Così fan tutte is more confused and confusing Mozart in Berlin

Germany Berlin Festtage [4] – Mozart, Così fan tutte: Soloists, Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus master: Martin Wright), Staatskapelle Berlin / Giuseppe Mentuccia (conductor). Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, 14.4.2022 (MB)

Production:
Director – Vincent Huguet
Set designs – Aurélie Maestre
Costumes – Clémence Pernoud
Lighting – Irene Selka
Dramaturgy – Louis Geisler

Cast:
Fiordiligi – Evelin Novak
Dorabella – Marina Viotti
Guglielmo – Gyula Orendt
Ferrando – Bogdan Volkov
Despina – Barbara Frittoli
Don Alfonso – Lucio Gallo

From The Marriage of Figaro (review click here) to Così fan tutte: the first to the last of Mozart’s Da Ponte operas; or, with Vincent Huguet, from the second to the first in his ‘trilogy’. The setting suggested this, I suppose, moving back from the 1980s to the late 1960s, though that in itself assumes a unity one might not otherwise discern (or guess). Guglielmo, apparently, becomes Count Almaviva — and, after that, Don Giovanni. In Così and Figaro, he is sung by the same artist, at least, Gyula Orendt, though Michael Volle is due to take over in Don Giovanni. Beyond that, though, I found little indication of what might well be an interesting standpoint to take onstage. One can read this in the programme, of course, as I did afterwards, though what if one has not bought one? Should there not be some stage indication of this situation? We learn other oddities of Huguet’s conception in the programme too, for instance that Don Alfonso and Despina are married. I am not sure what light that shed on anything, but it was in any case not apparent to me.

I think I can see why someone might opt for a ‘flower power’ setting. Ultimately, one can set this opera anywhere or nowhere, with little in the way of loss, so long as one has some underlying, convincing idea to what one is doing. But the point — Mozart’s, still more than Da Ponte’s — seems to have been missed entirely, with something frankly weak and uninspiring put in its place. (I confess that I had to read the programme and watch a short video even to get that far, but perhaps I am just especially slow.) Apparently what happens is that Alfonso and Despina meet another couple of couples, ‘from, let’s say, Milano’ who are intending to marry, and decide to show them a few home truths by having them lighten up a bit. Fine, so far as it goes, but ‘you can have a lot of problems and it is never that bad’. Really? Is not the agonising truth of this work, in all its exquisite sadomasochism, that it really is ‘that bad’, actually worse, and that you — we — must somehow live in knowledge of that devastation? We have eaten the apple; we are fallen creatures; more to the point, we are going to keep on falling, keep on hurting, even killing, each other. It is an opera made for Schopenhauer, save that it is still clearer-eyed. Of the philosophical, let alone religious, truths at the work’s heart — this is surely a ‘Passion of passion’, to quote Michael Tanner on Tristan — there is little or nothing. ‘Always look on the bright side of life’ is a message of sorts, I suppose, though ultimately, however much (or little) one dresses it up with a smattering of Foucault, it does not really extend beyond the realm of the self-help book.

That, however, seems largely beyond the point, given how difficult it is (at least it was for me) to deduce any of it from what we actually see. We simply have the time-change, a move for a while to what appears to be a yacht, the inevitable silly dancing and other tomfoolery, smoking of what appears to be marijuana, and some random extras engaging in what sometimes, but not that often, approaches soft porn. Two of them massage members of the cast for a while, again to no evident reason. Everyone is good looking and everything is surprisingly heterosexual, any engagement between women remaining clearly for the benefit of the man watching or participating. I could not help but notice that a few more elderly men in the audience were audibly excited by female nudity; one even managed to wake from his intermittent snoozing to exclaim something whose meaning I mercifully could not quite discern. If this is sexual liberation, some serious repression would be in order, if only to prevent participants expiring from sheer boredom. That may be a point worth making, though it seemed to arise by accident rather than design.

Daniel Barenboim should have conducted, but has had to take time off to recover from illness. In his place, at very short notice, was his assistant Giuseppe Mentuccia. It is difficult to tell much of Mentuccia’s own vision of the work from such a ‘jump in’, given that he would essentially have had to conduct Barenboim’s Così, perhaps with the odd inflection when he can. There were a few hints that he may have preferred swifter tempi at times, yet for the most part he fulfilled his duties very well indeed, the Staatskapelle Berlin sounding gorgeous and fully involved throughout. I look forward to hearing more of Mentuccia on his own terms.

Orendt impressed once more, if anything still more so than as the Count. His dark, virile baritone was well complemented by Bogdan Volkov’s sweet-voiced tenor, ardent and imploring as required, as Ferrando. The latter’s duet with Evelin Novak’s Fiordiligi was a particular vocal (and orchestral) highlight for me. Fiordiligi’s journey, traced in finest Egyptian vocal cotton, was throughout as involving as Huguet’s banalities permitted. I was less sure about Marina Viotti’s contrasting Dorabella, though concluded that to be more a matter of taste than anything else, her degree of forthrightness in, say, ‘E amore un ladroncello’, a valid interpretative choice (if not necessarily mine). Lucio Gallo made for an effortlessly stylish, verbally acute Don Alfonso. Barbara Frittoli shared the same virtues and offered a welcome change as voice of experience rather than irritating soubrette. She felt no need to resort to silly voices for Despina’s other ‘characters’, employing subtler transformations of tone and colour.

The cast throughout worked very well together, though I could not help but wish they had been put to use in a more interesting, even challenging, production. Memories of Hans Neuenfels in my first Così continue to die hard, though there have been many alternative options since. Incidentally, on what does Huguet base his claim that the three Mozart-Da Ponte operas are ‘the most-performed operas worldwide’? They have not been in any statistics I have seen; indeed, not one of them falls into the top three, so far as I am aware. I should be astonished, though heartened, if Così came into the top ten. It is certainly among the least understood, though Don Giovanni must come close, and even Figaro’s more profound meaning seems to elude most.

Mark Berry