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Review
Così fan tutte review, Investec Opera Holland Park: an affordable and entertaining crowd-pleaser
Good honest opera at affordable prices – top whack £80 – giving opportunities to young native talent and making only minimal demands on the public purse. Welcome to Investec Opera Holland Park, which seems (on a smaller scale) to be doing the job that English National Opera has dismally failed to do for the past 20 years or more.
Recently ENO had the chance to employ IOHP’s savvy, seasoned, resourceful and popular Director James Clutton as its new CEO: instead, it plumped for a subscription television executive with no experience of live opera or theatre whatsoever. Good luck to them – perhaps they know something that I don’t – but think they’re crazy.
This summer’s programme at Holland Park opened with a highly acclaimed production of La Traviata, which I have yet to catch. On the second night came this new staging of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, directed by Oliver Platt.
Although it could have done with one more rehearsal – the physical comedy wasn’t sharp enough, leaving Sarah Tynan’s agile Despina under-characterised – it’s a pleasantly conventional reading of this rather silly comedy, played out in a pretty rococo drawing-room and free of any ambitions to plumb putative moral, emotional, psychological or Marxist-Freudian-deconstructive depths. The ending is presented as one of sour disillusion, rubbing against music that laughs the whole intrigue off, but the mood is otherwise sunny and uncomplicated.
What lifts the quality of the evening is an outstanding pair of “sisters from Ferrara”. As Fiordiligi, Eleanor Dennis has a truly gorgeous soprano – glowing, ample, easeful – and her lovingly intense account of “Per pietà” was the show’s vocal highlight. Kitty Whately’s Dorabella was a strong contrast – bubbling with personality and fully mistress of both the melodramatics of “Smanie implacabili” and the insouciance of “E amore un ladroncello”.
The men were less impressive. Nick Pritchard’s Ferrando took a long time to warm up, which meant that “Un aura amorosa” at the end of the first act was still not fully defrosted. There was nothing wrong with Nicholas Lester’s Guglielmo, but why burden him with “Rivolgete a lui lo sguardo”, a tedious and inferior aria usually cut? Of Peter Coleman-Wright’s geriatric Don Alfonso, the less said the better.
Dane Lam conducted the City of London Sinfonia: once past some rough edges in the first act, his reading settled down nicely. The audience went home happy, and isn’t that the point?
Until 22 June, in repertory with La traviata. Tickets: 0300 999 1000; operaholland park.com