If it’s a sign that you must be getting older when police officers appear younger, does the same apply to Don Alfonsos from Così Fan Tutte? Tim Albery’s Opera North production has been around for some time, though not so long that you’d expect William Dazeley, one of the great Guglielmos of recent years, to have graduated to the role of the cynical old philosopher.
Don Alfonso can be a thankless part – a largely unsympathetic character who goes through a three-hour opera without a proper individual aria. But Dazeley’s Alfonso subtly alters the dynamic of the evening. This Don is not a dusty old pedant, but a still-virile figure whose job is to remind his young companions that he was once in their shoes as one day they will be in his.
Alfonso’s scientific bent is key to Albery’s concept, which contains the action within a giant camera obscura set up to reveal the fallibility of human nature with pinhole clarity – not to mention the neat, optical metaphor of a world turned upside down. And the opera’s subtitle, the School for Lovers, might equally be adjusted to the School for Singers as the production, eloquently conducted by Jac van Steen, continues to provide a platform for new generations of talent.
Nicholas Watts’s fresh, airy Ferrando and Gavan Ring’s sardonic Guglielmo continue to develop the double act they established in last season’s Barber of Seville. Helen Sherman’s handsomely sung Dorabella shares an innate wickedness with Ellie Laugharne’s wily Despina. But the real discovery is the Irish soprano Máire Flavin, who is resplendent as Fiordiligi. Though in the early stages of her career, Flavin has a perfectly proportioned Mozartian voice, with a glittering upper register that suggests she may be the next singer ready to graduate to greater things.
- At the Grand theatre, Leeds, until 26 February. Box office: 0844-848 2700. Then touring.
