Mozart's troubling comedy of manners is an exacting test for the most experienced of operatic hands. For someone tackling only his second opera it is a real ordeal by fire, and one that has badly burnt the Catalan director Calixto Bieito at Welsh National Opera. His production of Calderon's Life is a Dream, at the Edinburgh Festival two summers ago, suggested that Bieito's eye for theatrical imagery and sense of dramatic pacing might be powerfully transferred to the operatic stage. However, this Cosi Fan Tutte turns out to be a horrible disappointment, a disaster partially redeemed by the dependable conducting of Robert Spano and promising performances from some of the principals. Bieito has new shows (Don Giovanni and A Masked Ball) scheduled at English National Opera in coming seasons; they will need to be far, far better.
Bieito's inadequate response to the almost insoluble dramatic problems of Cosi - the debatably effective disguises; the emotional switchback that the two pairs of lovers experience; the ambiguous conclusion - is to turn everything into a brittle, hyperactive romp. He dodges the challenge of the ending by playing the final ensemble in front of the curtain, with no one relating to anyone else, or giving a hint of how these strange events might have changed their relationships.
Alfons Flores's handsome set places the action in a present-day Italian bar, with mirrored back wall and lots of chrome chairs and tables; these, and the unremarkably contemporary costumes (by Mercé Paloma), provide plenty of opportunity for distracting business. When extras aren't re-arranging furniture, the protagonists are rearranging each other's clothes: some of Mozart's most beguiling numbers are sung against a counterpoint of fumbling hands and awkward unbuttonings.
Bieito renders everyone pretty repellent. Ferrando and Guglielmo (Gregory Turay and Neal Davies) are simply macho and loutish young men; Dorabella and Fiordiligi (Imelda Drumm and Cara O'Sullivan) seem to be girls who want nothing out of life apart from a good time. Alfonso's misogyny is so caricatured in Donald Maxwell's ranting performance that you half expect him to turn into a serial killer. No character is well defined or, with the possible perverse exception of Despina (a typically accomplished portrayal from Linda Kitchen), appears to learn anything from the experiment they, willingly or not, undergo. If the events of Cosi Fan Tutte are turned into nothing more than an opportunity for a bit of extra-mural groping and none of the characters seems even momentarily sympathetic, the opera is hardly worth staging at all.
• Further performances: tomorrow, February 19 and March 2 - box office, 01222 878889 - then touring
