In March, while reviewing the Boheme Opera New Jersey’s production of “Carmen,” I mentioned a “stand and deliver” approach to the performance, saying the singing was generally excellent, but the direction was static and lacked the passion inherent in Bizet’s work.
Now, the Princeton Festival is showing the opposite side of “stand and deliver.” James Marvel’s staging of Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte” was downright manic. It wasn’t a matter of every little movement having a meaning of its own. It was a whirlwind tour of tics, gestures, moues, and other shtick that kept this “Così” from establishing any solid dramatic foothold. Not in reality. Not in texture on intensity. Not even in comedy.
As with Boheme, the singing overcame the perpetual motion and non-stop antics that made Lorenzo da Ponte’s story into a dismissible trifle and turned what could be wit and brittle sophistication into silliness.
Only “Così’s” major arias, especially as rendered by Aubry Ballarò when she sings of Fiordiligi’s preference for fidelity and inability to betray her stated beloved, Ferrando, and David Walton, as Ferrando, when he is torn between faithfulness and romantic opportunity.
Benjamin Taylor, as Guglielmo, and Alexis Peart, as Dorabella, also impress when they can soar vocally rather than racing around the stage, conveying a schoolchild’s idea of devoted affection, and going through Marvel’s endless stage business.
Zulimar López-Hernández is the lucky one. Her character, Fiordiligi and Dorabella’s housemaid and overall factotum, Despina, has comic mischievousness built into her part. While Ballarò, Walton, Taylor, and Peart look lost in slapstick, López-Hernández revels in it. Through Despina, she exemplifies how comedy can be effectively used. In every other case, the imposed folderol diminishes the characters — as well as Mozart and da Ponte’s opera, a beloved classic when performed in proportion.
The other character who can get away with some vaudeville is Don Alfonso, the skeptical friend of Ferrando and Guglielmo who inveigles the pair to test the dedication of their respective lovers, sisters Dorabella and Fiordiligi, by pretending to go to some far-flung battle with their military regiment and then donning aliases and disguises to woo the “deserted” women.
Don Alfonso says women cannot be faithful, and he aims to prove it.
In keeping with the general tone of his production, Marvel has Jeremy Harr play Don Alfonso as an instigating scoundrel, which the character undoubtedly is. The trouble with Marvel’s choice is he gives Harr’s character no sense of scruple or honor. This Don Alfonso is not a boulevardier or man of the world testing a theory, he’s an out-and-out rascal whose challenge should have been ignored.
The main problem with Marvel’s production is it reveals all the da Ponte plot devices that often play cleverly but at the Princeton Festival, are so baldly exposed, they border on unbelievable. Fernando and Guglielmo look foolish accepting Don Alfonso’s wager. All the lovers overdo the sadness of their forced separation. Fiordiligi and Dorabella look like lovesick romantics who don’t accept a soldier’s departure and can’t live without the attention of a man.
The plot remains clear, but its subtleties fall apart. They unravel until the production becomes unwatchable. With the exception of López-Hernández, one begins to feel story for the performers. They looked trapped in a production that turns them and their characters cartoonish. The men are not lovers conducting a dubious test to see if their sweethearts are faithful. They appear like dupes to the prurient, misogynistic ideas of Don Alfonso.
The women at least are unwitting, and Ballarò attempts to give some substance to Fiordliligi as she fights giving in to entreaties designed to trap her, yet they too must succumb to a production that takes so much credibility from “Così.”
By forcing humor through gags and monkeyshines, Marvel robs Princeton Festival’s “Così Fan Tutte” of its innate comic possibilities.
Farces and comedies of manners, the latter of which categories fits “Così Fan Tutte,” tend to work most effectively when played straight, allowing Mozart and da Ponte to do their work.
Signs of overdoing are hinted as early as the overture.
Rather than let Rossen Milanov’s Princeton Symphony Orchestra tease us with Mozart’s grandeur and musical jokes, Marvel has Despina appear to be manipulating the lovers to notice and seduce each other. Peart’s Dorabella practically takes Walton’s Ferrando in what looks like an act of conquest rather than play between paramours,
“Così Fan Tutte” leaves a lot of room for playfulness. Unfortunately, Marvel staged too self-conscious a romp, and “Così” is never allowed to take off and entertain by its own devices.
The way Marvel’s “Così” plays, Ferrando and Guglielmo do not only agree to accept Don Alfonso’s wager about their lovers’ fidelity but actively follow his cues and work against themselves in securing his bet.
Fiordiligi and Dorabella protest too much methinks when their boyfriends go off to battle. Mozart and da Ponte plot their dismay, and but Marvel has Ballarò and Peart make it look childish.
Marvel also does not serve Ferrando and Guglielmo by turning them from soldiers who dress formally and have poised manners to boorish bumpkins who look like what were once called “lounge lizards” and forgo blazers and neckties in favor of salmon-colored polka pants and harlequin-patterned trousers.
The essence of “Così Fan Tutte,” the genuine fun and intrinsic wit of it, never shines through Marvel’s mayhem.
In spite of that, there are moments of excellence. Aubry Ballarò, on three occasions, settles into Fiordigili’s warmer, more sincere sentiments.
During those sequences, Mozart and the person performing him mesh. Suddenly, there’s texture and genuine emotion in Ballarò’s arias.
The same is true of some of the more plaintive singing of David Walton. Though Ferrando seems to be the weaker and more willingly philandering of the men, Walton’s intonations reveal some of Ferrando’s doubts.
Benjamin Taylor finally gets a chance to show his virtuosity near the opera’s end. Alexis Peart doesn’t get quite as much stage time or musical fireworks as her castmates. Lucky for us, a passage finally comes that allows her to show her mettle.
Peart is also a fine actress and sometimes pulls off Marvel’s excesses.
Congratulations to Zulimar López-Hernández for always managing to keep Despina credible no matter what Marvel asks her to do.
Blair Mielnik’s set was flexible ad colorful. Marie Miller may have made the men’s disguises too outlandish. It is hard to see the women reconciling themselves to the garishness with which their suitors are dressed.
“Così Fan Tutte” is now closed, having been produced by The Princeton Festival at Morven Museum and Gardens, 55 Stockton Street in Princeton.
The Princeton Festival continues through Sunday, this week featuring The Sebastians playing Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto” on Thursday, June 20, ensemble Empire Wild on Friday, June 21, and Tony winner Santino Fontana (2019 for “Tootsie”), fresh off a Carnegie Hall date in Sondheim’s “Follies,” in an unusual concert on Saturday. What makes Fontana’s show unique is he prepares up to 30 songs from the Great American Songbook and chooses which to sing spontaneously, and the mood strikes him. For tickets: www.princetonsymphony.org/festival.
Mozart’s opera ‘Così Fan Tutte’ was the centerpiece of this year’s Princeton Festival. ,
