How seriously should we take the story of Mozart’s “Così fan tutte”? It’s a story that many since Mozart’s day have considered cynical if not downright misogynistic. Two men, Ferrando and Guglielmo (here played by New Zealand-Tongan tenor Filipe Manu and Australian baritone Nathan Lay, respectively) wager with a bitter older man, Don Alfonso (here played by Australian bass Richard Anderson) that their fiancées, Fiordiligi and Dorabella (British soprano Nardus Williams and Australian/British mezzo soprano Helen Sherman), will not betray them as soon as their loyalty is tested – and are proven wrong! The fact that all’s well that ends well, that the men themselves, disguised as Albanians, did not sign and seal the marriage contracts their beloveds signed, does not really fix the underlying critique of supposed feminine inconstancy. And yet, Lorenzo da Ponte’s almost-perfectly structured libretto (its wonderful layout of various-sized ensembles and perspectives) provides composer Mozart with opportunities for such gorgeous, varied music that we can almost forget the implications of Don Alfonso’s cynical exercise.
The story presents a challenge to a director, and perhaps the decision of the director of this Opera Australia production originally staged in 2016, Sir David McVicar, to update the plot to the early 1900s helped guarantee an acceptance of this one-sided characterization of women as “of its time”. But a conductor, also, must engage us with an e.