Classical and Jazz: Preview - Jonathan Miller autumn season - Cosi Fan Tutti, La Boheme, The Mikado - at ROH
Published: 16 September 2010
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR
THE autumn season of Jonathan Miller opera productions is off to a flying start with Royal Opera House revivals of his Cosi fan Tutte, first staged in 1995, and Don Pasquale in 2004.
Next to come will be La Boheme in November, followed by The Mikado early next year, both staged by the English National Opera.
His modernised take on Mozart’s Cosi may have lost its initial novelty, but it’s still tremendous fun.
The feisty sisters are dressed to the nines, checking their mobiles, while their prospective lovers in snazzy suits could well be young City bankers on the bonus gravy train.
But actually more interesting is how JM seeks to change the identities and personalities of the young men after they head off to war in Dr Alfonso’s duplicitous scheme.
Traditionally, the young men return in fancy clothing and get up to a lot of tomfoolery.
In JM’s production, they return as macho-men, tattoos on their arms, wearing T-shirts emblazoned with skulls and wearing bandanas wrapped round their heads.
Indeed, they could well be rockers about to get on their Harley Davidsons.
But as JM’s evening moves on, the feisty sisters begin to fall for the macho men in place of their City dudes.
Wow! Perish the thought! Is JM really suggesting women might like a bit rough?
If he is, he’s abetted by Mozart’s magnificent music, played without blemish by the ROH orchestra under German conductor Thomas Hengelbrock and by strong singing by soloists, notably French baritone Stephane Degout as Guglielmo.
Thomas Allen has tremendous fun as the plotting Dr Alfonso.
Two days later, JM’s downstairs/upstairs production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale took to the ROH stage.
The set is the inside of a three-storey house, singers moving upstairs and downstairs as the delightful plot takes shape.
Unfortunately, as the set is well back from the front of the stage, some of their sound is lost on its way into the auditorium.
It’s only when soloists move to stage front in the last act that they’re heard at full throttle.
Then you realise you’ve been short-changed by JM and you’ve missed the full glory of some world-class singers, notably by Italian baritone Paolo Gavanelli as Don Pasquale himself and Costa Rican soprano Íride Martinez as Norino.