Jonathan Miller’s modern day adaptation of Mozart’s brilliant opera Cosi Fan Tutte is back at Covent Garden for its sixth revival, and this time its not just the iPhones, rock n roll costumes or 21st century stage embellishments that make this tale of tangled love, rivalry and deception so up to date. Making her house debut, 15-year regular of the Vienna state opera Julia Jones reminds us what Mozart meant by it all in the first place – slick, sharp ensembles that go way beyond the emotional tenor of each aria, and a profound understanding of how texture and tempo can be used to change mood and meaning instantaneously.
And what of all the acting on display? Like all good antagonists, we can’t help liking William Shimmel’s superbly cast Don Alfonso. Always relaxed on stage (he sits cross-legged, wiping his hands nonchalantly on a napkin for the best part of the first act), his is the Bulgakovian Lucifer – proud, egotistical and infinitely sad, with a personal vendetta against those elusive, feminine creatures he just can’t live without. His melodic vibrato soars sublimely throughout and is the perfect counterpoint to his own masterly posturing from the sidelines. Comic he truly is, and from this vantage point he sets out to prove that ‘all woman are like that’, Charles Castronovo’s ringing Ferrando and Troy Cook’s rather pace-halting Gugliemo no-more than sitting-ducks for his social experiment.
Not so easy. Nino Surguladze’s adorably fickle Dorabella softens pretty quickly though Sally Matthew’s staid Fiordiligi takes a little more time to crack, her lower-register tones full of a perplexed despair as she falls for Ferrando in disguise. Her multi-layered delivery of ‘Come Scoglio’ wins the standing ovation, but the most flavoursome, piquant moment of all is Shimmel’s shame and disgust at the denouement of this most immoral of moral fairytales.
Cosi Fan Tutte is on until 17th February at the Royal Opera House. For more information, see www.roh.org.uk
