Review Classical music: Cosi fan tutte | London Coliseum | ENO | Bay of Naples

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Published: 4 June 2009

Cosi Fan Tutte at London Coliseum

Film set enlivens Mozart’s Cosi

REVIEW: COSI FAN TUTTE
London Coliseum

AN enchanting Cosi Fan Tutte is made doubly entrancing in the English National Opera’s new production of Mozart’s beloved opera through the use of film to enhance the sets.
Although film has been used in musicals, notably in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Woman in White, this is the first time that an opera set has been embellished by film.
As Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami is the director of the new Cosi, it’s hardly surprising that film backdrops are an integral part of his designs.
Most of the opera takes place in the room of a villa looking out on the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius.
Kiarostami’s computerised film of the sea has a real feeling of the Mediterranean, shimmering slightly in the sunshine, with Vesuvius brooding on the other side of the bay.
There’s very little action to distract attention away from the singers.
Just about all that happens is the arrival of a two-masted gaff-rigged ketch to collect Ferrando and Guglielmo for their pretend army call-up.
Even then, the computerised ketch merely glides across the water without changing tack or flapping its sails.
Overall, you almost feel you’re on holiday in Naples, eavesdropping on the fun and games.
Other film sequences are less successful. For the final wedding scene, Kiarostami has film of an orchestra conducted in time with the actual orchestra in the pit; it’s silly and distracting.
Mostly, the shimmering Bay of Naples makes a delightful backdrop to the opera where the love of two sisters for two young men is put to the test and ultimately found wanting after their lovers return in disguise to woo them.
The great arias and duets were well delivered on the night. Particularly notable were Susan Gritton as Fiordiligi, one of the sisters, and Sophie Bevan, the sisters’ maidservant Despina.
Steven Page made for a persuasive Don Alfonso, the old philosopher bent on demonstrating female fickleness.
Again, the orchestra was on tip-top form.
German conductor Stefan Klingele marked his ENO debut by encouraging the woodwind to make the most of their roles in some of the key arias.
• In ENO repertoire until July 5.

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