All art imitates life, they tell us. Well, should it be so, we’d have to accept that in times past a popular means of testing your Nearest and Dearest’s fidelity was to stick a curly moustache on your best mate, dunk them in something irresistibly odorous, give him instructions on a show-stopping charm offensive, point him in your sweetheart’s direction and await the field report.
These days cyber-stalking and private investigators are less laborious alternatives for the paranoid lover. Opera North’s English language production of Mozart’s frothy comic opera, Cosi Fan Tutte sparks a peculiar sense of dramatic nostalgia; demonstrating how the more traditional practices might have worked. Or, maybe, how they didn’t.
Don Alfonso’s the man with the wager - played with glorious mischief here by Geoffrey Dalton - proclaims Ferrando’s (Allan Clayton) and Guglielmo’s (Quirin de Lang) trust in their fiancés’ faithfulness as futile because – as the translated title insists – Women are like that: i.e. fickle and capricious. Incensed anyone would dare question their sweethearts’ honour, the young men accept the bet and, following the Don’s terms, falsely inform their intendeds of their imminent departure for war; only to return later, both in disguise and with a remit to attempt a seduction of the other’s lover.
Their unsuspecting female counterparts Dorabella (Victoria Simmonds) and Fiordiligi (an outstanding Elizabeth Atherton) produce many of the opera’s more enjoyable moments; sung in English the libretto can have its comic lines fired at the audience point-blank and the sopranos manage their timing along with some beautiful singing with astonishing precision.
Clayton and de Lang play the men as one-part hapless Romantic to two-parts Aristo-fop, but their abilities in executing Mozart’s juddering, interweaving vocal lines ensure the escalating confusion from the tortuous conspiracy is fully captured. In fact, such is the quality in the performance of the two singers as their disguised selves, they achieve the perceptual trick of seeming equally as well suited in their new couplings as they did in the original partnerships.
That said though, from the moment he strides onto the empty stage to wave assent for the orchestra’s first stroke of the overture’s pulse, it is Dalton’s Don Alfonso that commands proceedings all the way. The only thing ever to threaten an upstaging is designer Tobias Hoheisel’s high-concept set and costumes: the centrepiece of which being an immense brass porthole fastened up on high, peering down on the stage and singers as the All Seeing Eye.
The production does lose a little of its sparkle in the lead up to the all-smiles finale, but its earlier vitality and swaggering comic verve keep sufficient momentum to push itself home.
An imitation of life? Well, perhaps not. A celebration for the city’s night-life, though? Definitely.
Cosi Fan Tutte was performed by Opera North on Tuesday November 3 2009 and will be shown again on Friday November 6.
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