Opera Australia’s top-notch production brings sheer joy to Mozart favourite Cosi

A fine, uplifting Opera Australia production with a top-notch cast brings the sheer joy of Mozart at his best.

Nardus Williams as Fiordiligi, Helen Sherman as Dorabella, Filipe Manu as Ferrando, Alexandra Oomens as Despina, Richard Anderson as Don Alfonso and Nathan Lay as Guglielmo in Così fan tutte. Picture: Keith Saunders.

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Dismissed by such giants as Beethoven and Wagner as frivolous, this delightful confection of Mozart’s has continued to delight audiences worldwide since its first performance in Vienna in 1790, and plainly operagoers loved it every bit as much on opening night 234 years later at the Sydney Opera House.

Mozart wrote the opera quickly because, as usual, he needed the money. Despite the haste, he produced a work of beauty with finely balanced complexity and emotion, all contained in the silliest of plots.

Outrageous farce, otherworldly fable about the constancy or otherwise of love, heartbreak and bittersweet comedy – Così embodies all that.

Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte came up with Cosi based on themes borrowed from Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro and Moliere’s Don Juan, as well as older texts.

Così fan tutte is usually interpreted as “All women act like that”, a lighthearted study of feelings wavering between tenderness, love, pain and resignation, all effortlessly contained in a radiant score.

The plot centres on a cynical bet that calls for two officers to adopt disguises then attempt to seduce the other’s fiancee. The women aren’t easily tempted so their maid is bribed to assist the seduction.

And so to opening night …

Nardus Williams as Fiordiligi, Helen Sherman as Dorabella and Alexandra Oomens as Despina. Picture: Keith Saunders.

Nardus Williams, as Fiordiligi, produced a sinuous soprano with a finely focused delivery most evident in the softer moments, bang on target and with a sweet delicacy.

Nowhere is this sensitivity more eloquent than in her rendering of the ironic aria Come scoglio immoto resta (like a rock we stand immobile against wind and storm) in Act I.

She was an English National Opera Harewood Artist between 2019 and 2022 but before attaining professional operatic roles, she worked as a steward at Opera Holland Park. Fellow soprano Susan Bullock mentioned to Holland Park management that she had taught Williams in a masterclass a few days earlier and shortly afterwards Williams began on the company’s young artists scheme. From such small beginnings, great things grow.

Helen Sherman, who played Dorabella, used her impressive mezzosoprano to good effect, generating warmth and colour.

She had an even more unlikely start than her English co-star. Sherman was born on a lettuce farm in rural NSW. She went on to study at the Sydney Conservatorium and the Royal Northern College of Music.

Sydney-born Richard Anderson’s towering bass and personal gravitas was perfect for the role of Don Alfonso, the cynical nobleman whose bet that the two women would betray their fiances formed the basis of the plot.

Anderson began his musical training in voice and organ at St Andrew’s Cathedral School and the Conservatorium.

The two officers who accept Don Alfonso’s bet were played with relish by baritone Nathan Lay, from Victoria, and tenor Filipe Manu, a New Zealander of Tongan extraction, both transformed in this production from soldiers to wealthy Albanians intent on seducing each other’s women.

The production of Cosi was uplifting and featured top-notch singers. Picture: Keith Saunders.

Lay’s ardent singing and comedic sense helped lift the production. I hadn’t heard of him before until someone pointed out that he was In the 2021 romantic film Falling for Figaro, in which he dubbed the singing voice of the lead character Max.

Nathan’s past roles range from Bunyip Bluegum – The Magic Pudding to Schaunard in La Boheme. In late 2018, he joined The Ten Tenors, touring with them in Australia and internationally and in 2022 he made his mainstage role debut at the Sydney Opera House as Yamadori in Opera Australia’s Madama Butterfly.

Manu’s rich tenor and a finely tuned sense of the ridiculous worked well, ably backed, as were all the leads, by the chorus.

Diminutive Australian sopano Alexandra Oomens almost stole the show as the women’s cynical maid, Despina, wagging her finger at her charges’ reluctance to give in to their suitors.

She mocks them, advising them to take new lovers while their fiances are supposedly away with the aria In uomini, in soldati, sperare fedelta? (In men, in soldiers, you hope for faithfulness?).

Her lovely tone and obvious ease with the role, combined with her clear, ravishing voice, sometimes delicate and othewise revealing steel underneath, was a delight.

All up, a fine, uplifting production with a top-notch cast and the sheer joy of Mozart at his best.

DETAILS

• OPERA Cosi Fan Tutte

• STARS Nardus Williams, Helen Sherman, Nathan Lay, Filipe Manu, Alexandra Oomens and Richard Anderson

• WHERE Sydney Opera House

• SEASON Until August 17