Germany Mozart, Così fan tutte: Soloists, Choral Soloists (director: Jean-Christophe Charron) and Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin / Erina Yashima (conductor). Schillertheater, Berlin, 14.1.2024. (MB)

Manufacturing:
Director, Set and Costume designer – Kirill Serebrennikov
Implementation of route, choreography – Evgeny Kulagin
Workers director (Spielleitung) – Martha Jurowski
Co-Costume designer – Tatyana Dolmatovskaya
Assistant Set designer – Nikolay Simonov
Dramaturgy – Beate Breidenbach, Maximilian Hagemeyer
Lighting – Olaf Freese
Video – Ilya Shagalov

Solid:
Fiordiligi – Penny Sofraniadou
Dorabella – Susan Zarrabi
Guglielmo – Hubert Zapiór
Ferrando – Caspar Singh
Despina – Alma Sadé
Don Alfonso – Seth Carico
Sempronio – Amer El-Erwadi
Tizio – Goran Jurenec

There ought to by no means be a run-of-the-mill Così fan tutte: Mozart’s most beautiful opera, arguably his profoundest, and maybe finally his best. (It’s, at any price, my present favorite, and never solely as a result of I heard it final.) This was actually not it, whether or not in origin, route, or efficiency. Certainly, this staging from Berlin’s Komische Oper is an impressive achievement in virtually each respect, giving one a lot to consider, a lot to relish, and far by which to be discomfited. On prime of that, it’s a very long time since I’ve seen and heard so completely achieved a forged.

Kirill Serebrennikov’s manufacturing was first seen in Zurich in 2018, albeit beneath extremely uncommon circumstances stemming from the director’s home arrest. His choreographer and assistant Evgeny Kulagin, right here credited with ‘Umsetzung Inszenierung’, took Serebrennikov’s place in particular person, passing to Serebrennikov’s lawyer movie recordings of what was growing in rehearsal for the director in flip to touch upon by way of video message. Therefore the considerably concerned checklist for the manufacturing workforce, which I assumed necessary to incorporate as a complete and with as clear a translation of phrases as I may. Following a number of extensions to his home arrest, adopted by conviction for fraud, probation, dismissal from the Gogol Centre, and bans on journey and management of any cultural establishment in receipt of presidency help, Serebrennikov’s suspended sentence was ultimately cancelled by one other court docket on account of fine behaviour and the journey ban lifted. Having been permitted to journey to Germany in 2022, he was in a position to direct the Berlin incarnation of the manufacturing, of which that is now the primary revival. It will be tough to disclaim that these circumstances make the manufacturing’s achievement all of the extra spectacular; it actually suggests some reality could but lie within the double-edged, Romantic adage that antagonistic circumstances can foster nice inventive achievement.

Onwards, in any case, to the manufacturing ‘itself’. It has already begun when one enters the theatre. A horizontally break up set (ranges 1 and a couple of) reveals at this stage – it stays, while the settings it reveals change over time – two health club settings, female and male, extras figuring out. Train of a unique sort, orchestral tuning, supplies the accompaniment. The extra bodily selection onstage continues into the overture, skipping noises proving one thing of an aural irritant, albeit a minor difficulty within the better scheme of issues. Guglielmo and Ferrando arrive, and ultimately Don Alfonso, with a lot stereotypically, certainly performatively masculine behaviour to be noticed because the stage is ready. It quickly turns into clear, although, that while Alfonso has some kind of maintain over the lads on the health club – not solely our pair of lovers – he’s additionally a deeply broken particular person, broadening and deepening his characterisation from the standard stock-character cynic. This can be related with conflict, which looms eerily massive for a manufacturing conceived in 2017-18; I couldn’t assist however wonder if some modifications had been made in mild of the invasion of Ukraine, which Serebrennikov publicly opposed. For, when Guglielmo and Ferrando are despatched off to fight – it’s unusually clear what could be concerned, coffins and all, the ladies in mourning – the army online game whose management Alfonso is making an attempt, certainly struggling, has him shaken, traumatised. Is that merely a metaphor? Maybe. We could bear in mind Monteverdi’s Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi and any variety of different literary and inventive connections and constructions. Revelation of the betrayal or defeat he has suffered in battles of the guts, by way of a show of textual content messages, provides additional context however doesn’t exclude one thing darker and deeper nonetheless. My sense was of a veteran of each kinds of battle — and extra.

For when the opposing ‘workforce’ takes inventory, led by Despina, not a servant however a therapist, she exhibits Fiordiligi and Dorabella slides of typical male behaviour, particularly within the armed forces. What higher solution to present her sufferers – the phrase is definitely used within the subtitles, which alternate as devoted translation and information to the manufacturing – what their lovers will actually be as much as, if they’re nonetheless alive? Her visible aids pursue a variety of traces, some frankly feminist, some extra cynical. The therapeutic flip that has knowledgeable lots of Dmitri Tcherniakov’s more moderen productions (e.g. Carmen, Les Troyens, and the Ring I’ve seen; as properly, I’m informed, his personal Così, which I’ve not) is first introduced on board but additionally introduced into query. If anybody is perpetrating a hoax right here, it’s arguably Despina, who additionally, removed from coincidentally, appears probably the most resilient of the lot.

Clichés that elsewhere have grow to be drained, as an illustration using cell telephones, each for messages and footage, are for as soon as used to real dramatic ends. That is, in any case, how trendy communications work — and trendy relationships, even intercourse, too. Nowhere is that this clearer, but additionally extra genuinely advanced, than when Guglielmo and Ferrando are changed by their ‘Albanian’ – on this case, first Arab – counterparts, Sempronio and Tizio, right here performed by actors (Amar El-Erwadi and Goran Jurenec) whose time on the health club appears to have been nonetheless extra profitable. The paradox over whether or not they’re precise, employed replacements – I believe they virtually actually are – is such that one can take completely different views. ‘Completely different views’, although, could also be understood in a unique sense, motion (of assorted varieties) being seen from one other stage by way of video hyperlink (not essentially ‘impressed’ by the director’s remedy, however gaining better which means nonetheless by means of that connection) and even ‘in particular person’ however as ghostly presence, apparently unseen by and certainly deceased for Fiordiligi and Dorabella. There are particularly merciless touches, equivalent to considering all is properly, solely to listen to the rest room flush from the en suite toilet: all very a lot within the spirit of these extraordinary horns of cuckoldry Mozart employs at essential factors within the rating. Precise horns are donned by each ‘Albanians’ at one level, suggesting an assumption of quasi-divine standing, Dionysus and even Zeus, enabling and initiating congress and conquest.

For males now are as objectified as girls. As a homosexual man, Serebrennikov will know this all too properly, however so do many youthful heterosexual males too. This stays a heterosexual opera on probably the most basic stage, with out say the step into overt lesbianism taken by Stefan Herheim in his reimagination of Die Entführung aus dem Serail as an exploration of affection between and past the sexes. Then again, the our bodies of all involved, however particularly Sempronio and Tizio, are so resolutely within the gaze of us all that boundaries blur and dissolve whether or not we prefer it or not — and the implication could be that the majority, maybe all, of us do. We’re all actors, enjoying roles right here, Ferrando explicitly in assuming the metatheatrical, ambiguous with respect to diegetic standing, function of ‘a singer’ in ‘Un’aura amoroso’, ‘credited’ at its shut by Don Alfonso. That extends, furthermore, to gender roles, absolutely a tribute to the much-maligned but ever-relevant Judith Butler. It finally comes as no shock, maybe even as a surprisingly satisfying fulfilment, that the title scrawled on the again by Don Alfonso is corrected to ‘Così fan tutti,’ tellingly ‘girlish’ hearts atop the ‘i’s an additional flip of the dialectical gender-screw (because it have been).

And but, this stays a deeply disillusioning expertise for all, the trendy anomie of what are both lodge rooms or a contemporary condo so modern it’d as properly be, not the least of the bridges constructed between deeper meanings to be drawn from Mozart (to a lesser extent, Da Ponte too) and Serebrennikov’s conception. Each girls have incomplete, neon-lit crucifixes above their beds: most likely solely a ‘design characteristic’, however extending into one thing extra in Fiordiligi’s case, allied to her little shrine (to what, although?) assembled for ‘Per pietà’, when she drags it throughout the ground, failing twice to take care of the electrical connection. For Mozart, these parodies of opera seria have a message that’s, amongst different issues, deeply theological; that will or is probably not the case right here, however it’s actually to not be excluded. That is, in any case, a Ardour of Ardour to rival – to my thoughts, even to surpass – Tristan und Isolde.

Credit score ought to once more be accorded the corporate’s extras (Komparserie) who had a lot to do all through and did it properly, not least dressing the 2 brides in full conventional Russian wedding ceremony costume – they may virtually have been auditioning for Les Noces – solely to should undress them as soon as once more in acts of inflation, deflation, and revelation. In a superb coup de théâtre, we flip all of a sudden to an interpolated musical memory – or premonition – of Don Giovanni’s Stone Visitor Scene. The Albanians, seizing maintain like twin Commendatores of ‘their’ girls’s fingers, could also be standing in judgement over them or could merely be making an attempt to maintain them. It’s a disruption that may likely solely be visited as soon as, distinctive to this manufacturing, however a extremely productive one, reminding us that even in probably the most hedonistic, secular, ‘sex-positive’ society, the query of sin, of remoteness from the divine, doesn’t disappear, removed from it; we merely faux it has and mistake euphemism for theodicy. As desolate as ever, most likely extra so, the characters making an attempt to attract some kind of lesson from occasions which have shattered their world appear fairly unaware that, on the extent above, an precise hearth has begun to blaze. Narcissism, in any case, isn’t the least of our modern sins — and/or illnesses.

All this, or most of it, would go for little, have been it not dropped at life by tremendous performances. This it actually acquired. I can truthfully discover nothing of any significance to which to object, and far to reward. If I write much less about them on this event, it isn’t as a result of I think about them much less necessary; for one factor, they aren’t to be extracted from what has been stated above, however slightly very a lot a part of it. In any case, Penny Sofraniadou and Susan Zarrabi portrayed, from the outset, correctly distinguished Fiordiligi and Dorabella, clear of line, if hardly of deeper intention. Each drew on various palettes of vocal color that would mix the place dramatically and musically crucial, with out loss to identities that shifted but by no means merged. A lot the identical might be stated – and that is Mozart’s laboratory of musical quasi-geometry at work, in addition to their artistry – of the Ferrando and Guglielmo of Hubert Zapiór and Caspar Singh. Equally adept as actors and singers, their exploration of wounded masculinities was each bit as revealing as that of Seth Carico’s uniquely refined Don Alfonso. Ferrando, as ordinary, had two slightly than his full three arias: a pity however not the tip of the world. Alma Sadé’s Despina likewise not solely acquired new depth as Despina however contributed that better vary. (And what a aid it was, for as soon as, to not should endure the standard ‘foolish voices’.)

Erina Yashima’s route of the orchestra proved equally impeccable. Hers was not the kind of deeply private studying that leads one to talk of a selected standpoint, ‘Böhm’s Così’ or ‘Muti’s’; nevertheless it carried out a unique, extra readily theatrical operate, near-faultless in its incitement, mirroring, and at instances questioning of the motion onstage. That I barely seen her tempi as such speaks for itself: there was a ‘rightness’ in context that would not be gainsaid. Nor may the excellence of the orchestral enjoying in a rating by which any false transfer, any slight infelicity of intonation or phrasing, will stand out like a sore thumb. The Komische Oper could also be recognized primarily for its emphasis on theatre, however that ought to not imply the orchestra issues much less, slightly that it’s half and parcel of the motion. At any price, so it sounded right here. They could not have been singing, however our ‘Albanian’ actors Amar El-Erwadi and Goran Jurenec additionally contributed significantly to the motion and its final achievement. If, as I recommended earlier, the manufacturing was in a position even to reinvigorate well-worn directorial clichés with new which means, I could as properly supply as my very own ‘a real ensemble efficiency’. Don’t take my phrase for it, although: if potential, attempt to see and listen to this Così for your self. It has, for no matter this can be value, my highest suggestion.

Mark Berry

Featured picture: Komsiche Oper Berlin’s Così fan tutte © Monika Rittershaus