Opera review: Cosi fan Tutte puts women at the heart of Mozart's classic
Sharon Carty, Majella Cullagh and Anna Devin in Irish National Opera's Così fan Tutte Picture: Ruth Medjber
- Cosi fan Tutte
- Gaiety Theatre, Dublin
- ★★★★☆
In a fairly crowded field, Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte has the reputation for being perhaps the most misogynistic of operas. Yet, you’d never know it from this new Irish National Opera staging, which is much to the credit of director Polly Graham. Her project of centering the story’s two young women, Fiordiligi and Dorabella, begins even in the overture, and continues to a final, perhaps-not-so-surprising twist.
As conductor Peter Whelan lifts the baton for the first time, we see a sketched Irish big house on the safety screen. Onto this is projected a sepia-tinted film showing scenes from the young aristocratic lady’s life: letter-writing, card-playing, water-colouring, such things. It’s the first of many visual delights (take a bow Jamie Vartan for the sheer invention of the design), which add up to create a strong sense of time and place. Not 18th-century Vienna, but early 20th-century Ireland, with war in Europe looming, suffragettes campaigning, and revolution in the air.
The story proper begins as Ferrando and Guglielmo, the respective lovers of Dorabella and Fiordiligi, and so sure of their girls’ fidelity, accept a bet from the cynical old philosopher Don Alfonso, who thinks they’ll cheat if given half a chance. So, off Ferrando and Guglielmo pretend to go, as “gallant Irishmen” to the trenches of France, only to return disguised as a pair of buffoonish filmmakers, here to make a kitsch cod-Celtic epic about Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the Fianna. As Mozart’s score bounces along, full of life and beauty, it’s often the sublime in the service of the silly: a ridiculous story, of ridiculous characters and situations.
But Graham shows there’s nothing wrong with that, as baritone Benjamin Russell (Guglielmo) and tenor Dean Power (Ferrando) show themselves adept at physical comedy, sending up their characters’ eejitry (the word “eejit” even appears in the surtitles here, to much laughter) in a way that balances the overtones of contempt for women.
Thus, this Cosi fan is less about woman’s inconstancy, and more about the tumult, the heartache, the uncertainty of young love. As such, Fiordiligi’s beautiful aria of faithfulness, 'Per pieta, ben mio, perdona' (In pity’s name, my dearest, forgive), sung so wonderfully by Anna Devin here, is the most emotionally real moment of the night, and when the men do come together finally to sing 'Cosi fan tutte', or 'they are all like that', they no longer do so with untroubled authority.
Whether or not that final twist coheres is up to each to decide for themselves. But agree or not, it’s another confident flourish in a production that points to one thing – there remains something essential about this silly, problematic, madcap masterpiece.
- At the Gaiety until May 27; Leisureland, Galway, May 29; Cork Opera House May 31 & June 2
