Così fan tutte, Grange Festival Opera, 10 June 2023

Fiordiligi – Samantha Clarke
Dorabella – Kitty Whately
Guglielmo – Nicholas Lester
Ferrando – Alessandro Fisher
Despina – Carolina Lippo
Don Alfonso – Christian Senn

Martin Lloyd-Evans (director)
Dick Bird (designs)
Johanna Town (lighting)

Grange Festival Chorus (chorus master: Tom Primrose)
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Kirill Karabits (conductor)

Guglielmo (Nicholas Lester), Dorabella (Kitty Whately),
Fiordiligi (Samantha Clarke), Ferrando (Alessandro Fisher)
Images: Craig Fuller

To Hampshire and The Grange for the second of what should for me be three productions of Così fan tutte this summer. I cannot yet comment on Munich (Benedict Andrews/Vladimir Jurowski) but Oslo (Katrine Wiedemann/Tobias Ringborg) makes for an interesting comparison. Both had good casts, though if pushed, I should say The Grange had the edge. Though there were a good few things to admire in conductor and orchestra in Oslo, here the wonderful Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and an inspired Kirill Karabits unquestionably offered the superior experience. It was, however, in staging that the greatest contrast was to be found. Whereas Katrine Wiedemann’s production sometimes verged on the bizarre and failed to add up to more than the sum of its parts, Martin Lloyd-Evans trod a highly ‘traditional’ line. Neither seemed to me especially revelatory, though by the same token, neither lacked positive qualities. Ultimately, though, it was difficult not to conclude that both would have benefited from a greater dose of abstraction – or, paradoxically, even historical specificity – so as to penetrate more closely to the (broken) heart of Mozart and Da Ponte’s extraordinary musical laboratory. 

Here, Così is set somewhere on the Bay of Naples – we see advertisements for visits to Herculaneum and Vesuvius – in the eighteenth century. Nothing wrong with that, of course: we do not need a multi-storey carpark for the sake of it. But whereas, say, Oliver Platt’s 2018 production for Opera Holland Park, one of the best I have seen, used that setting to go further, to venture into the work’s exquisite, sadistic cruelty via the commedia dell’arte, this seems content to stay where it is and to offer an often fresh eye for detail within that framework. There is a nice sense of a world beyond, of a tavern in which intrigue takes place, populated by recognisable human beings. There is a definite ear for music, action often carefully choreographed so as to fit rhythm and even harmony: not at all something we can take for granted, however much we should be able to. That, presumably, was a matter for both director and cast; whoever is responsible should be duly congratulated. I was less sure about the second-act portrayal of Fiordiligi and Dorabella as drunk. I can understand why one might wish to resort to some sort of drug to ‘explain’ their actions, but ultimately that seems to me to miss the point of the action (singular). It certainly, however, chimed with the state of some of the audience, newly returned from the long interval, heartily signalling their approval. There was nothing, then, to scare away the horses, which may well have been the intention.

Karabits and the orchestra, however, provided deeper insight aplenty, in a performance that seemed almost to have come from the golden age of orchestral Mozart. It was probably not faultless; what, apart from Mozart, is? But I cannot recall a single slip, which would usually register with stark clarity in so cruel a score. More to the point, tone was warm and variegated; articulation was telling, without drawing narcissistic attention to itself; and line and tempi proved quite without reproach. Karabits’s equally musical and theatrical reading offered great cumulative power and wisdom, and orchestral soloists played like angels. So often, one fears that orchestral Mozart has been lost forever; Karabits and the Bournemouth SO showed this categorically not to be the case. I am usually a sceptic when it comes to harpsichord continuo playing during orchestral passages. Peter Davies’s contribution was, however, a model of its kind: neither exhibitionistic nor impeding, but rather enabling performance and, briefly on occasion, beguiling too.

Don Alfonso (Christian Senn)

Samantha Clarke impressed greatly as Fiordiligi, her performance truly building towards an explosive ‘Come scoglio’. Kitty Whately, also Holland Park’s Dorabella, proved every inch – note? – her equal, yet properly different in character. Their collaborative chemistry was notable, as was that between Nicholas Lester’s Guglielmo and Alessandro Fisher’s Ferrando, both offering finely sung and acted performance, similarly (yet differently!) differentiated. Da Ponte and still more Mozart offer, in a sense, all that is needed here, yet that is arguably only to beg the question.  Christian Senn’s presented a wily and subtle master of ceremonies in Don Alfonso. Carolina Lippo’s complementary Despina was alert and knowing, no mere caricature, ‘Una donna a quindici anni’ a brilliant welcome back after the interval. Even the chorus, sharply directed by Lloyd-Evans, made an uncommonly fine musico-dramatic mark. If one must choose, it will always be the score; in that respect, we could not reasonably have hoped for better.

La bohème, English National Opera, 26 November 2018

Coliseum

Images: Robert Workman

Marcello – Nicholas Lester

Rodolfo – Jonathan Tetelman

Colline – David Soar

Schaunard – Božidar Smiljanić

Benoît – Simon Butteriss

Mimì – Natalya Romaniw

Parpignol – David Newman

Musetta – Nadine Benjamin

Alcindoro – Simon Butteriss

Policeman – Paul Sheehan

Official – Andrew Tinkler

Jonathan Miller (director)

Natascha Metherell (revival director)

Isabella Bywater (set designs)

Jean Kalman (lighting)

Kevin Sleep (revival lighting)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Mark Biggins)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Alexander Joel (conductor)

And still they come. The last opera I saw during my near-year of liberation from Poundland was La bohème at the Deutsche Oper. No year goes by without multiple opportunities to see it; few years now go by without my taking at least one of those opportunities. Indeed, I see that I shall now have gone to Jonathan Miller’s staging on three of its five (!) outings since it was first seen at ENO in 2009. Is there a degree of overkill, especially when it comes to a far from adventurous production? Perhaps, although I am well aware of the (alleged) reasons for a company performing the opera so frequently. Do they add up, though? Judging by the number of empty seats at the Coliseum on this, the first night, I am not sure that they do. Might that indicate that it is time to give the work a rest or a new production? Again, perhaps, although what in the present climate would be an adequate substitute for box-office certainty? Perhaps there is no longer any such thing. Is that a bad thing? For a company struggling with declining funding and years of mismanagement – remember the self-styled ‘She-E-O’, Cressida Pollock, granting interviews about how she liked to relax with a bottle of wine whilst wearing her favourite training shoes, at the same time as attempting to sack the chorus? – the answer would seem to be yes. On the other hand, might it ultimately be a prod towards diversity of repertoire, towards taking Puccini as something more artistically serious than a box-office certainty, towards asking whether a performance in an often jarring English translation vaguely ‘after’ Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica is really the best way to ‘sell’ as well as to perform this work to a multicultural audience? Perhaps. We shall see.

One very welcome aspect of this performance – and possible justification for retaining the production a little while longer – was the opportunity it granted, well grasped indeed, to a young cast including two of ENO’s Harewood Artists: Nadine Benjamin and Božidar Smiljanić. Benjamin’s Musetta is very much her own woman, no mere memory of other Musettas we have heard – or claim to have heard (‘does not efface post-war memories of Dame Ermintrude Heckmondthwike, “Ermie” we called her…’). Not that she was different for the sake of it, quite the contrary, the crucial facets of Musetta’s character coming through bright and clear, but fresh too, very much an acquaintance as well as a reacquaintaince – and a vocal acquaintance too.  Smiljanić is likewise an able actor and impressed greatly both as soloist, insofar as possible for a Schaunard, and in ensemble. Likewise David Soar as Colline, his final-act moment something truly to savour. Nicholas Lester’s Marcello was definitely a cut above the average, rich and, where appropriate, ardent of tone, hinting cleverly at far more to the character than we ever officially learn (surely so much of the trick to a compelling Puccini performance). Simon Butteriss’s comedic turns as Benoît and Alcindoro even had a doubter such as I consider the approach (Miller’s, I suspect, more than the artist’s) perfectly justified.

Last yet anything but least, our pair of star-crossed lovers, played by Jonathan Tetelman and Natalya Romaniw, showed themselves (mostly) sensitive artists who could yet project to the back of the largest of theatres. (Alas, the Coliseum remains not the least of ENO’s problems, whatever audience members ‘of a certain age’ might claim.) Romaniw’s Mimì proved perhaps the more moving early on, but that is more likely a consequence of the opera itself than of any great performative disparity; both certainly moved in the final tragedy of the work’s final minutes. If only they had not on occasion – under instruction, I suspect – played to the gallery, treating their ‘big moments’ as stand-alone arias. The real culprit here, I think, was Alexander Joel. His conducting of the ever-excellent ENO Orchestra was incisive and mostly unsentimental, but he seemed incapable of thinking – or at least projecting – a greater unity to each act, let alone to the score as a whole. Of Puccini’s ‘symphonism’, we heard little or nothing.

As for Miller’s production, ably revived by Natascha Metherell – who surely deserved a curtain call – it is what it is. Paris updated to the thirties looks beautiful, occasionally desperate too; Personenregie is keen. As mentioned above, I am more reconciled to its comedy than I first was. Moreover, I rather like – some do not – the glimpses we catch of characters off the set as such, carrying on with their lives. Something a little challenging or interesting, though, would surely not go amiss in the future. As yet, few if any directors seem to have matched Stefan Herheim’s challenge in his superlative Norwegian Opera production, let alone gone beyond it. Will time tell? Perhaps.

Così fan tutte, Opera Holland Park, 31 May 2018

Fiordiligi (Eleanor Dennis) and Guglielmo (Nicholas Lester)
Image: Ali Wright

Fiordiligi – Eleanor Dennis

Dorabella – Kitty Whately

Guglielmo – Nicholas Lester

Ferrando – Nick Pritchard

Despina – Sarah Tynan

Don Alfonso – Peter Coleman-Wright

Oliver Platt (director)

Alyson Cummins (designs)

Rory Beaton (lighting)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Richard Harker)

City of London Sinfonia

Dane Lam (conductor)

Absence makes the heart grow fonder; or does it? In Così fan tutte, who knows? Or rather, what could such a question even mean? Would it not be a typically sentimental coping mechanism adopted to avoid confronting the questions – artificial yet profound, indeed profound through artificiality – it asks of its characters and its audiences alike? If one does not at some level, perhaps the most important level of all, find that Così goes deeper and further than Tristan, then one most likely has not understood either. Given a tragedy without catharsis, a tragedy in the clothes, surpassingly elegant and ravishing, of comedy: sometimes one might ask who needs an opus metaphysicum at all? (We might actually need it in order to recover.)

Ferrando (Nick Pritchard), Guglielmo, Depsina (Sarah Tynan), Don Alfonso (Peter Coleman-Wright),
Fiordiligi, Dorabella (Kitty Whately)
Image and subsequent images: Robert Workman

At any rate, absence had certainly made my heart grow still fonder when it came to Opera Holland Park. Not having been able to visit last summer, I returned to what may well be the most completely successful show I have yet to see and hear there. There is certainly none I would put above it, quite a claim, given that we are dealing with Mozart, the most difficult of all composers to perform. There is nowhere to hide, on stage, in the pit, nor indeed in the audience. Nor should there be. Moreover, one had the sense, whether in production or in musical performance – the distinction is far from distinct – that this ambivalent, ambiguous, existentially devastating drama was being enabled, with the lightest of touches, to speak for itself. That does not happen by itself; there is no room for ‘non-interpretation’, for some illusory ‘original’. Yet nor did it ever seem that something was being inflicted on the work. There is room for critique, whether in words or in performance, yet sometimes, as here, the work is so rich that it both offers its own and, perhaps, renders it beside the point.

Don Alfonso

For what is Così, if it is not a musico-dramatic laboratory, a game whose results we should rather not know, and yet can never quite un-know? We see that in Oliver Platt’s production: not spelled out, ‘in a laboratory’, but actually more or less where it ‘should’ be, in an eighteenth-century setting, in which detail is everything. The more we look at what might seem a straightforward, ‘traditional’ production – and, in a sense, is – the more we see – and hear. The chorus, which like us watches proceedings and occasionally participates, is, from the start, a participant and perhaps a critic. It is not quite the Neapolitan ‘daily passeggio’ of which Leopold Mozart wrote, in a letter quoted by Helen Wallace in the programme, for that was perhaps too obviously theatrical, at any rate too bound to a particular stratum of the social hierarchy: ‘in a few hundred carriages the nobles go out driving in the afternoon until Ave Maria to the Strada Nuova and the Molo.’ These seem largely to be more ‘ordinary’ people, but what is ‘ordinary’? They are like us, perhaps, but they also remind us that we need not be ‘like’, or at least identical to, the principal characters on stage to learn from them. And so, when one looks more closely, one notices an apparently ‘male’ member of the ‘chorus’ in apparently ‘female’ dress. (S)he brings no particular other attention to himself or herself. There is no obvious plotline, no ‘distraction’, as some would have it, rightly or wrongly; there is also no obvious exit strategy for us on heteronormative or other grounds. Così fan tutti/e; or, mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur. 

Fiordiligi and Ferrando

All, however, is not always quite what it seems. For the commedia dell’arte painted faces of Ferrando and Guglielmo are there to start with: visitors, perhaps, from beyond, yet also in need of external transformation – in Tristan, it would be a potion – in order to reveal themselves. Interactions between characters, like those between different chemical elements, are minutely observed, rendering us experimenters of our own, again whether we like it or not. (At least, so long as we watch and listen.) One of the problems some people, not unreasonably, seem to have with this opera is not always appreciating the level of parody, verbal and musical. And so, when Fiordiligi stands on a chair to assume her pose for ‘Come scoglio’, that cruel, loving, and in every sense ravishing seria parody, she initially falters, almost falling (not, I hasten to add, vocally). The watching lovers laugh, and she resumes. All is not quite what it seems, or perhaps it is. That is largely up to us, yet within the framework constructed – or rather within the different, intersecting frameworks constructed, by Alfonso and Despina, by Mozart and Da Ponte, and by production and performers; as well, of course, as that constructed by our own experiences, thoughts, and emotions. We are led to deconstruct that terrifying final ‘moral’ ourselves, Mozart’s brusque neo-Classicism the only possible response to Da Ponte’s seemingly straight hymn to reason. If we do not think about, do not feel its numerous contradictions, we have no one to blame but ourselves – not unlike the characters themselves. Is all perhaps precisely what it seems? Yes and no.

Dorabella and Guglielmo

For it is Mozart above all who renders this opera such a necessary agony. And it is the musicians who – with the greatest respect to truly excellent work from everyone else involved, whether in the theatre, behind the scenes, or somewhere in between – who ultimately bring that into life. The City of London Sinfonia offered us gorgeous musical sado-masochism, woodwind one might almost literally have been willing to die for, strings incisive yet far from without warmth of their own. Dane Lam’s tempi began on the quick side, never unreasonably so, yet indicative of an approach one might too readily have taken to be partial. For, as the drama progressed, as the characters achieved greater delineation, so did temporal differentiation. Lam’s was a reading that knew where it was going, and thus could afford to take time on the way – in, for instance, a heartrending ‘Un aura amoroso’.

Not that that would have been heartrending without an estimable Ferrando, of course; that was not, happily, something we needed to put to the test, Nick Pritchard balancing with apparent ease the demands of line and variegation. So too did Nicholas Lester’s Guglielmo, the bitterness of his disillusion moving indeed, his ‘journey’ perhaps the greatest of all. Eleanor Dennis and Kitty Whately likewise proved almost infinitely capable both of sisterly affinity and dramatic disentanglement. So many attributes – sorrow and joy, honour and temptation, simplicity and complexity – were revealed as sides of the same experimental coin. Lines, unadorned or subtly ornamented, exuded both clarity and warmth. We knew them, and yet did not. Sarah Tynan’s Despina was very much the musical catalyst, her cynicism and her sense of fun both vividly portrayed. If Peter Coleman Wright’s pitch was sometimes a little approximate, he brought important dramatic truths to his portrayal of Don Alfonso – perhaps not unlike Francesco Bussani, first in his line. The chorus, well trained, by Richard Harker, could hardly have done more to bring their roles, individual and collective, to life.

Fiordiligi and Dorabella

There is method in the madness one feels at the close; there has to be. And yet, quite rightly, there remains mystery too. Or, in the ruminations of another operatic character, forced to confront truths of existence he might rather not – at least not too often: ‘Ein Kobold half wohl da:/Ein Glühwurm fand sein Weibchen nicht; der hat den Schaden angericht’t.’ Was Sachs just rephrasing the question? Probably. Are we? Almost certainly. That does not, however, mean that we are not confronting it, that we need not do so. Mozart leads us to Wagner, as well as Wagner to Mozart.