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BrumHour saw Così fan tutte at the invite of Birmingham Hippodrome.
By Dave Massey twitter.com/BrumHour
Review: Così fan tutte – Welsh National Opera at Birmingham Hippodrome
Directed by Max Hoehn, music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
In a late 1960s boarding school, we find two sisters Dorabella (Kayleigh Decker) and Fiordiligi (Sophie Bevan) have been dating two young men from the school, Guglielmo (James Atkinson) and Ferrando (Egor Zhuravskii). Egged on by tutor Don Alfonso (Stephen Wells) and Despina (Rebecca Evans) the two young men pretend they’ve gone to fight in the armed forces before returning in disguise to try and win the hearts of the two sisters.
Testing the love of a partner isn’t the regular basis for a comedy set in a school isn’t what I’d think of when going to see an opera and this is a pretty unconventional experience, at three hours and nearly twenty-five minutes (Including interval) It was also a pretty long experience with two 90-minute sections.
I really enjoyed listening to the vocals of these classically trained singers much more than the story itself perhaps because I found the story itself a little clunky and even the revised setting couldn’t help update it to modern tastes. Don Alfonso seems to be pushing his own agenda with very little thought or care for anyone involved. The set is a single static set, a school hall, with desks, a canteen and some vibrant artwork and full of imagination. The vocals and music from this production are what saved it for me particularly the two couples.
Welsh National Opera is at Birmingham Hippodrome on a regular basis. Find out more about upcoming productions here: wno.org.uk and see what is coming up at Birmingham Hippodrome here: https://www.birminghamhippodrome.com/whats-on.
