Manitoba Opera’s Mozart production transports the audience to Canadian wilderness

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/04/2023 (877 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More Canadian than a bottle of maple syrup or a hockey game Saturday night, Manitoba Opera’s witty new production of Mozart’s opera buffa “Cosi fan tutte,” (“Women are Like that”) billed as a “Canuck Cosi,” measured up to all that and more.

However the company’s final offering of its milestone 50th anniversary season also served as testament to the well-spring of talent that has come from Prairie loam since its inception in 1969 — and continues to do so.

The comic opera originally set in 18th century Naples and based on a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, has been transplanted to a 1930s luxury hotel situated in the Canadian Rockies, courtesy of set designer Sheldon Johnson’s inspired concept.

Sisters Dorabella and Fiordiligi, now swishy Italian tourists vacationing in Canada, become instantly smitten, and fall head over heels for Ferrando and Guglielmo, similarly now appearing as dashing Mounties who exit stage left in a cherry-red canoe (yes, there is a real boat in the show).

Cynical philosopher Don Alfonso, in cahoots with hotel housekeeper Despina, lays a wager that the women will be unable to remain faithful to their men after they return disguised as heavily bearded, brew-swilling log jammers, evoking NFB short vignette film “The Log Driver’s Waltz,” to lay their web of seduction.

Winnipeg-based Robert Herriot’s wonderfully sharp stage direction ensures that the production’s unabashed campiness, including hilarious topical references and sight gags aplenty (albeit delivered sweetly), provides astute insight into the quirky idiosyncrasies of “Canadian identity,” that would surely put a smile on the Wunderkind’s face.

So would its six principal performers, including the incomparable Canadian colouratura soprano and a national treasure, Winnipeg’s own Tracy Dahl reprising her role as Despina, appearing on this stage nearly 41 years ago to the day since marking her MO debut as Barbarina in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” in April 1982.

The internationally renowned singer at the top of her game for now over four decades held nothing back, her crystalline, three-octave range voice immediately showcased during her opening aria, “In uomini, in soldati, sperare fedeltà?” in which her well-nuanced character advises the sisters to take lovers while their Mounties seemingly have been called to duty.

Equally known for her razor sharp comic timing, the charismatic singer’s mad scientist-styled doctor a.k.a. Despina also had Saturday’s opening night crowd in stitches, as she cured the “poisoned” loggers not with the opera’s traditional “magnet therapy,” but with oh-so-Canadian jumper cables.

She capped even herself later as the nasal-twanged, bewigged notary, her versatile acting chops and no holds barred delivery making this opera buffa sing. Despina’s flirting with “Jim” the hotel’s bartender (a.k.a. MO Chorus member and Dahl’s husband, tenor Raymond Sokalski), added both poignancy and a gentle grace note to the evening, with art imitating life as a true-blue, real-life love story.

Another beloved Winnipegger, bass-baritone David Watson, who made his MO debut as Baron Duphol in Verdi’s “La Traviata” in 1979, delivered a compelling Don Alfonso, also a role reprisal. His robust, booming vocals were immediately heard during his first arioso “Oh, poverini, per femmina giocare cento zecchini?” with the artist still going strong in notably his 51st MO production.

Company “newbies,” Canadian soprano Jamie Groote and mezzo-soprano Danielle MacMillan both marked auspicious debuts as siblings Fiordiligi and Dorabella, respectively, ultimately given the last laugh thanks to Herriot’s surprise ending (no spoiler alerts here).

Groote particularly enthralled during her “big aria,” Act I’s “Come scoglio,” in which she pledges to remain faithful to Guglielmo. The singer’s confidently assured, agile voice able to navigate the piece’s treacherous leaps made this an early highlight, as did her later “Per pietà, ben mio perdona,” that stirred the soul.

MacMillan similarly treated listeners to a compelling “Smanie implacabili,” in which she bemoans being left alone by their abruptly departed men. While her voice did not always fully project in her lower range over the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra musicians (led by Tyrone Paterson), she nonetheless seamlessly melded her voice with Groote’s during their tightly harmonized duets, including Act I’s “Ah guarda sorella” where the sisters gaze adoringly at snapshots of their strapping paramours.

Another fine debut proved to be Canadian tenor Jean-Philippe Lazure as Ferrando, whose stirring performance of “Un’aura amarosa” as he sings of his beloved Dorabella, rightfully earned loud applause and cheers of bravo from the crowd.

His counterpart, Canadian bass-baritone Johnathon Kirby, last seen here as Ben in MO’s 2021 production of “The Telephone,” also delivered a boisterous “Donne mie la fate tanti,” despite his Italian text also at times becoming obfuscated by the orchestra.

One of the evening’s most gorgeous, lump-in-your-throat moments comes during Act I’s trio “Soave sia il vento,” in which the two sisters joined by Alfonso bid adieu to the men, now paddling off into the distance, as they sing, “may everything be as we hope;” a sentiment that never grows old.

The Manitoba Opera Chorus made every moment of its brief stage time count, with chorus master Tadeusz Biernacki also moonlighting (naturally) as “Sam,” the hotel piano player who tinkles recitative accompaniment not on a customary harpsichord, but the ivories of his onstage grand piano, adding effective sonic dimension to the show.

The three-hour production is lengthy — even for opera — including its first half clocking in at 90 minutes before intermission. There are few chorus numbers, as well as virtually the same set used throughout, despite the odd piece being paddled, er, rolled in, and a series of archival picture postcards of the great Canadian wildnerness projected onto an upstage screen that adds nostalgia. Costumes provided by Harlequin Costumes and the Stratford Festival, and Scott Henderson’s sensitive lighting design rounds out the evening.

“Cosi” doesn’t take itself too seriously — nor should it — and despite its notoriously misogynistic leanings, purporting the perceived fickleness of women in affairs of the heart, its tenets about true love never wear thin. While it may now be difficult to imagine this opera buffa taking place anywhere else than in our home and native land, Mozart’s genius is able to transcend time and space, his comic masterpiece now re-envisioned as an all-Canuck Cosi, for which we can all proudly lift a cold one, and say ‘eh!”

The production continues Tuesday, April 25 (note: earlier start time of 7 pm) and closes Friday, April 28 at 7:30 p.m. at the Centennial Concert Hall.

Holly.harris@shaw.ca

If you value coverage of Manitoba’s arts scene, help us do more.
Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism. BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project.