The cult Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami would in normal circumstances have accompanied his Cosi fan tutte to London. But, as widely reported, he lost patience with the UK immigration authorities and left his production, first seen in Aix in 2008, in the hands of his assistant, Elaine Tyler-Hall.
Unfortunate as Kiarostami’s enforced absence was — and the difficulties touring artists currently experience are quite intolerable − it is reasonable to ask whether the Iranian was a wise choice anyway.
For a film director to make a successful impact in opera, he or she has to have an innate (or acquired) understanding of how to translate psychological observation (one of Kiarostami’s strengths) to the theatrical stage. That understanding is entirely lacking here but so, too, is any individual view of Mozart/Da Ponte’s masterly dissection of human foibles.
If Kiarostami/Tyler-Hall have a single original insight to offer, it passed me by. Instead we have all the old favourites, not excluding the breast-fondling of a soprano to elicit a high note.
Kiarostami (designer Malika Chauveau) provides a series of cinematic backdrops: a café for the opening scene, the bay of Naples with lapping waves for the women’s house. They’re pretty but not particularly well integrated: the water, unlike the garden, has no contrasts of sun and shadow.
A prerecorded film of the orchestra runs at the marriage ceremony but the musicians, unlike the actors, are not in period costume and the conducting is repeatedly out of sync with the man in the pit.
The latter, Stefan Klingele, is one of the few virtues: he paces the action well and reveals delightful textural details. Susan Gritton’s Fiordiligi is another. Her Per Pietá is a heartfelt expression of inner torment, its surface ruffled by little squalls where she takes herself by surprise.
Liam Bonner is a respectable Guglielmo but Stephen Page’s Don Alfonso is frankly inadequate, while Fiona Murphy’s Dorabella and Thomas Glenn’s Ferrando are no better than so-so. No problems in obtaining visas for some of these, it seems, but would this not have been an ideal vehicle for more home-grown talent such as Sophie Bevan’s excellent Despina?
Until 2 July (www.eno.org, 0871 911 0200).
English National Opera: Cosi Fan Tutte
London Coliseum
St Martin's Lane, WC2N 4ES
