San Francisco.(North America)(review of Cosi Fan Tutte)(Opera Review)

It just doesn't do to make Cosi Fan Tutte either exclusively comic or excessively dark: striking a balance is key to a successful production of Mozart's dramma giocoso, and director John Cox did so, with splendid results, in San Francisco Opera's production (seen September 11). Boasting assured music direction by debuting conductor Michael Gielen and radiant singing from a well-matched cast featuring two more company debuts, the production (co-owned by Opera de Monte Carlo, where it had its premiere in February of this year) made a winning first entry in SFO's eighty-second season.

Cox and production designer Robert Perdziola set the opera in a luxury hotel on the Mediterranean, circa 1914. The setting emphasized both sides of the serio-comic split. The place gave Mozart's young lovers an apt backdrop for games and deception: Perdziola framed the action with twin three-columned pavilions that moved into various configurations as casinos, parlors and promenades; a deep-blue seaside backdrop, complete with striped umbrellas and moving sail-boats, could be seen just beyond. It was all brightly colored and festive, yet Cox allowed intermittent glimpses into the increasingly grim reality of the era: the crisp military uniforms seen at the start of the evening gave way to soldiers on crutches and the sisters in nurses' uniforms by the end of Act I.

The setting helped balance and clarify the action throughout. In the first scene, Don Alfonso was a sort of avuncular croupier, raking a huge gaming table and treating his challenge to Ferrando and Guglielmo as just another bet in a long night of gaming--albeit one with uncommonly good odds. The affable young men seemed more than willing to be gulled. Despite their opulent surroundings, Fiordiligi and Dorabella appeared genuinely horrified, and somewhat bewildered, by the idea of the impending war, while the maid Despina was more world-weary than the usual soubrette. When this Despina--a woman of a certain age--sang "In uomini in soldati," one felt the voice of experience speaking.

With the stage adequately set and an emotional balance established, Mozart's always-astonishing score poured forth in one glorious episode after another. The ensembles were divine, with the cast achieving a silken vocal blend. There wasn't a weak link in the mix. Making her company debut, soprano Alexandra Deshorties was an impressively upright Fiordiligi--statuesque and haughty, with a keen, indignant edge. Boasting magnificently large, rounded tone, she invested "Crone scoglio" with delicious outrage; "Per pieta" was steeped in despair and delivered with ample reserves of vocal power. Mezzo-soprano Claudia Mahnke (replacing the originally scheduled Magdalena Kozena) sang attractively as the more malleable, voluptuous Dorabella. The men were also smartly cast. Tenor Paul Groves's ardent, bright-toned Ferrando cut a handsome figure and contributed a yearning "Un'aura amorosa." Bass-baritone Hanno Muller-Brachmann (also a company debut) was a firm-voiced, energetic and naturally comic Guglielmo. Baritone Richard Stilwell was the robust, patrician Don Alfonso. The San Francisco Opera Chorus made refulgent contributions.

Still, it was mezzo-soprano Frederica yon Stade who emerged from the cast with the evening's finest and most endearing performance. Taking on Despina for the first time in her career, von Stade sang with charm and vivacity, inhabited the role fully and made the character's point of view seem the only reasonable one. Her brief caricatures as a gleeful Dr. Mesmer and a fussy Notary were pure comic gold.

Gielen is a precise, forceful conductor, and he shaped the score with finesse and a clear sense of forward motion. Under his direction, the orchestra yielded rich, unified sound; the strings took on a beautifully burnished sheen, and the woodwinds articulated with real bite. He also proved adept at uncovering the score's deep well ...