Reviews 2006
Reviews 2006
✭✭✭✩✩
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, directed by Daniel Dooner
Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto
October 17-November 5, 2006
To begin its 2006-07 season the COC switches gears from Wagner’s massive mythological Ring Cycle to Mozart’s bitter social comedy Così fan tutte (1790). The production is lovely to look at and the singers a constant pleasure to hear. What’s missing is clear a directorial point of view to make sense of one of the most morally ambiguous operas ever written.
“All women are like that” the title states meaning that woman can never remain faithful. That’s what the misogynist Don Alfonso (Enzo Capuano) believes and to prove it he persuades two young men (Russell Braun and Lawrence J. Wiliford) to disguise themselves to woo and win their own fiancées (Joni Henson and Krisztina Szabó). In this Alfonso is aided by the fiancées’ cynical maid (Shannon Mercer). Under Daniel Dooner’s superficial direction, the opera seems to support Alfonso’s repellent views leaving too many questions unanswered. Doesn’t the action equally show that all men are deceitful? Doesn’t Alfonso’s plot ruin the lives not only of the women but also of the men?
Dooner needs to show us Alfonso’s true nature more clearly and to give the two men and two women more distinct personalities. Musically, however, there is much to enjoy especially in Henson’s fervently sung arias, Mercer’s sprightly performance and the beauty of Henson and Szabó’s sublime duets.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2006-10-26.
Photo: Krisztina Szabó and Russell Braun. ©Michael Cooper.
2006-10-26
Così fan tutte