It’s a silly story, Mozart’s Così fan tutte — but that’s true of many an opera. The Dallas Opera production that opened Friday night at the Winspear Opera House certainly played up the farcical elements, but it also plumbed unsettling emotional ambiguities.
Two young men, Ferrando and Guglielmo, are sure their fiancées — Dorabella and Fiordiligi, respectively — will always be faithful. But an older man who’s seen it all, Don Alfonso, determines to prove these sisters are as fickle as other women. (The opera’s title translates as “They’re All Like That.”)
As part of a bet, the men pretend to be called away to military duty, then return in disguise as “Albanians.” Each then sets out to seduce the other’s fiancée, with mixed success, the women egged on by their wily maid Despina.
A pretend double wedding is arranged. At the last minute, though, the disguises are discarded, and the humiliated women beg for mercy and Alfonso reveals the wager. What happens after has inspired varied interpretations.
Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto imagines the action in Naples, but it’s really wedded to no particular place — or time. Designed by Erhard Rom for San Francisco Opera, variously configured panels and scrims of neoclassical walls and porticos place the drama in an upper-crust American country club, circa late 1930s.
Clubby furnishings alternate with a swimming pool and a gym supplied with treadmills. Constance Hoffman’s costumes flash bright colors and patterns for more casual activities — not always flatteringly — with formal wear at other moments. Jane Cox’s original lighting design has been revived by Justin Partier.
Michael Cavanagh’s very active staging makes the most of the opera’s silliness, without quite overdoing it. But he leaves no doubt of the exquisite psychological torments — experienced differently by each in the two couples — produced by the deceptions.
So vividly are the sisters portrayed here that you’d never know the two sopranos stepped into rehearsals only last month, replacing two indisposed singers. Kayleigh Decker gives Dorabella a brighter tone and, shall we say, greater moral flexibility. Caitlin Gotimer’s Fiordiligi has a warmer timbre and a more complicated, more guilt-ridden persona.
Lucas Meachem supplies a sturdy, well-focused baritone for Guglielmo. David Portillo, as Ferrando, sings ardently, but his edgy tenor emphasizes a bit of a throb here and there.
Rod Gilfry is a splendid comic actor as Alfonso, his baritone well steeped in experience. Diana Newman’s Despina is deliciously mischievous, but her soprano, bright and carrying in upper registers, peters out below.
At the end, Cavanagh’s staging leaves dynamics among the four main characters unclear. No one emerges uncompromised.
Has a dirty trick — which it certainly is — destroyed the relationships, or can they emerge stronger for having been tested? As often in life, ambiguities are the greater truths.
Conducted by Elizabeth Askren, an alumna of Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors, the orchestra supplied vivid characterizations of its own Friday night. The minimal choral contributions were capably prepared by Alexander Rom.
But there were spots when the orchestra lost a bit of focus and precision, the second act sometimes running low on energy. And there were too many times when singers and orchestra weren’t in sync. Here’s hoping for improvement in subsequent performances.
Details
Repeats at 2 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and April 1 at Winspear Opera House, 2403 Flora St., Dallas. 214-443-1000, dallasopera.org. A livestream of the final performance will be available for $9.99 at TheDallasOpera.TV.
