Mozart’s funny and deeply cynical “Cosi fan tutte” is so subtly drawn yet so ravishingly beautiful that its difficulties are often underestimated. Six good singers are essential. The delicate blending of those voices and their mix with the orchestra is much harder to manage.
Atlanta Opera’s production of “Cosi fan tutte” -- loosely translated as “All women are like that” -- runs through Sunday and should not be missed.
The daffy plot involves two young soldiers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, who bet the older Don Alfonso that their finacees, the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella, will be forever faithful. In disguise, the guys woo each others' girl. But with inside help from the sisters’ maid Despina, they lose the bet and their tidy conception of “true” love and an orderly world is shattered. Yet Mozart and poet Lorenzo da Ponte never pass judgments and the six characters are each revealed with full humanity.
Soprano Keri Alkema sang Fiordiligi gorgeously, with voluptuous higher notes and a husky or underpowered low end. She was thoroughly believable in Act Two, when she sang of the tremors of her heart (“Per pieta”) and finally succumbed to the pleas of her new suitor, that strange fellow with the fez and cheesy moustache.
As her flightier sister Dorabella, mezzo Jennifer Holloway was pigeon-toed, dressed in pink and offered delicious moments, although her sound wasn't always focused. Listening to these young voices, one wondered if side walls on Peter Dean Beck’s sets would have helped project the sound into the auditorium that otherwise drifted away into the wings.
Built for the Atlanta Opera for its 2000 production, the sets still look charming, with terraces and docks and a cafe by the seaside. The colors are cartoonish, or rather with the over-saturated hues of a color-tinted old photograph.
Baritone Phillip Addis, as brunette Guglielmo, was fluid and flexible in voice and, like the others, a good vocal actor in Jose Maria Condemi’s mostly linear stage direction, set on the eve of World War II. But I found it hard to get a read on the timbre of Addis’ voice; a lot of its texture never quite reached my ears in the side balcony.
Matthew Plenk, as the blond Ferrando, had no such trouble. His tenor was bright and youthful, with a delightful “ping” in the tone, and more than once he pushed his voice to the edge of searing intensity. Jason Hardy’s Don Alfonso, as ringmaster of this comedy, had a chalky tone and a youthful air, despite playing the old man of the cast.
Kiera Duffy, ridiculous and hilarious in her impersonations, offered a precisely sung and highly musical Despina. Like Plenk and the other women, she's a star in the making.
The production’s troubles came from Kazem Abdullah, a young conductor making his Atlanta Opera debut, who couldn’t always keep the orchestra and singers together. His tempos didn’t drag, but the whole evening had a spongy, generalized feel, lacking vigor.
Still, after the contrapuntal bustle of Act one yielded to the intimate encounters and private meditations of Act Two, the performance finally took flight, thanks to some very lovely singing.
Pierre Ruhe is music critic of www.ArtsCriticATL.com
Opera Review
Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte"
Atlanta Opera. 8 p.m. on Friday and 3 p.m. on Sunday. Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, 2800 Cobb Galleria Pkwy., 404-881-8885, www.atlantaopera.org
