Cosi fan Tutte, Glyndebourne
Cosi fan Tutte, which opened the Glyndebourne on Tour season on Tuesday of last week, is not my favourite opera.
Not a lot goes on for a long while and when, at last, the sex war skirmish does seem to be reaching a resolution, it's a long time coming.
I felt as though I was going up an endless escalator, passing some very pretty and well-executed advertisements, but never quite reaching my destination.
The theme - that women are by nature fickle but that fickleness will ultimately be forgiven by men - was flouncingly demonstrated with lots of stamping, sighing, flirting and general whooshing around the stage.
But interchangeable arias between endless recitatives left me with a sugary aftertaste and little sense of sustenance.
The hoary old tale recounts how the faithfulness of two aristocratic sisters is tested by their fiances who return to woo them in disguise.
Even the sexuality had an undertone of cool cruelty and carefully laid fires remained unlit.
When the sisters appear set to marry each other's fiances, I found myself hoping they would all get on with it.
Beethoven had an aversion to the piece calling it 'frivolous,' Shaw felt 'quite as good plays have often been improvised in ten minutes in a drawing room or charades' but it steadily rose in favour in the second half of the twentieth century and is now one of the USA's 15 most performed operas.
Now for the good part - as always at Glyndebourne, this was sensationally executed, staged and orchestrated.
Paule Constable's lighting was, as ever, incandescent - one scene in particular sees the sisters sitting at a wrought iron table beneath a frilled canopy against a blisteringly blue Neapolitan sky.
The chemistry was there for steamy set pieces between Jacques Imbrailo's Guglielmo and Italian-born Lucia Cirillo's Dorabella although the bunsen burner remained unlit.
First night bouquets should be cast at the feet of Simona Mihai as scheming Despina - now there's a maid destined to rise above her station.
Soprano Gillian Ramm was a clear, bell-like and enchantingly direct Fiordiligi.
In programme notes she describes how Cosi 'neatly challenges us in terms of our thoughts on love, fidelity, trust - issues that are central to relationships the world over.'
Andrew Tortise's Wells Cathedral choral training served him honourably as Ferrando and Riccardo Novaro's enunciation as scheming philosopher Don Alfonso was raffishly perfect.
Susan King
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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