Lovers schooled

On Thursday night, the Washington, D.C.-based group Opera Lafayette graced the Rose Theater with a double bill of French opera… sort of. The first half consisted of Così fan tutte in French, the second François-André Philidor’s opéra-comîque Les femmes vengées, which slightly predates Mozart. It was ambitious and creative production that put a new spin on some very familiar material.

Nick Olcott’s production’s conceit is that Così makes more sense if you consider it as part of an eighteenth-century French tradition. The text is a vintage translation in verse, the recitatives are, like an opéra-comîque, made into spoken dialogue. The entire thing takes place in an artist’s studio, which brings up
some vague things about appearances and reality and also includes a
silent artist figure who became important in the second piece.The set is a basic set of walls and in period dress. There are a few novelties (the Albanians are now Canadians–not sure if that was the translation or a new idea but this is one production that takes the mustaches really seriously) and has the tone of a comedy of manners along the lines of The Rivals or The School for Scandal (to give some familiar English-language examples).

It proposes that the drama gradually moves from something very superficial and mannered (the staging uses many quasi-eighteenth-century poses) into more serious and sincere territory. Correspondingly, the finale contains a twist and the lovers end in their new pairing (Fleurdelise/Fernand and Dorabelle/Guillaume). The cast is engaged and enthusiastic, the Rose Theater is intimate enough to see all the detail, and this concept works pretty well. In fact, I think it probably would have worked equally well with the usual Italian text–perhaps that is missing the point, but the reason it works is that it finds an interesting angle on the text of Così, not because it says something about French theater.

It’s also nice to hear Mozart performed with a period orchestra, which
doesn’t happen very often in the US. The orchestra’s playing, under
music director Ryan Brown, was on the rough and ready side, particularly
in the winds, but it had a freshness and vigor that excuses some
messiness. The cast was mostly Canadian and French. Pascale Beaudin was a
wide-eyed, naïve Fleurdelise (Fiordiligi), and her voice is quite small
for this role, restricting the possibilities of her “Come scoglio.”
But, like Susanna Philips at the Met last fall, her “Per pietà” was
simply gorgeous and emotionally honest singing, much of it spent sadly
embracing the back of an empty chair. It was the highlight of the entire
evening. (I’m going to name the arias in Italian, because I didn’t
write down the French and it’s easier for you too.) 

Staskiewicz and Dobson

Blandine Staskiewicz was a perpetually guilty-looking Dorabelle with fruity tone and excellent comic timing. As Fernand, Antonio Figeuroa’s compact, somewhat nasal tenor made “Un aura amorosa” relaxed and almost disarmingly easy, but he didn’t seem to embrace the period style as fully as the rest of the cast and came across as quite modern. Alex Dobson was a natural comedian as Guillaume, if not always an elegant singer. As Delphine (Despina), Claire Debono had a chance to be witty and unaffected before everyone else, and her bright, focused soprano was one of the only I could hear working in a large opera house. Bernard Deletré’s Don Alfonso got some of his theatrical thunder stolen by Jeffrey Thompson mute artist.

The production’s second half was Les femmes vengées, a 1775 comic opera by François-André Philidor (today better known for his chess moves). It has a somewhat similar plot but predates Così by 15 years. An artist and his wife help two local ladies avenge their straying husbands (both of whom want to sleep with the artist’s wife). The staging made this story happen to the same characters from Così, only several decades later, sort of like the women’s revenge for the trick played on them years ago. (Regency fashions indicated that the French Revolution had transpired in the meantime, but no political references were made.) The artist was the silent figure from Così, now married to Delphine, and the two troubled couples are, of course, the lovers, who are now married.

The opera’s libretto, by Michel-Jean Sedaine, is surprisingly subtle in its development of the characters–well, subtle according to the standards of sex comedy, at least–but the problem is that the music isn’t. Philidor’s arias are charming and bright and pretty, but there’s little happening between words and music, and the kind of dramatization that makes the Da Ponte operas so incomparable is basically absent. (You can look at a first edition of the score online here if you’d like to see what eighteenth-century French engraved sheet music looks like or check out the score.) The same cast sang well and acted with rather more slapstick than in the Mozart. Debono’s role as the artist’s wife was more or less the central one, and her rhythmic acuity made the music come to life. As the artist, Jeffrey Thompson sang with a very slender but flexible tenor.

Beaudin and Figueroa

So it is supposed to be a lustiges Nachspiel, but it doesn’t quite work. The contrast isn’t between comic and serious (like in, say, Ariadne auf Naxos) but rather two separate styles of composition. It’s also all rather long: two operas in one evening, neither of which are short, is just more than one really needs. One is loathe, however, to cut any more of Così–the recits cut off some time, and we already lost Dorabella’s Act 2 aria and all of the optional Ferrando ones. (I unfortunately missed the end of Les femmes vengées, and I apologize for this, but the press person gave me a running time that proved to be incorrect by well over an hour. I stayed an hour longer than I expected until imperatives of public transportation compelled me to sneak out. Had I known the proper time I would have been prepared.)

Opera Lafayette doesn’t have the resources to operate on the level of a European group like Les Arts Florissants or the Theater an der Wien, but it’s nice to see an American ensemble trying something ambitious and creative in the pre-1800 realm.

Program Notes Plaudits
(the opposite of a Program Notes Smackdown): Nizam Peter Kettaneh’s notes are excellent.


“The French Così.” Mozart, Così fan tutte and Philidor, Les femmes vengées. Opera Lafayette at the Rose Theater, 1/23/2014. Conducted by Ryan Brown

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All the ladies are doing it


I rolled my eyes a little bit when James Levine was recently described in the Times as “somebody who may be the greatest opera conductor in history.” But after last night’s Così, the fourth performance in his triumphant return to the Met, I can at least understand the thinking behind it (though I still don’t agree). He’s an institution here, and Mozart at the Met hasn’t sounded anywhere near this good in years. It was impeccably clear, energetic, and paced, imbued with an air and light that no one else gets out of the Met orchestra. Everything is phrased and shaped, and yet it all sounds spontaneous and fresh.

The rest of the performance bore the signature of some of the less happy legacies of the Levine era: a boring production and singing that was fine but not quite star quality. The production is particularly egregious. Leslie Koenig’s 1996 staging is cartoonish, unsubtle, and offers much unfunny comic business, making a very poor contrast to the sublimity of the music. It flattens this ambiguous, intense libretto to its lowest common rom-com denominator. (Such a seemingly low opinion of the libretto has a venerable history in Così reception, but this sort of staging seems to proceed from an a priori assumption of triviality, and never constructs a coherent relationship with the overqualified score.)

It’s also just bad theater. The look is traditional, and the blocking in the first act frequently mirrors both the sisters and the men–problematic, I think, for a production already short on dramatic differentiation. Its brand of comedy involves having the Albanians spend an awful lot of time twirling their robes around. One great thing about Da Ponte’s libretti is how they always begin in media res. But while the men are obviously in the midst of a heated conversation when the curtain rises, here they lounge still and wordless for the whole introduction.

(I’m sorry to sound like a broken record here, but you have 70-some days left to watch the Michael Haneke production of Così on the Arte website, and if you haven’t yet, go do it now because you owe it to yourself. It’s a brutal and chilly take on an opera that I’ve (as you may have surmised) never found very funny.)

The cast offered some lovely moments, but none overshadowed the conducting, quite. Fiordiligi is a fiendishly difficult role and Susanna Philips handled many of the technical challenges with aplomb and a silvery soprano. But she isn’t a natural comedian or a big personality, and lacks the bravura to make “Come scoglio” really take off. Where she excelled was “Per pietà” and onwards, where she traced Fiordiligi’s descent with simplicity and honesty. Maybe she’s just more of a Mimì type. As her sister, Isabel Leonard was not impressive, sounding rather vinegary and showing little in the way of stage presence.

As Despina, Danielle De Niese had the most acting sparkle in the cast, but didn’t have much to play off against, and the performance ended up seeming a bit effortful. Her singing tended towards the raw and more Mozartean elegance would have been nice, but Despina’s music isn’t “Dove sono.” She was certainly a brighter presence than Maurizio Muraro was as Don Alfonso, who started off as a low energy Dulcamara and went downhill from there. This is a plum role and not difficult to cast, why not find someone with a little more wit?

The other men were much better. Matthew Polenzani remains a superb Mozart tenor with sweet tone and great musicality, and did the most glamorous singing of the evening. He can actually make “Ah! lo veggio” sound like the walk in the park that, in the libretto, it literally is. Rodion Pogorossov was a fine Gugliemo and almost funny, though this role always seems to have drawn the short straw.

Despite great unevenness, the conducting alone was enough to make this a gratifying performance, and I recommend you go if you can.


Mozart, Così fan tutte, Metropolitan Opera, 10/5/2013.

Photos copyright Marty Sohl/Met.

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The City Opera’s Mozartean rumspringa

City Opera is hanging on by a thread, and their current Così fan tutte reminds us why New York needs them. Christopher Alden’s bold and exceptionally thoughtful production pits a bunch of repressed kids against the terrors of young adulthood, and the cast is excellent. Those in search of ruffles, cheeriness, or, unfortunately, an orchestra that can play in tune or support the production at all will be disappointed. But in this small theater, it’s the most inspired Mozart production I’ve seen in New York in a while.

Mozart, Così fan tutte. New York City Opera at Lynch Theater, 3/20/12. New production by Christopher Alden, conducted by Christian Curnyn with Sara Jakubiak (Fiordiligi), Jennifer Holloway (Dorabella), Marie Lenormand (Despina), Allan Clayton (Ferrando), Philip Cutlip (Guglielmo), Rod Gilfry (Don Alfonso).

I’m not sure why C. Alden decided to set this production in a Seurat-ish 1920’s Paris straight out of Sunday in the Park with George. The entire thing seems to take in a park dominated by a very long bench, with umbrellas (used in a very Rossinian storm in the Act 1 finale) and occasional interloping picnickers. It doesn’t get in the way or add much either way, and Alden’s focus on the psychological development of the characters renders it more or less irrelevant.

This production is a slow burn. The first act is played out in very static, stylized fashion. Our four young people are exceptionally tight-laced and inexpressive sorts, moving slowly and never looking at each other. The original couples don’t seem to have that much in the way of genuine feelings. It all unfolds in a kind of slow-motion, zombie-like stupor (I was reminded of acting exercises in which the director yells “be a sloth! you’re a sloth!”). Don Alfonso is a mysterious magician figure who seems to want to shake these poor kids’ world up a bit. The boys’ disguises are nothing more than a series of mildly crazy outfits–a ruff, those silly hats with giant ears, and other things that the straight-laced Ferrando and Guglielmo would never touch. Despina is a helpful crazy bag lady and handywoman (not apparently in the sisters’ employ, but that works).

I noticed that partway into Act 2, Kelley Rourke’s convenient surtitles (which had previously glossed Despina tasting the chocolate to work with the staging) stopped translating “donna” as “girl” and began saying “woman.” It’s not in Da Ponte, but that’s surely what Alden was doing. All hell breaks lose. Don Alfonso shows up in a bear suit (more bait for a review from The Awl than Stefan Herheim), and the couples go through tense and ultimately traumatic coming of age–apparently the original couples were virginal, but the new couples are not. The emotion they had been holding back through Act 1 finally finds an outlet, and it’s pretty scary for everyone–Dorabella’s “È amore un ladroncello” is a nervous wreck, and Fiordiligi’s impulse to just get out of there for once makes real sense. At the end, we don’t end up with couples at all but the sisters in one group and the men in the other. This is going to take some time to get over.

It’s a very serious production, and takes the mock-opera seria elements of the score in total earnest. (I was reminded at times of David Alden’s more elaborate but equally grim Finta Giardiniera, but I think C. Alden is much more successful here than his brother was in that case.) But it’s a convincing one, and best of all a human and woman-friendly take on an opera that is often breathtakingly cruel. Both the men and women doubt what they are doing at every step (the men first go to their original partners before Don Alfonso rearranges them, and Fiordiligi sings “Per pietà” directly to Guglielmo) and feel enormous amounts of hesitation and guilt, and yet are driven somehow to escape the sloth-world of the opening anyway. It’s a voyage of discovery for everyone, men and women alike, and despite the title there’s no statement about fidelity on behalf of either gender. There are some random bits, but it keeps moving and sometimes you need some rabbit ears to spice up your unit set and six-character opera, I guess.

It’s awful that City Opera moved out of the formerly-known-as-State Theater at Lincoln Center and has been reduced to such a pathetic little season, but the Lynch Theater at John Jay College is just the right size for Mozart opera, with a lovely intimate atmosphere. The acoustic is dry and unforgiving, and showed the problems of the orchestra mercilessly. This was not professional-level playing, with terrible ensemble and intonation and just crass playing from every side. I can’t judge the contribution of conductor Christian Curnyn, the tempos were OK but musically was just a mess. With decent orchestral support, this production could have been so much better. And no stage music, City Opera? To this we’ve come?

The cast was excellent, and most importantly were visibly all in the same production. Sara Jakubiak has a spicy, strong soprano; Fiordiligi is a killer role and she struggled with the low notes and some of the coloratura. But it was a committed and musical performance, as was Jennifer Holloway’s richer-voiced Dorabella. Allan Clayton as Ferrando was the vocal standout of the cast with an evenly produced and very clear Mozart tenor sung with style and no apparent difficulty with the tessitura, and acted with sympathetic bashfulness. Philip Cutlip was the resident barihunk Gugliemo of any self-respecting Così but vocally OK at best. Marie Lenormand as Despina provided most of the production’s goofier moments with cute humor, and her mezzo is light enough to pass as a soubrette. Rod Gilfrey sounded loud and blustery as Don Alfonso, and was more an enigmatic Wizard of Oz than a teacher at this School for Lovers.

I could see this production being a big hit at somewhere like the Theater an der Wien. (My last Così was actually at the Theater an der Wien–in the Chéreau production, featuring Elina Garanca as Dorabella, so you can guess that it wasn’t super-recent.) In New York, it’s a refreshingly smart and interesting take on a repertory served badly in the oversized and conservative Met, but the serious musical compromises are unfortunate.

Two performances remain: March 22, and 24.

Photos copyright Carol Rosegg. Sorry for the bad quality, but I had to scavenge, as City Opera’s “Photo Room” wasn’t very helpful.

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