It must be galling for the cast of Così fan tutte to know they’re touring as the gammy leg of Welsh National Opera’s Spring double bill, but it’s not their fault that Death in Venice is such a triumph. Besides, there is a good deal in this new production to enjoy. Company music director Tomáš Hanus and the WNO Orchestra featherbed a musically satisfying account of the third and final Mozart-Da Ponte opera with five (out of six) excellent vocal performances. The exception on 6th March was the distinguished Portuguese baritone José Fardilha, whose chafing timbre and approximate intonation as Don Alfonso suggested that his salad days may be behind him.
As a starting point the director Max Hoehn took Così‘s subtitle, La scuola degli amanti (The School for Lovers), and connected it to Monty Python’s sex education sketch in The Meaning of Life. What larks, eh? It’s an idea that probably sounded clever at a production pitch, only to crumble in the rehearsal room when the director tried to fit an opera inside it. Unsurprisingly, the outcome feels like a salvage job. Still, its heart beats warmly and flashes of inspiration keep it afloat.
The opening tableau offers a heart-sinking prospect. Hoehn deflects attention from Mozart’s sublime overture by filling its duration with the manual importation of 18th-century anatomical drawings, all blown up to giant proportions and carried onstage piecemeal by hapless chorus members dressed in Billy Bunter-era school uniforms. Did no one suggest a drop curtain to conceal the clutter until after the overture? It would have been refreshing to have heard Mozart’s brief opening masterpiece unadorned by such a tiresome distraction. As for the illustrations, the addition to the female organs of a brightly coloured peach and to the male organs of two cherries (not plums, oddly) both confirmed the Python influence and made one pine for an ounce of Terry Gilliam’s wit.
Matters improved when the quartet of lovers found their stride. The contrasting personalities and vocal qualities of Sophie Bevan (Fiordiligi) and Kayleigh Decker (Dorabella) added an undertow of musical tension to the opera while, as their interchangeable lovers, tenor Egor Zhuravskii (Ferrando) and baritone James Atkinson (Guglielmo) sang with style and gave polished, witty performances. All four delivered their set pieces, solo or ensemble, with lyrical fervour and delight. Perhaps the surest performance of the night came from house favourite Rebecca Evans, whose comic business and energetic stage presence as Despina nevertheless allowed her to sing and enunciate beautifully, even if she did snarl her Mesmer doctor as though more used to baking small children into gingerbread.
Jemima Robinson’s, austere set – an old-fashioned classroom complete with raised dais for the teacher – includes a chalk blackboard that springs surprises at key moments. When Don Alfonso sketches a cartoon ship on it, then adds two stick men on deck (“Look, they’re waving to you”), the mood change into “Soave sia il vento” prompts a sweet visual gift by lighting designer Mark Jonathan as magical waves gently billow beneath the ship. A few moments before that, Hoehn had crafted the haunting farewell quintet (in which Bevan crooned her Laudate Dominum quotation quite divinely) with a subtle stagecraft that made me wish he’d ditched his concept at the planning stage and trusted Mozart to guide his hand.
