Così fan tutte
Royal Opera
Phaedra
Barbican
When Jonathan Miller’s production of Così fan tutte was first mounted at the Royal Opera in 1995, it was the Armani clothes which received the most attention. Over the years there have been many modifications, and it now bears little relationship, certainly in the direction of the singers, to its original conception. In this latest revival, under Daniel Dooner, a quite new and I found quite distorting account of Mozart’s most ambivalent masterwork of opera is offered, in which the subjects of Don Alfonso’s experiment are presented as self-conscious poseurs, whereas the source of all the insight and pain in Così is surely their unawareness of their own states of mind, their touching and absurd preparedness to take each of their feelings at its face value. Now the most prominent object onstage, almost the only one, is a full-length mirror into which the characters, especially the girls, constantly peer to ensure that they are going to make the right impression.
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