As Everyone Does
Mozart at UofT
by Axel Van Chee
Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte is a comedy, a farce on love on the surface, but the depth of human emotions, the anguish, the questioning, the sharp barb of sting is ever present. And it is one of those operas that the directors love to play with: it can be colourfully camp, to intriguingly avant garde, to calculatingly grotesque. The Opera Division at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music’s Cosi went with a traditional production set in a baroque- classical style marble mansion designed by Fred Perruzza, complete with topiaries, roman garden statues, candelabras, a host of house servants, and at one point, an elaborate gondola. With some ingenious directing by Michael Patrick Albano, what is playing at McMillan Theatre is possibly one of the funniest Cosi fan tuttes I’ve seen, with just the right amount of hilarity without being vulgar, and still hangs on to the uncertainty which really is the backbone of the opera.
Mozart at UofT
by Axel Van Chee
Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte is a comedy, a farce on love on the surface, but the depth of human emotions, the anguish, the questioning, the sharp barb of sting is ever present. And it is one of those operas that the directors love to play with: it can be colourfully camp, to intriguingly avant garde, to calculatingly grotesque. The Opera Division at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music’s Cosi went with a traditional production set in a baroque- classical style marble mansion designed by Fred Perruzza, complete with topiaries, roman garden statues, candelabras, a host of house servants, and at one point, an elaborate gondola. With some ingenious directing by Michael Patrick Albano, what is playing at McMillan Theatre is possibly one of the funniest Cosi fan tuttes I’ve seen, with just the right amount of hilarity without being vulgar, and still hangs on to the uncertainty which really is the backbone of the opera.
