VoxCarnyx

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

The librettos Lorenzo Da Ponte wrote for Mozart pose problems for modern audiences which opera directors love to wrestle with, not always to the benefit of the works or, indeed, the ticket-buyers. As SCO Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev has mischievously said, one of the benefits of concert performances is the absence of that input.

Directing Cosi fan tutte from the fortepiano, he and his cast of six absolutely top-notch soloists demonstrated that the work not only survives but thrives without the benefit of a full production. The quality singers, led by Golda Schultz as Fiordiligoi and Angela Brower as Dorabella with Christopher Maltman as superb as you’d expect in the role of Don Alfonso, could not overshadow the fact that this was musically Emelyanychev’s show.

From the distinctive pacing of the familiar overture to the oddly ambivalent sextet at the work’s close, when Da Ponte undoubtedly pulls his punches even if Mozart is still at full throttle, the conductor was all over the score. Many conductors leave star soloists to get on with it and concentrate on their orchestra in such performances, but that is not Emelyanychev’s way and he was rewarded with full engagement from his singers, playful flirting and playground joshing included.

A particular strength of Cosi is that the whole story, in all its ludicrous detail, is sung with great clarity, so the absence of full costuming and silly disguises matters not a jot if the audience is listening (and reading the surtitles). The singers did enough in the costume department, but were crucially all highly mobile. That was especially true of the clowning of Josh Lovell and Huw Montague Rendall as Ferrando and Guglielmo, but also of Maltman and especially Hera Hyesang Park as Despina, who perhaps pushed the boat out too far at times with her brusque characterisation of the mercenary chambermaid.

The singing from all six, and by the SCO Chorus in their contributions, was consistently superb. For all the animation onstage, the cast contrived to disappear into the wings to give each other full focus during many of the solo arias, while the ensembles, whether huddled together as Don Alfonso sympathises with the deserted women or scattered across the platform for the Act 1 sextet, were all excellently well balanced.

The augmented SCO was on similarly stellar form, the quality of playing undoubtedly lifting the singers to their best game. How they managed not to giggle at some of the more outrageous keyboard ornamentation Emelyanychev added to his continuo playing remains a mystery.

Keith Bruce

Picture by Andrew Perry