Los Angeles Opera’s current staging of Mozart’s Così fan tutte has got gimmicks to spare but delivers great music, magnificently performed. The production, seen on Sunday, March 16, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, comes from San Francisco Opera and was directed in this bring-up by Shawna Lucey.
The late Michael Cavanagh, who directed the original 2021 show, uprooted the location from 18th-century Naples, transplanting Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto to 1930s America. While the program essay refers to the clouds of World War II billowing on the horizon, they’re really not.
In fact, Lucey’s direction for LA Opera looks and feels more like a 1920s Mack Sennett comedy. The production comes replete with flouncing bathing beauties, mustachioed muscle men, and gents in white flannels and boater hats (courtesy of costume designer Constance Hoffman). The plot’s Italian villa becomes a palatial spa hotel, its clientele well-to-do tourists out to enjoy a week of high-society entertainment.
In Così, Mozart wrote one of his richest scores, and Mozartian beauty is unquestionably this production’s lasting takeaway, outshining myriad comic moments ranging from subtle to ludicrous. As conducted by James Conlon and performed superbly by the LA Opera Orchestra, Sunday’s performance floated like a feather on the breeze one moment, rollicked with buffa delight the next, and then pierced the heart with the accuracy of Cupid’s bow. The perfectly balanced cast of four vibrant young lovers anchored by a pair of company veterans made the show come alive.
Baritone Rod Gilfry has been delighting LA Opera audiences ever since the curtain rose on the company’s very first performance in 1986. His turn here as man-of-the-world Don Alfonso is like a sip of well-aged brandy.
His accomplice as the maid Despina is soprano Ana María Martínez, who made her LA Opera debut in 1997. She delivers a delightful performance with more than a nod to the queen of comedy, Carol Burnett. Martínez is especially zany in the scenes that have her character donning the disguises of an electro-zapping doctor and a seriously scribbling notary.
An air of lighthearted silliness abounds throughout the production. Don Alfonso’s love-wager unfolds, with the two suitors — baritone Justin Austin as Guglielmo and tenor Anthony León as Ferrando — pretending to go off to war, only to reappear as a pair of wild and crazy Albanians turned loose in the Adirondacks.
Costumed in identical outfits, soprano Erica Petrocelli as Fiordiligi and mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb as Dorabella could pass as identical twins. It’s a gimmick that makes their back-and-forth romantic allegiances even more fun to watch. Although the comic antics often push the bounds of credibility, the sublime singing brings the focus back to the characters’ emotions. Petrocelli soars vocally; her Fiordiligi stands comparison with any in the grand tradition of the role. Chaieb is saucier, more charming, and more easily tempted.
As for the suitors, Austin is bolder and fierier, while León produces the velvet sheen one desires in a Mozartian tenor.
There’s a moment in Act 1 when the direction lifts the lid on the opera’s underlying eroticism — the sisters, though deceived, become more aware of their physical desires. As the two ladies are lounging, reading society magazines, the wily Despina retrieves a pair of blank-covered books from a secret hiding place and substitutes them for the magazines. As the ladies peruse the pages, their eyes widen in astonishment. Clearly, they have been handed forbidden fruit — perhaps copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Given a less frivolous production, this idea might have been developed. But Mozart’s depth of characterization comes through the surrounding antics because this production serves the music so well.
LA Opera’s production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte runs through March 30.
