Chicago Classical Review

Lyric Opera’s opening performance of Mozart’s Così fan tutte felt longer than Götterdämmerung and not nearly as funny.

The Chicago company scored a great success with its 2018 production of Così, Mozart’s final collaboration with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. Those performances were ideally balanced, serving the sophisticated comedy while exploring the humanity and emotional depths of Mozart’s extraordinary score, and wound up topping that year’s finest performances.

No such luck this time around. Despite a youthful cast with attractive voices for the quartet of mixed lovers the performance was fatally undermined by witless stage direction that treated Mozart’s comedy with all the human insight and subtle humor of an episode of Three’s Company.

Lyric has dispensed with the elegant Monte Carlo production for an Erhard Rom staging from San Francisco Opera that transplants the action to a mid-20th-century American country club. Scenes take place in the club’s locker rooms, restaurant, library, at a pool and during an exercise class. (While it made sense for the sisters to be upset by strange men showing up in their home, why would they be outraged at men appearing in a public place?)

The distracting busyness of this dubious updating wouldn’t have been so damaging were it not for revival director Roy Rallo’s clueless misunderstanding of what Così fan tutte is all about.

The scenario centers on two friends, Guglielmo and Ferrando, who make a bet with the old cynic Don Alfonso that their fiancées, the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella, are ever-faithful to them. Alfonso devises a ruse to prove his thesis that their lovers are as fickle as all women (he believes). The men pretend to go off to war and then return disguised (as mustachioed “Albanians”) to woo each other’s betrothed. But the cynical joke takes an unexpected turn when the light-hearted mate-swapping charade proves all too effective, much to the soldiers’ dismay.

Così, when well done, is the funniest of Mozart’s comedies, often veering into pure farce. Musically, it is the most beautiful as well as the most varied of the Mozart-da Ponte operas, with more duets, trios, quartets and ensembles than any other. Yet while the effervescent, melody-packed score deftly reflects the comedic situations, Mozart also provides music of striking emotional depth. For all its surface frivolity, there are deeper, darker elements in Così that explore the volatile passions, fleeting joys and aching sadnesses inevitable in affairs of the heart. 

Unfortunately, those deeper currents were largely missing in action Sunday amid the relentless scenery-chewing; with nearly everyone wildly overacting and trying too hard, the results made for a frenetic show that was more exhausting than insightful or genuinely funny. 

Director Rallo clearly belongs to the Barbara Gaines school of Mozart opera direction, which believes that if the cast constantly acts silly and mugs outrageously, that automatically makes for a funny performance. What hacks like Rallo fail to understand is that the humor comes out of the characters and the outlandish situations not from any external sit-com shenanigans foisted on the narrative.

While this low-brow Così is not as vile as Gaines’ 2015 Le nozze di Figaro (inexplicably revived last season), the nonstop muggery pushed Mozart’s music and the deeper emotions into the background. The buffoonery seemed to get dialed down from 11 after intermission and Act II had more balanced results. Still, this was not a great afternoon for Lyric Opera or for Mozart.

Three of the four principals were making their company debuts. 

As Fiordiligi, Jacquelyn Stucker made a mixed impression in her Lyric bow. Her soprano is on the light side for this role and her rather squally “Come scoglio” lacked weight, unaided by Rallo undermining the aria with comic shtick. Stucker made up the balance with a spacious and expressive “Per pietà, ben mio,” reflecting Fiordiligi’s guilt-wracked contrition, slightly marred by interpolated high notes and stiffness in the coloratura runs.

At least Stucker seemed to have a clue what this opera is about, which is more than could be said for Cecilia Molinari as Dorabella. The Italian mezzo-soprano was miles over the top in her cartoonish portrayal with unfunny overacting, telegraphing every line, and a charmless stage persona (a virtual 180 from the delightful Marianne Crebassa in 2018). While Molinari possesses a sizable mezzo voice, her singing was largely as emphatic and unsubtle as her acting, as with her hectoring “È amore un ladroncello.”

The men proved more consistent, both vocally and dramatically. Ian Rucker as Guglielmo overdid the pelvic thrusting and mansplaining but the former Ryan Center member sang with a rich and flexible baritone. Rucker was at his best in a strong and impassioned “Donne mie, la fate a tanti,” Guglielmo’s denunciation of the perfidy of women.

Anthony León made an impressive house debut as Ferrando, largely avoiding the silly excesses, and displaying a vibrant and attractive tenor in a graceful “Un’ aura amorosa.”

That aria, like all of Mozart’s most serious and expressive numbers, was performed in front of the curtain, which served to separate them from the staging narrative—as if the director is saying to short-attention-span audience members, “Don’t worry, we’ll soon get back to the hi-jinx.”

The two seasoned veterans in the ensemble cast fared better than most of their colleagues, knowing that less is more. 

Ana María Martínez, Fiordiligi in 2018, took the role of Despina this time around. While the knockabout production made it difficult for the maid’s cynical humor to stand out, Martinez did solidly in an unlikely role, singing well (albeit with thin tone) as Alfonso’s co-conspirator.

As usual, Don Alfonso was sung by a baritone instead of the bass the role calls for. Yet Rod Gilfry’s baritone has darkened to an apt burnished tone and he provided a refined and dapper take on Alfonso, characterizing the old schemer effortlessly and avoiding any comic overkill.

As if this lowest-common-denominator staging didn’t have enough issues, Lyric’s production compounded the awkward “happy” ending with a heavy-handed overcorrection. The women become aware of the men’s ruse and pretend to go through the marriage ceremony and (of course) one-up the men at the curtain. Never mind that the revised scenario is wholly at odds with the music and the words the women are actually singing. Molinari’s disagreeable Karen-like attitude in the final scene makes one half-expect her to demand to see the manager.

Surprisingly, Enrique Mazzola’s conducting provided the most consistent element of the afternoon. In his first local Mozart assignment. Lyric’s music director showed a sure and stylish hand, leading the Lyric Opera Orchestra in an energetic and idiomatic account of Mozart’s luminous score while giving the singers ample freedom to phrase in their individual arias.

Così fan tutte runs through February 15. lyricopera.org

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