\u201cCos\u00ec Fan Tutte\u201d has become the most uncomfortable of the three Mozart-Da Ponte operas. \u201cLe Nozze di Figaro\u201d has secured itself as a revolutionary and anti-establishment opera. \u201cDon Giovanni\u201d is unavoidable and unforgettable. \u201cCos\u00ec,\u201d on the other hand, struggled to find its public for most of the nineteenth century. Its plot is often seen as both cruel and frivolous.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For Aix-en-Provence, \u201cCos\u00ec\u201d is the opera for the festival\u2019s 75th<\/sup> edition. In 1948, Gabriel Dussurget, with Countess Lily Pastr\u00e9\u2019s wallet, founded the festival with the goal of performing \u201cCos\u00ec\u201d in France. The following year, with a production of \u201cDon Giovanni,\u201d the festival became a hit and it never abandoned its yearly Mozart production. For its 75th<\/sup> anniversary, \u201cCos\u00ec\u201d is a compulsory invitee.<\/p>\n Dimitri Tcherniakov<\/a> makes severe changes to\u00a0 <\/span>the libretto of \u201cCos\u00ec\u201d in an effort to rescue the opera\u2019s capacity to critique moralism towards Love and Sex. Maybe his most insightful idea was to replace the youthful ingenuous lovers of the libretto with three couples way into their fifties and sixties. Fiordiligi and Dorabella are now two flashy, generic versions of uptight wealthy WASPy women who are as shallow as coffee-spoons. The young soldiers become two of the most obnoxious shadows of the tragedy of heterosexuality. Ferrando is senile menial, and Guglielmo is the annoying macho uncle that everyone has to endure at weddings and funerals.<\/p>\n The two couples are now in an unorthodox marriage resort commanded by Despina and Don Alfonso\u2014a couple whose marriage dynamics move indifferently between sublime pleasure and brutal violence. They are the principals of Mozart\u2019s long-lost \u201cSchool of lovers.\u201d<\/p>\n Tcherniakov\u2019s premise is bananas, but not so far away from the original craziness that is \u201cCos\u00ec.\u201d The staging echoes three major films: Ingmar Bergman\u2019s \u201cScenes of a Marriage<\/a>\u201d and \u201cThe Rite<\/a>,\u201d and Mike Nichols\u2019 \u201cWho\u2019s afraid of Virginia Woolf?<\/a>\u201d By pointing to the frivolity possible even for long-married couples, Tcherniakov rescues this idea that potentially objects of Mozart\/Da Ponte\u2019s comedy are not only the ingenues, but also those whose souls have been molded by long habits of complacency, becoming more and more shallow as the years go by.<\/p>\n It is very easy to see what went wrong in this \u201cCos\u00ec.\u201d I will get there, I promise. But, it seems few people actually wrote about what went well, i.e., its touching on this aspect of the superfluous organicity of marriage, especially when middle-aged people become more and more withdrawn from the\u00a0<\/span>world.<\/p>\n The staging is irregular, and most of the first act was tantalizingly boring. Nevertheless, in the second act, some things made some<\/i> sense. The uncomfortable recitatives that succeed the balcony serenata were insightful. There, the dynamics of couple swapping with everyone, very aware of who\u2019s who, by the way, gained colors of tense and fearful desire, suggesting that everyone actually wants to be with their original partners. For the first time in years, I saw a \u201cCos\u00ec\u201d where the process of learning \u201clove,\u201d whatever \u201clove\u201d might be in a world of Bergman-style cruelty, is a forceful task to undertake. None of the characters actually have the strength to do it for themselves. They need as much support as they can get.<\/p>\n That said, this \u201cCos\u00ec\u201d falls short because of its lack of attention to artistic details. The cuts and dramatic time are far from great. The story gets more and more non-sensical as it goes, trying to find a new ending to replace what was already an ironic and ambiguous solution. One cannot make ambiguity more ambiguous, and Mozart-DaPonte are hardly in need of the \u201chelp\u201d they were solicitously offered. Most importantly, this is the ugliest staging in Aix-en-Provence. Whereas, Bergman\u2019s films are beautiful, Elena Zaytseca\u2019s costumes, on the other hand, were incoherent and impractical. What wealthy lady would repeat the same look on a Saturday night that she wore on Friday? Gleb Filshtinsky\u2019s lighting does not change at all, making my eyes to bleed with three-and-a-half hours of emotionless and bland white-led lights. And, why do people in the 1980s have smartphones? It is tough to defend Tcherniakov when all of his artistic design seems careless.<\/p>\n“Bananas”<\/h3>\n