Publication Date: Friday Feb 25, 2000

Tales from the Enlightenment

The most remarkable thing about the star of West Bay Opera's "Cosi Fan Tutte" was not that he never actually set foot on stage, nor that he never sang a note. It was more that he had eight legs, and that he was rewarded for his performance with an onstage execution.

Stefano Arachnietti was a Julliard-trained spider who made his entrance early in Act II, dropping slowly from the flies of the Lucie Stern Theater (and yes, that's really the term) to dangle directly in the spotlight, a very small distance from where mezzo Sally Mouzon was performing one-half of a duet with soprano Maureen Mette. The duet, as with most of the opera, was meant to be funny, but Mouzon and Mette probably wondered why all the laughs were coming in odd spots-- specifically, every time Mouzon came close to inhaling poor Stefano.

Stefano's comic triumph, however, was destined to be short-lived. At the opening of the next scene, tenor Andrew Truett entered as the rascally Albanian nobleman Sempronio and, like Pete Sampras delivering an overhead smash, gave the spinto spider a fatal full-arm swat. The barbarous Coliseum crowd roared its approval, and David Sloss's orchestra kicked into "We Will Rock You." (OK, I made that last part up.)

The next bit of (possibly) unintended humor came when Italian soldier Guglielmo (baritone Todd Donovan), singing to his pal Ferrando (the non-Albanian Truett) in the courtyard, picked up a garden tool meant to symbolize his unfaithful fiancee. My companion, Greta au Gratin, snickered and whispered in my ear.

"Is that what I think it is?"

"Yes," I said. "It's a hoe."

"Unfortunate choice of implement," said Greta.

"It's all right," I said. "Later on, one of the sopranos sings to a rake." This last anecdote brings up a serious point about Mozart's little pastry of an opera--specifically that "Cosi," often brought up on charges of woman-bashing (the title translates as "They're all like that"), is actually quite even-handed, portraying lovers of both genders as hormone-addled idiots.

Lorenzo da Ponte's libretto, initially intended for Antonio Salieri (and his only Mozart collaboration not adapted from someone else's material), challenges us to face our true human nature as not entirely monogamous creatures.

The point seems more relevant than ever today, as our Rhodes-Scholar President chases down Valley Girl interns and right-wing boobs attempt to repair our 50-percent divorce rate by "protecting marriage" from homosexuals. Right smack dab in the middle of the Enlightenment, Mozart and da Ponte were saying, "Face it, people--we're animals!"

Da Ponte's plot--showing traces of Shakespeare's "Cymbeline" and Cervantes--provides not only many opportunities for goofiness, but also an astounding variety of ensembles for Mozart's agile musical mind. Playing billiards in a coffeehouse (drinking double lattes, half-caf), old bachelor Don Alfonso (baritone William Neely) proclaims that a faithful woman is like a phoenix--all believe in it but none has seen it. His young friends, Ferrando and Guglielmo, dissent, pointing to their fiancees, the virtuous sisters Dorabella and Fiordiligi.

The gents decide on a wager to resolve the matter: the soldiers will pretend to leave Naples on a military mission, then take on the guise of mustachioed Albanian nobles to try to woo their beloveds into infidelity. For Mozart, the musical possibilities multiply as the tenor woos the baritone's soprano and the baritone goes after the tenor's mezzo.

Throw in two behind-the-scenes connivers--baritone Alfonso and soprano housemaid Despina--and the cast becomes a six-piece vocal organ just waiting for the application of Mozart's dexterous fingers. (Keep in mind, also, that Mozart was composing at the peak of his powers, two years before his young death.)

The most thrilling combination in this particular cast is that produced by the two sisters, signaled early on by the tight unison harmonies in their first duet, "Ah guarda sorella." Mette and Mouzon both sport powerful voices with slim, well-controlled vibratos, so the match of their tones is absolutely divine.

It's sufficiently flattering to say that mezzo Mouzon keeps up with Mette's Fiordiligi, since the latter possesses an instrument of immense strength and agility. During a passage in the first act, Mette threw a double forte in my direction and, I swear, it hurt my eardrums.

For this role, Mette needs everything she's got. The tessitura (pitch-range) of Fiordiligi's arias are so wide that they inspired apocryphal stories about Mozart writing them to punish a soprano who had rejected his advances. (Count me skeptical, since the first Fiordiligi, Adriana Ferrarese del Bene, was librettist da Ponte's mistress).

"Come scoglio," Fiordiligi's impassioned first-act rejection of the Albanian suitors, covers two octaves in all and undertakes leaps of a 10th and a 12th (a 12th is, loosely speaking, an octave and a half). And her second-act aria, "Per pieta, ben mio," is not much easier. Mette gave such a mighty performance, I am left to list the two things she would need to do to gain absolute perfection: work a little more power into those subterranean low notes, and make more use of those several gradations of mid-level dynamics evident in her gorgeously cultivated crescendos.

In the acting department, I have more to pick on: Mette's stiff, prissy interpretation leaves little room later on, once Fiordiligi has come to earth, for empathy. She is the most adored character in the opera, and a more relaxed--but still faithful--portrayal pays big dividends. This is in contrast to Mouzon, who invests Dorabella with an utterly charming awkward friendliness, reminiscent of Lisa Kudrow of "Friends."

The best out-and-out comic on stage is Truett, who delivers the shy, Harpo Marx-like Albanian Sempronio with scads of physical ingenuity. He also displays a beautiful lyric tone (especially in the Act I "Un aura amorosa") but one that, at least in this cast, needs much more volume. It was notable, in fact, how ardently his fellow singers and orchestra worked to bring down their own dynamics to bridge the gap--but the gap was still there. Baritone Todd Donovan gives an excellent account of Guglielmo, but Willi Neely's Don Alfonso is even better, delivering all the opera's great sexist pig-lines ("Woman's faith is fiction and fabrication") with a relaxed self-possession and a warm, boisterous baritone. His co-conspirator, Despina, Alicia von Kugelgen, fares not so well, supplying the housemaid's playful coquettishness but failing to go full-gonzo goofy on Despina's masquerades (a wacky doctor, a doddering notary), and not quite mastering her buffo aria, "Una donna a quindici anni." As far as singing in English translation--something West Bay does once a season--I wish they would damn well give it up. Though it certainly provides translators Ruth and Thomas Martin with an arena for Gilbert & Sullivan wordplay ("Goodness gracious! How loquacious!"), it plays molto havoc with the Italian linguistic rhythms (only a little less than with Rossini) and they have to use supertitles, anyway, because of the way opera singers sing. (It also manages to convert the title phrase to the very lame "That's how they do it!" Boy, there's poetry for ya.)

Jean-Francois Revon's sets are better than an amusement park ride, revolving and flying away like plywood ballerinas to reveal several different settings. They also use enough trompe l'oeil to sink a ship, with beautiful touches of Seurat on the seaside backdrop. Richard W. Battle's period costuming is immaculate, and makes me wonder why it is that I always like the Mozartean servants' clothing best--in this case, Despina's glorious harvest gold dress with lacings of pink.

Stage director David F. Ostwald does Mozart and da Ponte the great favor of treating his daffy characters nonetheless as real people, throwing in a wistful moment of remembrance for Don Alfonso just to suggest that even the jaded old bachelor has a heart.

Respect, in fact, is the soul of "Cosi," which, until the 20th century, was not really considered a serious work. Perhaps what operateurs finally noticed is that, no matter how artificial the situation, Mozart and da Ponte insist on delving into their characters' genuine motives and feelings. The unexpected complexity makes a grand feast of philosophical appetizers, and, if that doesn't fill you up, there's enough music here to ricochet around your ears for months to come.

"Cosi Fan Tutte"

Who: West Bay Opera

When: through Feb. 27

Where: Lucie Stern Theater, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto

Cost: $17-$33

Info: (650) 424-9999



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