(Soprano Keely Flutterer in a past performance of Rinaldo, Armida. Photo by Evan Zimmerman.)
By Montague Gammon III
The post-Valentines Day Virginia Opera production of Così fan Tutte, Mozart’s comic tale of tested love and strained fidelity, harkens not just to the roots, but to the very first sown seeds of Virginia Opera.
Stage director Mo Chou’s new production, working from an idea Virginia Opera Artistic Director and Chief Conductor Adam Turner proposed to her, looks at this familiar opera through a fresh Roaring ’20s lens.
“I don’t know that Così needs to stay in the 18th Century to make it make sense” Turner said in a phone chat, making the case that this is no arbitrary modernization, but a way to “Breathe fresh life” into a story that could seem somewhat cringe-worthy for buying into the idea women’s affections are easily diverted.
Briefly, young buddies Ferrando and Guglielmo are engaged to sisters Dorabella and Fiordiligi.
Older Don Alfonso, invariably described as a “cynical bachelor,” bets the men that their beloveds will dump them for more interesting men if the two friends are absent. Off to war, supposedly, go Ferrando and Guglielmo, returning in disguise to woo each other’s sweethearts. The ladies’ maid Despina is in on the ruse.
In 1790 the two guys disguised themselves as Turks, but here, Turner said, they come back as vastly richer gents of much higher social class. (Thus removing any hint of racism that might be perceived today.)
This updating was inspired by an appealing and, Turner said, “very versatile” Art Deco set the Opera retained from a 2001 production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. Turner and Chou realized that a shift to the 1920’s consistent with that set could lead to a staging using “the very popular modern disguise of wealth and power.”
“Their disguise is all about social class; they are significantly richer…now they are society players. It fits in with Così–it’s all a game.” Turner likened it to The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel of Prohibition days, where a perceived image of social class, bolstered by conspicuous wealth, is at the heart of an elaborate deception.
Commenting on the visual appeal of this staging, Turner added, almost as an aside, “We get to see beautiful 1920’s costumes, and how often do we get to see that?”
Virginia Opera last staged Così in November, 2010, but the company itself sprang from a locally cast, locally directed production of Così in mid-1973. That’s a seldom told tale of local performing arts history’s blended wellsprings.
In the Spring of ‘73 Bob Kriner, French horn player in the Norfolk Symphony Orchestra (VSO’s predecessor), approached Stan Fedyszyn, the founder and Producing Artistic Director of Freemason Street’s Norfolk Theatre Center (ancestor of Virginia Stage), with the idea of a local opera company.
“No one will come,” Fedyszyn remembered saying, but still agreed to be the stage director, with Kriner as Music Director, of a Così that would be performed at the old Norfolk Center Theater for the City’s summertime Festival of the Arts, billed as either a Theatre Center or a Norfolk Opera Guild endeavor; available records are anecdotal.
(This writer had been tapped to stage manage that Così, but an unrelated injury put me out of commission after a few rehearsals. They took place at a long vacant Norfolk Police horse stable, repurposed decades later as ODU’s Stables Theater. Today’s Harrison Opera House is yesteryear’s Center Theater, rebuilt.)
“Well, I guess I’ll go down to the Center Theater and let in all 15 people,” Fedyszyn remembered remarking as he left home on opening night.
He found some 800 folks waiting at the doors, and the response necessitated extra performances. Another opera followed the next summer, though it was not particularly good, even in Fedyszyn’s account. Kriner brought Edythe Harrison onto the Board, and the rest, as the cliché goes, is history.
This year’s staging features four performers who will be familiar to Virginia Opera audiences, one with whom Turner has worked at Colorado’s Central City Summer Festival, and one new to both VaOpera and Turner.
That’s the “high quality lyric soprano” (Opera News) Keely Flutterer, playing Fiordiligi. Turner said she “has been recommended to me by so many colleagues in the industry, just raving about her.”
Dorabella is sung by former VaOpera Herndon Emerging Artist Kristen Choi, the mezzo whose Suzuki in Madam Butterfly earned her a “powerhouse in the making” comment from Opera News. She previously played romantic co-lead Hermia in 2018’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Tenor Terrence Chin-Loy, whom Opera News said displayed a “beautiful lyric tenor voice” as a soloist in Sanctuary Road last season, takes on the role of Ferrando. He has Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall credits on his extensive resume, which includes working with Turner in Colorado.
Film goers saw this production’s Guglielmo, Met Opera vet baritone Ethan Vincent, as César in “Bel Canto,” and President Obama heard him sing, picked for that honor by his dean when he was a student at Northwestern U. Most recently he was memorable in title role of this season’s first production, Don Giovanni.
Wm. Clay Thompson, Leporello in that same season opener and Don Alfonso this time around, is the third cast member with Metropolitan opera experience. Tuner described his casting of Thompson as saying, “You were great. Let’s have you back!”
Turner conducted Ashley Fabian, the maid Despina, in Colorado. Along with extensive opera credits she’s been in the TV film “Deadly Misconduct,” the video “Hurricane Sugar: The Grind,” and has the operatically unique distinction of being an undefeated game show champion twice: Wheel of Fortune and Chain Reaction.
Final historical sidelight: Virginia Opera Association’s January/February 1978 Così was its first show performed in Richmond. Casting was bold for that time; Fiordiligi was White and Dorabella, Black.
Così fan Tutte
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto Carlo DaPonte
Presented by Virginia Opera
Adam Turner, Conductor and Artistic Director
7:30 p.m., Fri. Feb. 21
2:30 p.m., Sun., Feb. 23
Edythe C. and Stanley L. Harrison Opera House
160 E. Virginia Beach Blvd., (Llewellyn at VaBeach Blvd.), Norfolk
866-673-7282 (1-866-OPERAVA)
Sung in Italian, English subtitles
(Additional performances in Richmond)
