Cosi Fan Tutte AT CHILDERLEY HALL
Childerley Hall
Forget Glyndbourne, give Garsington the brush off, high summer in the world of opera has to be Childerley Hall at Dry Drayton a hop skip and a jump, well ten miles, from Cambridge. To launch the Cambridge Summer Music Festival, this flower filled centuries old garden is perfect. On a warm evening, guests floated around the lawns and gathered in the nooks all lumbered with picnic gear ready for the 75 minute break. My companion decided this was now Glambourne.
Cosi Fan Tutte was performed inside the vast barn behind the house.. It helps having the inspirational Jeremy Sams behind the translation . His version was fast funny and brilliantly scanned. Lucky, as every word (for a change) was as clear as a bell. Don Alfonso the central circus master of the action was a heroic - and polished -last minute stand in for Eddie Wade and made a marvellously magisterial job of mastering the eighteenth century Mozart mix and make it into a contemporary comedy. The mechanics are simple enough. Fernando and Giuliemo have fallen for two sisters and all four are firmly affianced.Too smugly , thinks the older Don and he sets out to show how affairs between young men and women are far from these lads’ ideas about love. There’s a bet on it of course. The Don will shell out if the young women’s faithful intentions turn to naught. Jeremy Sams astonishes in these explicatory interludes. Instead of being dreary plot fillers, the lines are sharp witty and very funny.
The idea is ( and frankly it’s hardly an original one) the young men pretend to go off ( the famous farewell duo is divine - Fair winds and pleasant breezes’) and then return ins disguise to win their fiancées’ affections. How will the modern young women stand up to a full on Italian wooing? Will they lose their bet? And just to add more fun, the entire thing is set in Cambridge in the 1970s. When they re-appear they are truly unrecognisable hippies sporting guitars long hair and masses of attitude.
As in so much Shakespeare, the action needs a go-between to shift it along and Joanna Songi as Despina is a lovely versatile fair facilitator as she bobs up - finally -to marry the two interlopers to their already committed beloveds. All four lovers are fabulous singers, Martha Jones’ Dorabella a glorious tone, sends shivers down the spine from the first few bars - and keeps up the musical momentum. Fiordiligi, given by Ella Taylor, is a dream of a soprano whilst the lads Richard Dowling and Gareth Brymore -John sustain the energy the youthful lovers desperately need, throughout the whole rollicking performance.
The 1970s trope is great. Placards for Feminism and protests for politics in general are the props and the discreet rendezvous of each pair takes place in Cambridge Botanic Garden.
Well done P Burton Morgan with a dynamic direction and Chantal Short does her very best with design, ideas and imagination have to work harder in this sparse set.
Finally I was amazed to see the mini orchestra emerge for a bow. How could so few musicians sustain quite so much music?. Full credit to Orlando Jopling, a monumental task brought off with that essence of good opera , style. Yes Childerley is inching up on the inside of the Opera race and with their warm merry welcome - you don’t often here the words ‘ go anywhere you like ‘ they deserve to - eventually - outflank the opposition.
