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Saturday, January 22, 2005
Capitol City Opera in Mozart’s ‘Cosi fan tutte’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OPERA REVIEW
Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte.”
Capitol City Opera. Friday at 14th Street Playhouse. (Show repeats Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. Performances include alternate casts.) www.ccityopera.com
Mozart would have loved Malcolm Gladwell’s much-discussed new book “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.”
Mozart’s comic opera “Cosi fan tutte” plays into (and against) Gladwell’s premise: People make intuitive, snap judgments that are often more insightful than judgments reached after long, thoughtful deliberation.
The Capitol City Opera, an energetic community-based troupe, opened “Cosi” Friday at the 14th Street Playhouse, the first of three performances, sung in English.
“Cosi,” with an uproariously clever libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, is a goofy tale of couple swapping and the illusions of “true love.” The opera takes place over a busy 24 hours. Two young men test their fiancees’ devotion by disguising themselves to seduce the other’s lover. The girls fail the test; the “wrong” couples elope. In a mind-warping denouement, the trickery is revealed. Everyone pretends that nothing has changed when, obviously, nothing can ever be the same.
Mozart’s moral: Love captured in the blink of first impressions is just as worthy (or useless) as a love hard-won. Put more cynically, humans are trivial creatures and — love at first sight or not — we’ll find a way to screw it up.
With committed singers and smart use of resources, Capitol City has a remarkable knack for elevating serviceable, low-budget productions into engrossing evenings in the theater. Eric Smithey deftly conducted a small orchestra of 19 players, which tipped the sonic balances heavily toward the woodwinds. The score was trimmed and the chorus was cut entirely.
Vocally, the men made stronger first impressions than the women, although by evening’s end they melded into a smooth-flowing ensemble.
As the dopey fellas, Benjamin Pruett (as Ferrando) and Joseph Szalay (Guglielmo) sang with firm tones and clear diction, playing the comic bits better than the romantic emotions. It was slapstick all the way.
John LaForge, as Don Alfonso, the old cynic who instigates the action, had the richest, most naturally operatic voice on stage. He made the others, in comparison, sound more flatly Broadway than lyrically opera house.
Kathleen Szalay sang the scheming maid Despina, her voice clear and bright as a tinkling little bell. The sisters were less convincing for their roles. Perri Montane produced plumy warm tones as Dorabella. She had more control of her delivery than sister Fiordiligi, Kimberly Rosquist, whose sound was muddy and who strained to reach her highs and lows.
Alertly directed by Michael Nutter, this “Cosi” had a stereotype-busting final twist. Amid the who-loves-whom confusion, the sisters skipped off, waving away their deceitful suitors. Could you blame the girls? They’d been burned by their own snap decisions.
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