Opera Theatre Company/Brad Cohen

Cosi fan tutte - Mozart

Writing about his translation of da Ponte's libretto for Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, David Parry seems to suggest that there will be a special immediacy, raciness, even licentiousness to be found in it. However, the conductor of Opera Theatre Company's new Cosi, Brad Cohen, seems not to have been much stimulated by the text, for he often sets speeds at which the articulation of words is not so much a matter of clarity as avoiding tripping up. And he allows the forward projection of the wind instruments of his orchestra to challenge the voices on a musical level.

The clean lines of the wind in the 13-piece band dominate the outnumbered and acoustically weaker strings and deprive the group's playing of the sense of chamber ensemble balance which is a prerequisite in the sort of orchestral downsizing this production is engaged in. The production itself, directed by James Conway, seems more routine than inventive, static rather than dynamic of situation, low in comedic value or shafts of insight into the on-the-face-of-it preposterous changeability of the two sisters' affections.

The singing is at its strongest in the internally well-balanced ensembles. Mary Callan Clar ke's Fiordiligi, though variable in delivery and unduly taxed at the bottom of her vocal range, has some fine moments. Mary Nelson, more sheerly beautiful in tone and more sharply observant of graceful Mozartian line, makes a peculiarly unscheming Despina. Unusually for this character, she remains altogether more persuasive as herself rather than in her various disguises. As Dorabella, Deborah Hawksley shows one of those voices which sounds a bit too pressured of tone and vibrato for Mozart.

Philip O'Reilly's Alfonso, a black, priestly, stick-supported presence, appears unusually benign, more easygoing than manipulative. And, as the military lovers, Joe Corbett (whose desire for verbal resonance makes him a sort of operatic equivalent of an old Movie tone News voiceover) and Donal J. Byrne (a small voice nicely scaled and focused but not always secure) make a Guglielmo and Ferrando who seem almost more persuasive in disguise than in true character.