Le nozze di Figaro, Komische Oper, 27 April 2024

Schillertheater

Count Almaviva – Hubert Zapiór
Countess Almaviva – Nadja Mchantaf
Susanna – Penny Sofroniadou
Figaro – Tommaso Barea
Cherubina – Susan Zarrabi
Marcellina – Karolina Gumos
Bartolo – Tijl Faveyts
Basilio – Johannes Dunz
Antonio – Peter Lombert
Cherubino – Georgy Kudrenko
Count’s henchman – Nikita Kukushkin
Young man – Nikita Elenev

Director, designs – Kirill Serebrennikov
Co-set designer – Olga Pavlyuk
Co-costume designer – Tatyana Dolmatovskaya
Choreography – Evgeny Kulagin
Dramaturgy – Julia Jordà Stoppelhaar, Daniil Orlov
Lighting – Olaf Freese
Video – Ilya Shgalov

Orchestra of the Komische Oper

James Gaffigan (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus

It is currently fashionable to treat the three operas Mozart wrote with Lorenzo Da Ponte as a ‘trilogy’. There is nothing wrong with that in principle: that is, in commissioning a director (perhaps a conductor too and some of the cast) to stage all three. Nor is there anything wrong with attempting to draw out dramatic themes hold in common. What is sauce for the musicological goose should also be sauce for the performing gander, and vice versa. Results, however, seem more mixed: more, it seems to me, because the gander will not necessarily pay as much attention as he might, if not to the goose, then at least to the intrinsic qualities of the works themselves. Sadly, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s decision to entreat all three works to Vincent Huguet resulted in three productions that ranged from the merely vacuous to the catastrophic. Neither (relatively) recent experiments in this respect from the Salzburg Festival has resulted, to my mind in great success, though at least Claus Guth came up with a memorable, in the best sense provocative Marriage of Figaro. The jury must remain partially out on Kirill Serebrennikov for Berlin’s Komische Oper, with a Don Giovanni to come; yet, whilst this new Figaro has a number of things to commend it, it also proves considerably more problematical than his excellent Così fan tutte (premiered in Zurich). 

The set offers a literal upstairs-downstairs setting: eminently suitable, one might think, for a drama involving relations between masters and servants. In many ways, it is, though the sheer grubbiness of the ‘downstairs’, rows of washing machines to excite disgraced ex-MP Keith Vaz, seems in a not especially productive way to be a little too much. An old woman gets a great deal of ironing done, though, and cast members, especially male ones, freely change their clothes in an uninviting environment, which also plays host to a torture-interrogation scene for Figaro’s trial (again, perhaps a little too much, not least in its disregard for the words and music being sung and played). Above seems to be an art gallery, though it may just be that expensive works of art and, latterly, an exhibition are to be seen in the Almavivas’ private residence. An older painting is damaged and sent for repair, though I do not think we see it again; it is replaced by a shallow, kitschy installation-world with neon slogans, which, as video commentary and a spoken intervention by Dr Bartolo inform us, poses questions about contemporary relationships between hyperreality and simulation. ‘Capitalism kills love’; reads one; I presume the banal truism to be deliberate, although my wager would be small. One of the neon signs reads ‘FESTA FOLLIA’, ‘party madness’, which at least has relevance to what is going on and perhaps even to the folle journée of Beaumarchais’s title. We are, I presume, invited to read this into what else is unfolding dramatically, and that seemed to me at least a fruitful way to proceed, but connections both with what we saw and with the work might have been made clearer. 

I realise talk about ‘not trusting’ the work and its creators runs the risk of sounding, indeed perhaps being, unduly reactionary. It and they will survive to fight another day, and there is plenty of room, or should be, for productions that take their leave from a work to say something different, as well as those more evidently at its ‘service’. That said, I could not help find some of what we saw unduly provisional, as if the director had either run out of time, or simply could not be bothered. Serebrennikov certainly has ideas; this is not a Huguet-style disaster, far from it. Whether they are pursued with sufficient rigour to be comprehensible to an audience, let alone to form a coherent argument, is sometimes less clear. 

For there is much messing about with the text, without much in the way of gain from it. Characters are eliminated, redeployed, invented with scant justification, and the old(ish) trick of using titles to say something else begins to look a little threadbare. Why Bartolo’s first-act aria is cut, only to reappear in the third act I have no idea. The character’s sudden appearance in the second act finale is surprising, since no one will have any idea who he is, save for a text-message exchange (video again) between him and Marcellina earlier on. Text messages also feature heavily in the splitting of the role of Cherubino between a silent, highly physical male actor and a frumpily dressed ‘Cherubina’, who relays his messages to others. We read in the programme the extraordinary claim that Serebrennikov ‘gets round the operatic convention of casting a soprano in the role … (rather overstretching the imagination of the audience) and he makes Cherubino into a credible rival’. If high Victorianism could readily manage such gender fluidity and the ‘convention’ dates back not only to the premiere but to the entire conception of the work, it does not seem too much of an ‘overstretch’ to ‘imagine’ that Berlin in 2024 could cope. Perish the thought that disguise might also be crucial to the role and drama. The more fundamental idea, though, is that ‘a personification of eros’, who ‘cannot hear or speak’ uses as ‘his only weapon … passion, utilising his whole body’. Perhaps, though, presenting a hearing actor imitating deaf speech might have been rethought, so as to offer representation to a deaf actor. It is surely only a coincidence, though, that this gave Serebrennikov another opportunity to depict male undress and nudity. 

Barbarina is nowhere to be seen; I had thought her part might be united with that of ‘Cherubina’; that might have made some sense. It seemed to be in the third act, but then for some reason or none, the Countess sang her cavatina in the fourth act. A further odd claim, moreover, is that made by dramaturge Julia Jordà Stoppelhaar in the programme that Serebrennikov ‘becomes even more of a Kammerspiel [chamber play]’ by eliminating the chorus and allegedly ‘supporting roles’ (Nebenrollen). Since he adds a good few of his own, such as the bizarre, pet-playing ‘Count’s henchman’ – nothing necessarily wrong with bizarre, but even so – and another ‘Young man’, as well as other extras drawn from the Komparserie, the claim seems at best tenuous even on its own terms. The greater problem lies in what has been lost, musically too, nowhere more so than in the near nonsense of hearing much of the chorus music with orchestra alone (or, in the first act, shared between soloists and harpsichord). 

Interpolation of music from Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet to suggest (I presume) the neurotic, white-glove-wearing Count’s fragile state of mind, might have made greater impact had it been better played; it actually took me some time to realise what it had actually been (however obvious the selection). The debt owed to – no, let us be scrupulously fair, coincidence with – the better thought-through Calixto Bieito Fidelio incorporating Beethoven’s Heiliger Dankgesang was too obvious and not at all flattering. A pause would probably have been a better idea, if something must be done at all. I have little idea why the third act began with ‘Soave sia il vento’. The staging seemed to suggest the end of a threesome between the Count, Countess, and Susanna, though nothing that happened afterwards seemed to take that into account. At least, if so, it was a rare acknowledgement that women might have sexuality, or at least sexually attractive qualities, too. Moving Marcellina’s aria to the third act works well, precisely because there is dramatic motivation for the shift, observations on gender becoming part of her curatorial address. It also, to be fair, ensures that we hear a number all too rarely heard. Retention of Basilio’s aria, where it should be, is also greatly appreciated, not least given such an excellent performance, although Serebrennikov’s casual handling of action elsewhere in the fourth act often suggests a little more attention to what is ‘supposed’ to happen might have worked wonders for coherence. Moreover, the aria, sadly for something so rarely encountered in performance, made questionable sense in a portrayal that suggested the character to be far from elderly. 

Otherwise, tonal coherence seemed to be the least thing on anyone’s mind: a pity, given James Gaffigan led a bold, variegated account of Mozart’s music, the level of orchestral playing in general far higher than the unfortunate quartet sounds. Well paced and intelligently supportive both of singers and broader dramatic goals, too often it played second fiddle to Serebrennikov’s ideas, yet remained impressive. So too did much of the singing—and all of the acting. My criticism of the conception of ‘deaf Cherubino’ should not in any sense detract from Georgy Kudrenko’s performance in itself, though it did tend unfortunately to overshadow Susan Zarrabi’s performance. Hubert Zapiór’s made much of his difficult (though, I suspect, rewarding) task as Almaviva, in many ways a fascinating study in the fragility of masculinity. Tommaso Barea was an alert, agile Figaro; it is not his fault that his character seemed somewhat elbowed out by the production. Nadja Mchantaf, a fine singing actress as well as actress, seemed somewhat miscast as the Countess, especially in her first aria; recitatives fared better. Karolina Gumos, Tijl Faveyts,  and Johannes Dunz all shone in their roles. In many ways, it was the remarkably able Penny Sofroniadou who, as Susanna, held things together—which is probably as it ought to be. A little more of ‘what ought to be’, though, might more generally have assisted ‘what might be’.

Hercules, Komische Oper, 3 March 2024

Hercules – Brandon Cedel
Dejanira – Paula Murrihy
Iole – Penny Sofroniadou
Hyllus – Caspar Singh
Lichas – Susan Zarrabi
Priest of Jupiter – Noam Heinz
Choral soloists – Martin Fehr, Taiki Miyashita

Director – Barrie Kosky
Designs – Katrin Lea Tag
Dramaturgy – Zsolt Horpácsy, Johanna Wall
Lighting – Joachim Klein
Assistant director – Tobias Ribitzki

Choral Soloists of the Komische Oper (director: David Cavelius) 

Orchestra of the Komische Oper

David Bates (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Dejanira (Paula Murrihy), Lichas (Susan Zarrabi)

Handel’s ‘musical drama’ – an interesting term, though we can sometimes make too much of such things – Hercules has never proved especially popular. The composer’s public at the time and for a long while after tended to prefer his Biblical oratorios. Since the revival and, latterly, the craze for his Italian opere serie, they have ruled the roost. Semele, another ‘musical drama’, ‘after the manner of an oratorio’, has fared better since its modern stage revival in Cambridge in 1925. Handel never intended it to be staged, though the librettist (William Congreve) and original composer (John Eccles) had. It perhaps comes closest to Hercules, whose first staging was also in 1925 – the very beginning of the modern Handel revival – though in Münster. Whilst perhaps not the most compelling, dramatically, of all Handel’s works, Hercules, to a libretto by the Anglican clergyman Thomas Broughton, is certainly not the least either. This new production from Berlin’s Komische Oper affords a valuable opportunity, certain shortcomings notwithstanding, for news audience to see and hear it for themselves—many doubtless for the first time, the present writer included. 

In a programme interview, Kosky tells how and why he has long found Handel’s oratorios, to which he reasonably assimilates Hercules, more compelling than his operas. Me too, though we seem to stand nowadays in a minority. One question presented by staging the oratorios (broadly considered), though, relates to how to treat the chorus. Its dual role in participation and commentary dates back to Attic tragedy, of course, as well as holding an obvious point in common with Bach’s Passions. There remains the question of how to stage this, especially when the chorus is being asked to sing some notably difficult music conceived for singers standing with their scores rather than darting around the stage. (Insofar as the Italian operas have ‘choruses’ at all, the music is far simpler, and in general we might consider them simply to be the cast coming together.) One needs an excellent chorus, of course, which was certainly the case. Its singers and their director, David Cavelius, deserve much praise; audience appreciation was rightly enthusiastic on the opening night. Kosky involved them directly in the action where required, including a disturbing scene of largely implicit violence when Iole is brought home (for Hercules, not for her) as spoils of war. There is also mesmerising choreography for the reflective role in which singing and movement combine to evoke and perhaps even provoke the deadly jealousy forming in Dejanira’s fevered imagination.

 

Chorus and Dejanira

For, as Kosky points out, Handel focuses everything not on Hercules but on his wife, Dejanira. ‘Everyone is constantly talking about Hercules,’ as is typical for a hero, or an idea of a hero, ‘but all one sees is one theme – and that is jealousy, which the chorus also sings about at a central point. What is jealousy, what does jealousy do, what is fantasy, what is projection, what is reality? Dejanira spins herself through jealousy into madness,’ in her obsessional belief, quite unfounded, that her husband has deserted her for the foreign princess Iole. Kosky’s suggestion that Broughton probably read Othello strikes me as eminently plausible, and certainly makes its way in here, with a good touch too of Ovid. This unfolds in an unsparing visual environment, situated at the dramatic trisection of antiquity, its eighteenth-century revisitation, and our twenty-first-century revisitation of both. Glaring light and whiteness impart a sense of nowhere to hide. We may not wish to watch at times, but we must—just like those taking part. Katrin Lea Tag’s designs here play a crucial role; indeed, one cannot imagine the action without them. A statue of Hercules, ever present, make Kosky’s point about constant reference when the drama is not really ‘about’ Hercules at all.

Dejanira, Hercules (Brandon Cedel)

We knit our own heroes, Dejanira to extremes, and in this respect Paula Murrihy’s performance must be accounted a striking success. Murrihy has much to do and not only did it very well indeed, but functioned, as she must, as the dramatic lynchpin. As Hercules, Brandon Cedel has a somewhat thankless part, but presented it with conviction and due collegiality, doing just what was required of him to have the apparently strange focus of the drama work. Kosky has an inventive solution, which tightens the bonds of family loyalty further, to the question of the role of the messenger Lichas. Handel made it an oddly large role; that is, oddly, until one knows that it was on account of the popularity of its creator Susanna Cibber. For revivals, it was cut. Kosky elects to make the herald, always sung by a woman, Hercules’s younger sister. It works well, I think, and helps make sense of something that can otherwise seem a little odd. Susan Zarrabi’s heavily accented performance might have been a little much for some English speakers, but it was certainly animated and dramatically committed; we should remind ourselves that German- and Italian-speakers face similar distractions frequently. Penny Sofroniadou’s Iole was beautifully, sparklingly sung, with just as keen an eye and ear for drama, her initial, well-nigh regal disdain for Hyllus, Hercules’s son, duly wounding. Caspar Singh offered a subtle, often moving performance of that difficult role: very much in his father’s shadow, his mother’s too, in need of space to become his own person. The small role of the Priest of Jupiter was well taken by Noam Heinz, from whom I shall likewise be keen to hear more. 

Hyllas (Caspar Singh), Dejanira, Lichas

The one significant drawback for me was David Bates’s direction of the orchestra. Clearly intent on making it sound as little like a modern orchestra as possible – in which case, why use one? – Bates often sounded as if he were presenting a caricature of rebarbative ‘early musicking’. Not only was there no longer line; there were barely orchestral phrases at all, which made for a peculiar contrast with such excellent singing. If it was, alas, too much to hope for even the slightest manifestation of string vibrato. The orchestra doubtless did as it was asked, but lunging extremes of tempo only highlighted the strange assumptions underlying Bates’s performance. Quite how we have backed ourselves into a corner where all manner of explorations are permitted on stage, yet a single, highly questionable idea of ‘correctness’ (or otherwise) in instrumental performance is all that can be allowed, I really do not know. One can only hope that, some day, wiser, more humane counsels will prevail. There are certainly far more alluring Handel performances on period instruments, let alone the all too rare occasions when more properly ‘modern’ readings are permitted.

Hercules, Hyllus

It would doubtless be an exaggeration to describe Hercules as an ‘Anglican work’, but it chimes well enough with a broadly Christian yet latitudinarian outlook. If part of the reason for the work’s ‘failure’ – it received only two performances in its initial run at the Haymarket – was, as has been claimed, its lack of moral and spiritual uplift, then it is tempting to conclude the audience was not paying as much attention as it might. From a modern standpoint, it might all seem a bit clean, the deus ex machina in need of questioning or undercutting. Kosky does not opt to do so too overtly, letting the work speak largely for itself. Yet in continuing his focus on Dejanira, for whom this is certainly not a happy ending, one can continue, as it were, to hear her pain, renewed and intensified by the sounds of rejoicing that surround her.

Così fan tutte, Komische Oper, 14 January 2024

Schillertheater

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

Director, set and costume designer – Kirill Serebrennikov
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

Choral Soloists of the Komische Oper (director: Jean-Christophe Charron) 

Orchestra of the Komische Oper 

Erina Yashima (conductor)  

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.