OPERA Project, the company that first appeared in the South West in 1996 at the Iford Festival, where 14 productions were staged over the next eight years, moved to Bedminster’s Tobacco Factory in 2003 and has been performing in the former cigar packing factory sporadically ever since.
The Iford productions saw student friends Jonathan Lyness and Richard Studer hone their craft, develop their ideas and grow their ambitions, since when they have become not only founders of Opera Project but music director and artistic director of Mid Wales Opera, I was keen to see how they had progressed, and with rave reviews for the company’s 2024 Figaro at the Bristol venue, looked forward to their take on Mozart’s darkly mad Cosi fan Tutte.
With the unforgettable Soave sia il vento as its musical highlight, it’s the story of two young sisters (Fiordiligi and Dorabella) engaged to two dashing soldiers (Ferrando and Guglielmo), and an older man (Don Alfonso) who wants to prove to the boys that women – all women – are feckless and changeable and unworthy of their devotion. He sets up an elaborate plot where the soldiers go off to war, only to be replaced in double-quick time by another couple of young men (the originals disguised as Cossacks) set on seducing the sisters. This can only be accomplished with the connivance of their maid, Despina. As a story, it would get librettist Lorenzo da Ponte – and Mozart himself – cancelled in these frangible days, and in the Bristol production “translator” Studer has rather strengthened Alfonso’s punches. In this version he’s a senior officer teasing and bullying his officers into a cruelly misogynistic plot.
The only way to pull this off is by charm, light-hearted hijinks and youthful delight. There were many in the packed Tobacco Factory who came new to the story, and found the production funny and convincing.
John Lyness, a master of reduced orchestration, took the overture at a merry lick and the ten-strong orchestra produced a convincing version of the Mozartian score, which, as we all now know, has debatably “too many notes”.
Richard Studer’s productions have always been big on visual ideas. Here he lines the acting space with hanging sandbags, and there’s a canon in one corner, along with military-looking cases. The “girls”, Galina Averina and Melissa Gregory, are almost bobby-soxers, declaring their everlasting love for their departing boyfriends (Robyn Lyn Evans and Samuel Pantcheff) but, reasonably quickly, falling for the charms of their replacement Cossacks, in befrogged jackets over their soldierly trousers.
Don Alfonso (Phillip Smith) is gloatingly pleased with his dastardly scheme, and Lorena Paz Nieto’s Despina creates by far the strongest characterisation as the conflicted and quick-witted Despina.
It is early days for the production, which continues until 18th October, but it really does need more nuanced attention to the portrayals of these foolish, bright young things, and a lighter touch to the often impassioned singing.
GP-W