“See Naples and die.” Spike Milligan saw the funny side of the old saw when he was stationed there in the dog days of the Second World War. In her picturesque new staging of Così fan tutte for Opera Holland Park, Cecilia Stinton takes us back there, a few years later. Ferrando and Guglielmo, so careless of love as to bet on the fidelity of their girlfriends, are American GIs on leave.
Rather than visiting from Ferrara, in Lorenzo da Ponte’s original scenario for his dramma giocoso, Dorabella and Fiordiligi have sailed in from the States: possibly New York, where da Ponte himself ended up, to judge from some sharp accent-related banter. Back home, they could be BFFs with the sisters on Coney Island in Phelim McDermott’s long-running Così for English National Opera.
In the same spirit of updated fidelity, it makes good sense when the officers are pressed into service at a moment’s notice. We begin to slide into a realm of magic realism when they return as Roman soldiers: spear and shield, the works. The disguise serves both to deflect attention from the confected absurdity of the set-up as the soldiers woo the “wrong” girls, and to draw us into a world of time-lapsed make-believe familiar from the contemporary films of Fellini.
Once the action has moved to the ruins of nearby Pompeii, for the Act 1 finale, everyone else gradually slips into Classical costumes, as part of Neil Irish’s clever design. At the climax of “Per pietà”, Fiordiligi draws back a shroud to reveal the two embracing figures immortalised in the burning ash of Vesuvius: her fond ideal of eternal love, no doubt, well on its way to falling apart. When the plot-volcano finally blows up and the deception is laid bare, we are left in no doubt that Don Alfonso’s twisted human experiment has gone badly wrong, while his motives remain as veiled as ever.
For the sexual politics of Così to cut to the quick, however, they must be laced with wit. Too few of the gags landed on the opening night, probably owing more to delivery than set-up, though in fact Paul Grant (Guglielmo) and Osian Wynn Bowen (Ferrando) brought off their recitatives with real style. In “È amore un ladroncello”, Dorabella samples flavours of ice-cream as though they were men. Elsewhere the humour is spread with a thicker brush – Despina dishing up overcooked spaghetti in one of her various disguises – or imbued with heavy symbolism, when she appears as the Classical figure of Justice to play the fake Notary. Something is always happening, but Stinton could afford to let her singers – and Mozart and da Ponte – do more of the work in holding our attention.
The experience of Paul Carey Jones as Don Alfonso told in his projection of everything – words, notes, charisma – from any point on the stage. A little pinched in “Un’aura amorosa”, Wynn Bowen warmed up to a handsomely floated and text-pointed “Ah, lo veggio”. Grant’s Guglielmo was easy on the ear, affable and engaging even when twisted with scorn and fury.
The women suffered more from the vagaries of the Holland Park stage, divided as it is by the pit. Elizabeth Karani’s Despina and Shakira Tsindos’s Dorabella both gained vocal and dramatic focus when out front. Madeline Boreham sang Fiordiligi with a full measure of her anguish and nobility of character, as well as a thrilling chest register. In the pit, Charlotte Corderoy expertly handled the City of London Sinfonia and kept up momentum while breathing with the singers, even if the Act 1 finale rather dashed to the double-bar. Once a little tweaked and sharpened, this new Così deserves to hold its place in the ever-enterprising repertoire of Opera Holland Park.
