of remoteness from the divine, does not disappear, far from it; we simply pretend it has and mistake euphemism for theodicy. As desolate as ever, probably more so, the characters attempting to draw some sort of lesson from events that have shattered their world seem quite unaware that, on the level above, an actual fire has begun to blaze. Narcissism, after all, is not the least of our contemporary sins—and/or ailments.
All this, or most of it, would go for
little, were it not brought to life by fine performances. This it certainly
received. I can honestly find nothing of any importance to which to object, and
much to praise. If I write less about them on this occasion, it is not because
I consider them less important; for one thing, they are not to be extracted
from what has been said above, but rather very much part of it. In any case, Penny
Sofraniadou and Susan Zarrabi portrayed, from the outset, properly distinguished
Fiordiligi and Dorabella, clean of line, if hardly of deeper intention. Both
drew on varied palettes of vocal colour that could blend where dramatically and
musically necessary, without loss to identities that shifted yet never merged.
Much the same could be said – and this is Mozart’s laboratory of musical quasi-geometry
at work, as well as their artistry – of the Ferrando and Guglielmo of Hubert Zapiór
and Caspar Singh. Equally adept as actors and singers, their exploration of
wounded masculinities was every bit as revealing as that of Seth Carico’s
uniquely subtle Don Alfonso. Ferrando, as usual, had two rather than his full
three arias: a pity but not the end of the world. Alma Sadé’s Despina likewise
not only acquired new depth as Despina, but contributed that greater range.
(And what a relief it was, for once, not to have to endure the usual ‘silly
voices’.)
Erina Yashima’s direction of the orchestra proved similarly impeccable. Hers was not the sort of deeply personal reading that leads one to speak of a particular standpoint, ‘Böhm’s Così’ or ‘Muti’s’; but it performed a different, more readily theatrical function, near-faultless in its incitement, mirroring, and at times questioning of the action onstage. That I barely noticed her tempi as such speaks for itself: there was a ‘rightness’ in context that could not be gainsaid. Nor could the excellence of the orchestral playing in a score in which any false move, any slight infelicity of intonation or phrasing, will stand out like a sore thumb. The Komische Oper may be known primarily for its emphasis on theatre, but that should not mean the orchestra matters less, rather that it is part and parcel of the action. At any rate, so it sounded here. They may not have been singing, but our ‘Albanian’ actors Amar El-Erwadi and Goran Jurenec also contributed greatly to the action and its ultimate achievement. If, as I suggested earlier, the production was able even to reinvigorate well-worn directorial clichés with new meaning, I may as well offer as my own ‘a true ensemble performance’. Do not take my word for it, though: if possible, try to see and hear this Così for yourself. It has, for whatever this may be worth, my highest recommendation.
