It’s No Day at the Beach: Met Opera Opens a New ‘Così’

NEW YORK — The last time the Metropolitan Opera put on Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte,” in the 2013-14 season, it was to celebrate the return to the podium of its music director, James Levine. He had missed the previous two seasons because of health problems, so it felt like a moving triumph for him to come back with this, an opera that was long one of his specialties.

The mood could not have been more different Thursday evening, as the Met presented the premiere of a new production of “Così,” set in 1950s Coney Island. Practically as the curtain was going up, the news broke that Levine had sued the Met for breach of contract and defamation, three days after the company fired him when an investigation found he had “engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct.”

#MeToo has reached the Met, but since its premiere in 1790, “Così” has explored the dark, cruel aspects of romance and sex. The deception that drives the story is activated by a cynical bachelor, Don Alfonso. Tired of hearing his young friends, Ferrando and Guglielmo, brag about the fidelity of their fiancées, Alfonso challenges them to put their money where their mouths are. Following his command, the two men don disguises and try to seduce each other’s girlfriends. Alas, they succeed.

How do you get an audience to believe that the two girlfriends — sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella — are fooled by their men’s disguises? For director Phelim McDermott, that is one of the biggest challenges in making sense of “Così.” His colorful, inventive, sometimes riotous, sometimes surreal new production — a replacement for an idyllic 1996 Met staging conducted at its premiere by, yes, Levine — seeks to resolve this central conundrum in an elusive opera, which can seem both farcical and harsh, utterly absurd and devastatingly real.

Working with set designer Tom Pye, McDermott zaps the story from 18th-century Naples to an amusement park in mid-20th-century Brooklyn, where, at least for a while, life becomes a carnival; where everyday codes of behavior don’t apply; and where you are continually confronted by strange figures, including sideshow performers.

The Met has hired a 12-member ensemble that includes sword swallowers, a strongman, a fire eater, a contortionist and a bearded lady to help make this setting seem a place where disbelief can be suspended. When these boyfriends appear in disguise, they look like classic greasers, with slicked-down hair, mustaches, leather jackets and jeans. You believe that their fiancées, in time, could see these strangers as the kind of guys you could let yourself go with. I don’t think even Mozart realized how deeply he had managed to probe below the comic surface of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto. The work’s ambiguities quickly grow darker. The girlfriends don’t recognize their disguised boyfriends? Well, perhaps on some level they do! “Così” explores the baffling truth that romance may be more arbitrary than we like to admit. After all, Mozart fell in love with one woman and then, when it didn’t work out, wound up marrying her younger sister. So this sister or that one, this boyfriend or the other? Perhaps it’s not that crucial.

I have never seen a production that completely cracks the code of “Così,” and for all its charms and insights, this production also comes up short. McDermott’s concept doesn’t explore the unsettling elements as much as some productions I’ve seen. But one thing it gets right is the role of sexual desire as a motivator for these lovers. To that end, moving the story to the 1950s, when proper young people refrained from premarital sex, and setting it in an amusement park, where the couples are on vacation, work well.

Things start off with a playful pantomime during the overture. We see Don Alfonso (the hearty, excellent baritone Christopher Maltman) acting as a sort of master of ceremonies. His assistant is Despina, the maid who works for the two sisters, and here the wonderful Kelli O’Hara, a Broadway star who brings savvy dramatic instincts, a lovely soprano voice and quite good Italian diction to the role. Alfonso rolls out a box, from which pop sideshow performers, who show us tricks and hold signs to signal what’s to come: Lust, Love, Big Aria, Lies, Intrigue and more. The audience applauded each trick, understandably; if this meant that the spirited orchestra under conductor David Robertson became background music, I don’t think Mozart would have minded. Robertson’s performance of the long score was fleet, clean and vibrant.

When we meet the young officers, they are having a drink at a garish nightclub near the park with Alfonso. Tenor Ben Bliss is wonderful as Ferrando, with an ideally sweet voice and boyish earnestness. Bass-baritone Adam Plachetka, as Guglielmo, comes across as more blustery and impulsive, with a robust voice and swagger.

The sisters, it’s strongly suggested here, are sexual innocents, and they’re an adorable pair. Soprano Amanda Majeski, as Fiordiligi, and mezzo-soprano Serena Malfi, as Dorabella, wear ‘50s-style skirts, sweaters and pumps. Majeski’s lustrous, focused voice and Malfi’s mellower tones blend beautifully in the scene, set on the boardwalk with a Ferris wheel and roller coaster in the distance, when the sisters pine for their boyfriends and say that they are sure weddings are not far off. You sense what they are really longing for.

It’s mostly effective to see visitors to the park strolling in the background and sideshow performers doing their thing as the main characters interact. But sometimes it distracts from the richness of Mozart’s harmonically intense and complex music during the many intricate ensembles in which the lovers go through moments of genuine confusion and torment.

McDermott knew, thank goodness, when to clear the stage and focus our attention on the music. When Bliss sang the melting aria “Un’aura amorosa,” as Ferrando thinks about the breath of true love that comes from his fiancée, he faced the audience, lost in reverie. Guglielmo — and even, for a moment, Alfonso — seemed touched by his sincerity.

And in Act II, when Fiordiligi realizes that her resolve to stay faithful is weakening, and she sings the heartbreaking “Per pietà,” asking her absent boyfriend to pity her inability to contain her desire, McDermott created stage magic. Majeski sang from within a teacup-like compartment of a ride that lifted her into the air against an empty stage.

I’ve still never seen an ideal “Così” production. But the Met certainly has a winning show here, albeit one now shadowed by the company’s ongoing battle with the Mozart-loving conductor who has defined its modern history.

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