Mozart wrote Così, a comedy about love and fidelity, late in his short life — he died in 1791 at age 35, the year after the opera’s debut. It became a fixture in the international opera cannon just before World War II, according to Nicholas Carthy, the music professor who conducts CU’s opera orchestras.
A veteran of the Salzburg Festival, in Mozart’s hometown, Carthy calls Così “the ultimate ensemble opera,” because all six characters figure prominently in the action and “everybody gets to play with everyone else.” It ends ambiguously, leaving a modernist whisper of doubt about the central tension’s resolution. Then there’s the music, he says — “the most sublime… that Mozart ever wrote.”
Until March, CU had last performed Così in 2004, in a traditional production set in the 18th century. Think velvet and white stockings. Holman, who directed the latest show, set the action in 1959, in a suave Rat Pack milieu intended to serve as a 20th-century analog to the risqué 18th-century original. For inspiration, she encouraged the cast to watch Pillow Talk, the Doris Day-Rock Hudson film, and How to Marry a Millionaire, which starred Marilyn Monroe.
The opera’s plot revolves around a scheme by two young men, Ferrando (Hosmer and Michael Hoffman) and Guglielmo (James Held and Frank Fainer) to test the fidelity of their lovers, the sisters Fiordiligi (Mahlberg and Rebecca Kidnie) and Dorabella (Rebecca Robinson and Megan Schirado).
Prompted by Don Alfonso (doctoral student Luke Williams), an old man who doubts woman’s capacity for fidelity, Ferrando and Guglielmo falsely report that they’ve been called to war. As the sisters rue the situation, the men return in disguise and try to seduce the other’s girlfriend. A spunky maid, Despina (Nadya Hill and Sara Yoder), stokes the girls’ latent interest.
CU has tended to stage operas in their original time and setting. But in the spirit of fun and to broaden opera’s appeal, professional companies today often opt for anachronistic productions — The Marriage of Figaro set in a Trump Tower, for instance, or Rigoletto in Al Capone’s Chicago. Holman, enchanted by the popular culture of the 1950s, decided 2015 was as good a time as any to try a Sinatra-era Così.
The approach can disappoint traditionalists, she says, but it can also win new fans for an old art form that is, at core, a play with live music.
“When you set it close to the present day, it becomes more tangible and more relatable,” says Mahlberg. “It demonstrates that the stories that take place in opera take place anywhere, anytime.”