Mozart , Così fan tutte at the Royal Stockholm Opera ( New Production)  12.5.2007(GF)

Production:
Directed and staged by Ole Anders Tandberg
Costumes: Maria Geber
Lighting: Ellen Ruge

Cast:
Maria Fontosh – Fiordiligi
Susann Végh – Dorabella
Peter Mattei – Guglielmo
Jonas Degerfeldt – Ferrando
Hilde Leidland – Despina
Gunnar Lundberg – Don Alfonso
The Royal Opera Chorus and Orchestra/Okko Kamu

 

The Royal Stockholm Opera’s new production of Così fan tutte is a Così to out-Così  any other Così! These are strong words indeed and I am going to give cause for them within the next paragraph or two, but before that a short retrospect is justified.

It was written at the request of Emperor Joseph II to a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, who obviously wasn’t too proud of it. In his Memoirs he mentions it only in passing, and then by its sub-title La scuola degli amanti as ‘an opera that holds third place among the three sisters born of that most celebrated father of harmony’ and the only reason he mentions it seems to be that he wrote the leading role to be sung by his mistress. The opera is probably based on a similar occasion in Trieste at about the time but it also seems that Da Ponte drew some details from plays by Tirso de Molina – as he of course did to much larger extent for his Don Giovanni libretto. Mozart composed the music in amazingly short time, mostly during December 1789, the first rehearsals were held on 21 January and the premiere was on 26 January. It was a success and before the end of the month it had been played five times, but then Joseph II died and further performances were cancelled. After that it never quite got a foothold in the repertoire, due primarily to the fact that the plot was considered to frivolous, an opinion that was strongly endorsed by Beethoven. During the 19^th century the libretto was reworked several times to make it more palatable but it was not until well into the 20^th century that the original version was staged again and then greeted as the masterpiece it is. Musically and psychologically that is – there can still be doubt about the morality and especially the gender perspective that the feminist movement rightly could find reason to attack.

 

Bearing all this in mind Ole Anders Tandberg has made a hilariously colourful and entertaining play where he turns almost everything upside down and invites the audience to a hide-and-seek game where every new scene makes the viewer exclaim: He did it again! As so often with today’s performances, the director deviates from the intended time of the play and in this case all kinds of times appear more or less simultaneously: the two sisters are innocently dressed in white, seemingly 18^th century, unless they are in petticoats of indeterminable period. The two fiancés make their first appearance in white bath towels and then, in the full glare of publicity, put on timeless tails, only to disappear when they are called to arms and return in modern military outfit, including machine-guns. When they return as Albanians, as the original libretto has it, they are instead hash-smoking hippies in hair-raising wigs. The two wire-pullers, Don Alfonso and Despina, are of course in impeccable servants’ outfit, as is the rest of the staff.

 The sets are picture-book like in bright colours. Most of the time we are in a garden with an invitingly green lawn filled with junipers or whatever trees they are supposed to be. But much of the action also plays in front of the curtain, which shows sundry more or less risqué motifs.

The action, like the sets, is filled with inventive twists and turns and rarely have I encountered so much inventiveness: elegant, sophisticated, daring - even a mite vulgar at times - and I believe that Mozart would have appreciated it all, himself a man who wasn’t foreign to the obscene. The opera is performed in Italian but the Swedish translation by Lasse Zilliacus, shown as surtitles, is updated and sometimes broadly colloquial.

I could go into a detailed account of the ingenuity of the action and the sets but that would rob the intended visitor of the joy of experiencing all this first hand. Suffice it to say that during the overture Tandberg sets the seal on the production in the shape of a hilarious pantomime with Don Alfonso shining shoes in time with the music, much the same way as Chaplin shaved a customer in The Dictator, and servants run back and forth, several of them after a while busily mowing the lawn. When the Albanians take poison to gain compassion from the sisters, in this production they partake of poisonous fly agaric – another stroke of genius!

All this jollity doesn’t exclude some more serious strokes, most prominent at the beginning of Act II, but the remaining impression is still a light-hearted atmosphere where all’s well that ends well.

Finnish conductor Okko Kamu isn’t particularly known as a classicist and some heavier rubatos than usual reveal that he is a romantic at heart, but considering the sets and the action this is part and parcel of the performance at large and his feeling for choosing sensible tempos is never in question. The Royal Orchestra play with accustomed finesse and the Opera Chorus sing what little they have to sing with flair. Their main object is however to act as servants which they do with obvious relish.

Relish is also a suitable word for the six soloists. They can’t hide the fact – and why should they? – that they probably enjoy this production just as much as the director does and they throw themselves whole-heartedly into whatever whimsy Tandberg incites them to. Gunnar Lundberg, who impresses more and more for every time I see him, is a scheming Don Alfonso with superb timing, Hilde Leidland is just cut out for Despina and she is suitably over the top when disguised as doctor or notary. Jonas Degerfeldt and Peter Mattei are superb as Ferrando and Guglielmo and especially the tall and lanky Mattei has a marvellously expressive body language. As Fiordiligi and Dorabella Maria Fontosh and Susann Végh could hardly be bettered, lovely creatures both and still with a mind of their own. As for the singing little else could also be wished. Jonas Degerfeldt’s once light lyrical tenor – I first heard him thirteen years ago as participant in the Jussi Björling Tenor Competition – has filled out and he will probably move on to more lirico-spinto roles in due time but he still sounds a bit strained in Un aura amorosa. I have praised Maria Fontosh before; she was a great Tatiana in Stockholm’s Eugene Onegin. Here she didn’t seem quite at ease in the beginning of the opera but she soon warmed up and produced lovely nuanced singing in her difficult arias. As her sister,  Susann Végh gave a powerful reading and she too is heading for heavier repertoire; she also sings Carmen. Without in any way diminishing the impression of the others it has to be said that Peter Mattei is probably the greatest baritone to have emerged from this part of the world for quite some time and his singing at this stage of his career is so confident, so expressive and with beauty of tone and dramatic bite to place him in the very top layer among baritones world-wide.

But this performance should be regarded as an entity where every piece is essential in the jig-saw puzzle and I would strongly endorse every reader of this review to pay a visit to the Royal Stockholm Opera and this Così fan tutte. It will play until the 15^th of  June and is scheduled for more performances during the autumn semester. A final hint to recording companies: it is well worth preserving on DVD – more than most performances I have seen!

 

Göran Forsling

 

Photographs: Mats Bäcker