Opera
Cosi fan tutte (Royal Opera, Shaftesbury Theatre) Fidelio (English Touring Opera, Peacock Theatre)
Paradoxical paradise
Michael Tanner
With Opera North's treatment of Cosi fan tutte as a mere farce a few weeks ago, and Glyndebourne opening the season with it, I thought I would give the latest revival of the Royal Opera's production a miss, until I read the reviews. In the event it proved one of the most completely satisfy- ing performances of anything that I have ever seen, an evening of paradoxical par- adise, given the acutely uncomfortable state into which Cosi plunges one, and cer- tainly in which it leaves one, after its absurd non sequitur of a conclusion.
Colin Davis was the transforming pres- ence of the occasion, getting every tempo exactly right, taking the piece with the utter seriousness it needs, producing full, singing tones from the strings even in the merciless acoustic of the Shaftesbury Theatre, letting the music breathe at every point, indulging in welcome rallentandi at the end of arias where appropriate. For the members of the cast who have sung in much-acclaimed `authentic' performances with original instruments and whirlwind tempi it must have been a revelation. Even the obdurate overture chuckled and sang, as it hardly has since Fritz Busch.
The first cast, which I saw, was of a stan- dard of excellence in appearance, acting and vocal equipment which few operas can have been blessed with. Presiding with hor- rible insidiousness over the proceedings was the perfect Don Alfonso of Thomas Allen, as depressed by the success of his predictions as we were; only the people he manipulated seemed not to mind — an effectively sickening touch. Near the end when three of them are plighting their troth while Guglielmo wishes they could be poisoned, Allen, sitting aside, looked like a disgruntled frog.
Yet his voyeuristic interest in the plot was much more intense than in most pro- ductions, with constant silent appearances on stage, gesturing to the two male lovers to show them what to do next, communi- cating incessantly on his mobile phone, for once a plausible accessory, the perfect device for the idle schemer. The funda- mental point of Cosi has never been made so powerfully: Don Alfonso is detestable, and yet he is completely right. So how are we to react? If we all took his view of human nature, we would be still worse than we are.
Joseph Kerman, in his celebrated attack on Cosi, and I, in my much less celebrated expansion of his points, have argued that Cosi gets out of control because Mozart endows his characters with a depth of feel- ing which the libretto doesn't permit them, Da Ponte being wholly of the Alfonso way of thinking. My feeling now — and Cosi never allows stability of response — is that the four guinea-pigs feel more than they know or can understand, and that in that sense Don Alfonso's wisdom stops short of the whole truth. Mozart understands both how we act and what we feel, and the ten- sion between the two; and it is the miracle of his comprehension, expressed in music which even he rarely equalled in depth and expressive range, which leaves us almost exhilarated, certainly less miserable than we would expect to be, at the end of the work.
Davis has this comprehension too, at any rate while he conducts this work, and he imparts it to his singers. Has any male cou- ple ever been so cocksure at the beginning as Rainer Trost and the supremely effec- tive Simon Keenlysidc, so confident that they will fail as they bid their beloveds farewell, so ardent in their Albanian woo- ing, so horrified at its success? I haven't seen a comparable pair, and only hope I shan't find all future productions disap- pointing. At first I thought the two ladies weren't going to be on their level, and it took the shock of separation to make it sure that they would be. Barbara Frittoli, especially, must have one of the most promising futures of any young soprano. She has both an appearance and an intensi- ty to put you in mind of Callas, and it is excellent news that she will be Glynde- bourne's Fiordiligi too. She commanded the whole range of her two ridiculously tax- ing and inadequately rewarding arias, and the inwardness to make her capitulation, in the sublime duet `Fra gli amplessi', as heartbreaking as it should be.
The next evening I went to a perfor- mance of Beethoven's creative repudiation of Cosi, Fidelio. The eponymous heroine does and is exactly what Fiordiligi wants to do and can't. This was the English Touring Opera's production, which I found so mar- vellous a month ago in the intimacy of
Cambridge's Arts Theatre. Alas, in the vastnesses of the cold Peacock Theatre on Kingsway, it had lost much of the immedia- cy it had, and most of the singers found it necessary to force their voices, with some ugly and possibly damaging results. What survived triumphantly was the superb Flo- restan and the magnificent conducting, in which the long line was sustained and a small orchestra in a parched acoustic sounded lean but utterly committed. It was a moving evening, but showed the impor- tance of the right sized theatre for young, developing singers.
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