DETROIT — Yuval Sharon’s new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte at Detroit Opera reimagines a story that “when it’s played straight…feels out of date at best, and an apologia for prejudice at worst,” according to the director. The intelligent, tightly wrought version that opened April 5 augments the plot’s distasteful premise, Alfonso’s puppetmaster-like manipulation for the sake of experiment, into a robotic AI deep dive, leaving no music, text, or plot point hanging outside its contemporary frame.
Every directorial choice leads us inexorably to the surprising ending, which, although a complete departure from the original, the audience still vociferously applauds. Why does it work? Because Sharon distills the work to its philosophical essence, then rebuilds the narrative with today’s materials, in our own image.
Mozart’s beloved overture is repurposed here as the bespoke accompaniment of a promo film for Soulsync, tech dudebro Don Alfonso’s cutting-edge AI robotics company. Brimming with hubris, Alfonso takes the conference stage to offer us, his eager customers, a real-time experiment for our viewing pleasure: Lovebots Fiordiligi and Dorabella (companions, he corrects, with ebbing patience) will contend with pressure against their programmed fidelity to their respective loves Guglielmo and Ferrando while he recruits his personal, more advanced model, love-servant Despina, to manipulate the women into accepting the advances of new suitors — their old ones, swapped and in disguise. Meanwhile, the darker implications of AI hit home amid images of camo-clad soldiers alongside an army of humanoid robots with the American flag reflected on their blank faces.
Sharon’s program synopsis stops after Act I, withholding the twists he will add to the thread of the narrative. After the intermission, we learn that Guglielmo and Ferrando are companion robots as well, as subject to this experiment as Fiordiligi and Dorabella. Interspersed throughout the second act are Q&A sessions with Alfonso in which customers initially taken in by Alfonso’s promises and framing realize how empty and flawed his enterprise is.
This device, delivered in Sharon’s spoken English text by the men of the small, impressive chorus, allows the director to explore the ethics of both AI and Così. Alfonso’s ultimate motivation, to create women he can control — as exposed by his ex Debbie, the model for Despina — casts a dark shadow on Despina’s servitude, as does the apotheosis of her dawning consciousness in the final scene, when she turns on Alfonso with the four lovers’ help.
Baritone Edward Parks makes a disturbingly convincing tech king as Alfonso. His strong performance encompasses fluent acting as he projects the easy swagger of the modern-day philosopher/puppet-master, while his powerful, lithe tone remains immediate and plentiful throughout. As employee-companion Guglielmo, baritone Thomas Lehman brings a satisfying combination of vocal and comedy chops, with a warm depth and exciting melodic energy to match his surprising flair for physical comedy. His “Donne mie, la fate a tanti,” delivered while gloatingly hitting ping-pong balls at Ferrando, finds him at his best. Tenor Joshua Blue’s Ferrando is an ideal match for Lehman in voice, energy, and manner, as body and sweetness carry his often glorious tone to the far reaches of his role’s range. The more sentimental of the two employee-candidates, Blue’s performance puts his generous heart on full display.
Mezzo-soprano Emily Fons combines stylized robotic movement with luxurious legato as Dorabella, her shimmering coloratura a glimpse of the prowess she must bring to her multiple Handel roles. She is a perfect scene and harmony partner to soprano Olivia Boen’s Fiordiligi. Boen’s breathtakingly robust low extension is the stony foundation of Fiordiligi’s resistance in her athletic “Come scoglio,” while her frequent, ringing upper passage work adorns the musical landscape like a magnolia in full bloom; her delicately touching “Per pietà, ben mio perdona” is, in itself, a convincing argument for the value of opera.
Where Despina is usually a sassy side character who “knows how to serve,” Sharon centers on her and her revenge, and he has found a performer more than up to the immense task in soprano Ann Toomey. She is gorgeous, with a supple, expressive soprano far richer than the Ina-girl type of decades past; her subtle shifts from more to less robotic, less to more flirtatious, and programmed to human are the work of an accomplished actor, while her vocal responsibilities, including the most sumptuous melodies as well as passages where she contends with live electronic interventions, demonstrate her musical mastery. Conductor Corinna Niemeyer brings together this marvelous sextet of principals with Detroit Opera’s slim yet mighty orchestra in a glittering performance of one of Mozart’s loveliest scores.
The action takes place in an immaculate box set (by the New York City design collective dots) of a white, amply lit lab space, upon which eerily colorful generative AI-style projections by Yana Biryükova and Hana S. Kim create each setting. Particularly striking is the infinite mirror effect behind Fiordiligi and Ferrando at the moment their consciousness sparks into existence. Alfonso’s tech dudebro black uniform contrasts with the white plastic sheeting and robotic joints of Fiordiligi, Dorabella, and Despina under Oana Botez’s colorful costumes, which wittily evoke and resist period Mozart costuming. Despina wears a vivid, frilly sexy maid costume over the same white plastic sheeting, until she appears as the doctor, when she dons a sexy girlboss disguise. Guglielmo and Ferrando first appear in business suits under white lab coats, but their disguises as rich men of leisure are hilariously awful white athleisure suits.
Weaknesses of the original — pace Wolfgang and Lorenzo — become opportunities here. Where Fiordiligi’s and Dorabella’s yielding in the original, under inhumane pressure, constitutes their failure, here the same journeys show education and growth toward human consciousness. Da Ponte’s well-known plot no longer describes the ladies’ destruction but their rise and, satisfyingly, Alfonso’s fall. This erudite production is opera that loves and repairs, made for audiences who consciously, willingly sit with the contradiction slicing into their enjoyment: The music is heavenly, but the old stories are a hellish slog through misogyny, racism, classism, and social norms long out of date. I’ve wanted to love Così, and in this version, I unabashedly do.
