Arts & Events

At San Francisco Opera, Canadian director Michael Cavanaugh has mounted Così fan tutte as the second of his planned trilogy of the Mozart-Da Ponte operas. Cavanaugh sets Le Nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte, and Don Giovanni in three different time-frames of American history. Le Nozze di Figaro, which was performed here in Cavanaugh’s staging in 2019, he sets in the late 18th century, in other words, in a new nation under construction after the American Revolution. For Così fan tutte, Cavanaugh chooses the 1930s, that is, in a nation emerging from the Depression but with prospects of a war looming ominously just over the horizon. Cavanaugh also chooses to set each opera of his Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy as taking place in the same building. In Le Nozze di Figaro, it was a house newly built. In Così fan tutte, Cavanaugh arbitrarily has transformed this house into an opulent country club. 

This is a strange choice. Emerging from the Depression in the 1930s, America was hardly enjoying an opulent country-club lifestyle. Further, why in the world does Cavanaugh have the characters of his Così fan tutte play racquetball and badminton? Country-club life in America, even in the 1930s, revolved around the game of golf, not racquetball or badminton! Moreover, at one point in Cavanaugh’s Così fan tutte, images of fancy cars are projected. Included, I think, were images of high-end, luxury Duesenberg cars. Maybe the rich could afford such cars, but not the vast majority of working-class and middle-class Americans. In another arbitrary move, 

Cavanaugh depicts the fancy cars moving in reverse. Why? What’s the point of all this? Finally, the clothes designed here by Constance Hoffman were all wrong for the 1930s. 

I criticised Cavanaugh’s Le Nozze di Figaro as a wishy-washy staging full of half-measures. I now criticise his Così fan tutte as simply full of wrongheaded measures! One cannot help but wonder how Cavanaugh will treat/mistreat America in the forthcoming Don Giovanni he sets in a futuristic world of decline and dissolution, in a house now in ruins! 

Enough on Cavanaugh’s shaky stagings! Mozart’s music and Da Ponte’s witty librettos can survive even the rudest, most wrongheaded stagings! In Così fan tutte, the plot revolves around the question of women’s fidelity in matters of love. The male protagonists Guglielmo and Ferrando 

are so convinced of the sincerity of their fiancées that they are willing to bet money on it. So when Don Alfonso challenges them on this question, the guys agree to go along with Don Alfonso’s plot, which has Guglielmo and Ferrando suddenly pretend to be called up to go to war, bid their fiancées a moving farewell, then return disguised as visiting Albanians who put the make on the two sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella. Don Alfonso was here sung by veteran bass Ferruccio Furlanetto, Guglielmo was sung by baritone John Brancy, Ferrando was sung by tenor Ben Bliss, Fiordiligi was sung by soprano Nicole Cabell, and Dorabella was sung by mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts. The cast was rounded out by the maid Despina, sung here by soprano Nicole Heaston. The conductor was Henrik Nánási, who also conducted Cavanaugh’s 2019 production here of Le Nozze di Figaro. 

At the performance I attended on December 3, the four principal singers were all excellent, with soprano Nicole Cabell’s Fiordiligi standing out for the richness and purity of her tone. Tenor Ben Bliss made his company debut as Ferrando, and his lyric tenor voice was both tender and ample in power. Soprano Nicole Heaston’s Despina was vigorous and amusing. Conductor Henrik Nánási led a brisk rendition of the score. 

Sets were designed by Erhard Rom, costumes were by Constance Hoffman, lighting was by Jane Cox, and the San Francisco Opera Chorus was led by Ian Robertson, who will retire at the end of this season after a 35-season career. 

Mozart’s music in Così fan tutte is endlessly inventive. The lovers’ initial sighs and vows of eternal love are set to highly conventional musical styles, thus underlining the conventionality of these young characters’ notions of love. Yet when the men go off ostensibly to war then return disguised as Albanians, the plot thickens. Ferrando and Guglielmo go back and forth wooing both their own fiancée and that of the other, while the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella exhibit stark differences in their attitudes towards the disguised suitors. Dorabella is the first to admit she is intrigued and her choice, interestingly, falls not for her fiancé Ferrando but for Guglielmo. By contrast, Fiordiligi is adamant in her refusal to give in to the wooing of the Albanians. As Fiordiligi, Nicole Cabell’s aria “Come scoglio” was a thing of sheer beauty and rock-hard conviction. But, eventually, Fiordiligi too gives in to the fervent wooing of Ferrando. 

Regarding the sincerity of Ferrando’s wooing of Fiordiligi, it is a complicated issue. Is he truly in love with Fiordiligi, or is he mainly seeking revenge for Dorabella’s betrayal of him when she gives in to Guglielmo? And is Ferrando also seeking revenge on Guglielmo for seducing Dorabella and then bragging about it? Finally, is Ferrando’s ardent wooing of Fiordiligi a desperate attempt to prove his own manhood as a seducer? These are all open questions. In what is perhaps the one move I applaud by director Michael Cavanaugh, it is his decision to end Così fan tutte not with either a reconciliation of the original lovers nor a new pairing off of the lovers. Instead, Cavanaugh has the sisters enbrace each other as Guglielmo and Ferrando rush off in different directions, seemingly confused by all that has happened. 

Così fan tutte Americanized, But What’s the Point? 

Reviewed by James Roy MacBean 

At San Francisco Opera, Canadian director Michael Cavanaugh has mounted Così fan tutte as the second of his planned trilogy of the Mozart-Da Ponte operas. Cavanaugh sets Le Nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte, and Don Giovanni in three different time-frames of American history. Le Nozze di Figaro, which was performed here in Cavanaugh’s staging in 2019, he sets in the late 18th century, in other words, in a new nation under construction after the American Revolution. For Così fan tutte, Cavanaugh chooses the 1930s, that is, in a nation emerging from the Depression but with prospects of a war looming ominously just over the horizon. Cavanaugh also chooses to set each opera of his Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy as taking place in the same building. In Le Nozze di Figaro, it was a house newly built. In Così fan tutte, Cavanaugh arbitrarily has transformed this house into an opulent country club. 

This is a strange choice. Emerging from the Depression in the 1930s, America was hardly enjoying an opulent country-club lifestyle. Further, why in the world does Cavanaugh have the characters of his Così fan tutte play racquetball and badminton? Country-club life in America, even in the 1930s, revolved around the game of golf, not racquetball or badminton! Moreover, at one point in Cavanaugh’s Così fan tutte, images of fancy cars are projected. Included, I think, were images of high-end, luxury Duesenberg cars. Maybe the rich could afford such cars, but not the vast majority of working-class and middle-class Americans. In another arbitrary move, 

Cavanaugh depicts the fancy cars moving in reverse. Why? What’s the point of all this? Finally, the clothes designed here by Constance Hoffman were all wrong for the 1930s. 

I criticised Cavanaugh’s Le Nozze di Figaro as a wishy-washy staging full of half-measures. I now criticise his Così fan tutte as simply full of wrongheaded measures! One cannot help but wonder how Cavanaugh will treat/mistreat America in the forthcoming Don Giovanni he sets in a futuristic world of decline and dissolution, in a house now in ruins! 

Enough on Cavanaugh’s shaky stagings! Mozart’s music and Da Ponte’s witty librettos can survive even the rudest, most wrongheaded stagings! In Così fan tutte, the plot revolves around the question of women’s fidelity in matters of love. The male protagonists Guglielmo and Ferrando 

are so convinced of the sincerity of their fiancées that they are willing to bet money on it. So when Don Alfonso challenges them on this question, the guys agree to go along with Don Alfonso’s plot, which has Guglielmo and Ferrando suddenly pretend to be called up to go to war, bid their fiancées a moving farewell, then return disguised as visiting Albanians who put the make on the two sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella. Don Alfonso was here sung by veteran bass Ferruccio Furlanetto, Guglielmo was sung by baritone John Brancy, Ferrando was sung by tenor Ben Bliss, Fiordiligi was sung by soprano Nicole Cabell, and Dorabella was sung by mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts. The cast was rounded out by the maid Despina, sung here by soprano Nicole Heaston. The conductor was Henrik Nánási, who also conducted Cavanaugh’s 2019 production here of Le Nozze di Figaro. 

At the performance I attended on December 3, the four principal singers were all excellent, with soprano Nicole Cabell’s Fiordiligi standing out for the richness and purity of her tone. Tenor Ben Bliss made his company debut as Ferrando, and his lyric tenor voice was both tender and ample in power. Soprano Nicole Heaston’s Despina was vigorous and amusing. Conductor Henrik Nánási led a brisk rendition of the score. 

Sets were designed by Erhard Rom, costumes were by Constance Hoffman, lighting was by Jane Cox, and the San Francisco Opera Chorus was led by Ian Robertson, who will retire at the end of this season after a 35-season career. 

Mozart’s music in Così fan tutte is endlessly inventive. The lovers’ initial sighs and vows of eternal love are set to highly conventional musical styles, thus underlining the conventionality of these young characters’ notions of love. Yet when the men go off ostensibly to war then return disguised as Albanians, the plot thickens. Ferrando and Guglielmo go back and forth wooing both their own fiancée and that of the other, while the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella exhibit stark differences in their attitudes towards the disguised suitors. Dorabella is the first to admit she is intrigued and her choice, interestingly, falls not for her fiancé Ferrando but for Guglielmo. By contrast, Fiordiligi is adamant in her refusal to give in to the wooing of the Albanians. As Fiordiligi, Nicole Cabell’s aria “Come scoglio” was a thing of sheer beauty and rock-hard conviction. But, eventually, Fiordiligi too gives in to the fervent wooing of Ferrando. 

Regarding the sincerity of Ferrando’s wooing of Fiordiligi, it is a complicated issue. Is he truly in love with Fiordiligi, or is he mainly seeking revenge for Dorabella’s betrayal of him when she gives in to Guglielmo? And is Ferrando also seeking revenge on Guglielmo for seducing Dorabella and then bragging about it? Finally, is Ferrando’s ardent wooing of Fiordiligi a desperate attempt to prove his own manhood as a seducer? These are all open questions. In what is perhaps the one move I applaud by director Michael Cavanaugh, it is his decision to end Così fan tutte not with either a reconciliation of the original lovers nor a new pairing off of the lovers. Instead, Cavanaugh has the sisters enbrace each other as Guglielmo and Ferrando rush off in different directions, seemingly confused by all that has happened. 

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