SEATTLE – You know it’s not your father’s Mozart when the female singers check cell phones and order double-tall lattes and the male leads play air guitar and dress like rejects from a Cheech and Chong movie.
| “Cosi Fan Tutte”: A Seattle Opera production through March 11 at McCaw Hall, Seattle Center. Tickets, $43-$141, with student discounts; 206-389-7676, 800-426-1619, www.seattleopera.org. on |
Seattle Opera took a leap of faith with its modern-dress version of “Cosi fan tutte” now playing at McCaw Hall, mindful that opera audiences are traditionalists.
English director Jonathan Miller’s updated and stylized version of Mozart’s farce remains a lyric masterpiece that drew a lot of laughs and ringing applause at Saturday’s opening-night performance.
Opera fans will accept a 21st century setting of an 18th century opera if the production is solid and the music is right, and this one checks in on both accounts.
“Cosi fan tutte” is treasured for its beautiful score; the plot is a somewhat convoluted affair about two fickle sisters – Fiordiligi and Dorabella – who are engaged to young officers, Guglielmo and Ferrando.
The officers, on a bet with their cynical friend Don Alfonso, concoct a fidelity test, disguising themselves as strangers and attempting to court each other’s girlfriends.
In this exercise in romantic deceit, the young woman yield to the ruse but are then reunited with their real boyfriends at the end. But it’s no happy ending.
Jonathan Miller’s modern staging of this somewhat creaky story is coherent and appealing. He’s aided tremendously by the clever and hip English captions of Jonathan Dean that are projected above the stage.
The minimal set is an all-white affair, adorned with a couple of chairs, a large mirror (for preening) and a stack of throw pillows on the floor (a handy landing strip for the overwrought characters).
The costumes are something else. In the opening, Guglielmo and Ferrando are dressed in business suits. Setting their plan of deceit in motion, they strut on stage decked out in torn jeans, ripped shirts, doo-rags, heavy-metal hair and sunglasses.
Fiordiligi and Dorabella are contemporary women in designer pants and layered haircuts.
Modern Mozart is fun, but it wouldn’t be worth a hoot if it were compromised musically.
The quartet of singers on Saturday night proved adept actors with comic timing and agile physicality. Mozart’s music was well served, with honors going to the superb tenor Matthew Polenzani (Ferrando), who sang with warmth and shimmering beauty.
Joining him were baritone Christopher Maltman, who brought a blustering swagger to the role of Guglielmo.
Alexandra Deshorties was solid as Fiordiligi in some of the opera’s biggest solo moments, and Christine Rice showed off her creamy, agile mezzo as Dorabella.
Mozart’s romantic ruse wouldn’t work without the aid of two cynical helpers: the maid Despina (here a personal assistant) sung by Kimberly Barber and the scheming Don Alfonso, sung by the courtly Richard Stilwell.
Andreas Mitisek conducts (and does double duty on the harpsichord), giving the music its full measure.
Seattle Opera makes Mozart modern in this clever production, but sometimes it distracts from the music.
My advice: Close your eyes, let the 21sts century melt away and enjoy the music.
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