OPERA REVIEW : A Milder, Broader, Gentler ‘Cosi’

Peter Hall’s staging of “Cosi fan Tutte” gave the adventurous Music Center Opera one of its finest hours when it was introduced in the fall of 1988.

Actually, the delicate, not-so-funny comedy gave the company nearly four such hours. This revolutionary “Cosi” wasn’t just performed scrupulously uncut. It was expanded with the restoration of “Rivolgete a lui lo sguardo,” a long bravura aria that Mozart provided as an afterthought for the central baritone.

For all its length, the production moved quickly. It avoided stylization, but it certainly had style.

Hall ignored most of the usual farcical conventions and focused instead on the pain and pathos that underscore the formula frivolity. For the most part, he stressed character, not caricature. In context one even could forgive his obtrusive fascination with a couple of irrelevant commedia dell’arte scene-changers.

With the sympathetic collaboration of his designer, John Bury, the British director unraveled the inherent anti-feminist intrigues in poetic yet mysterious Neapolitan twilight. The shadows were telling.

Hall kept the action moving with fluid grace, and made a valiant attempt to convey intimacy in the vast open spaces of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. He took appreciative advantage, moreover, of an ensemble of inspired singing actors, led by Carol Vaness as the heroic yet florid Fiordiligi and Maria Ewing as her deliriously flighty sister, Dorabella. Christof Perick conducted with lyrical elan.

The “Cosi fan Tutte” that returned on Monday isn’t quite the same. Hall having moved on to other challenges, the traffic patterns are now entrusted to Stephen Lawless. Four of the six singers are new to the production, and another maestro has taken over Perick’s baton.

The basic values of the original survive the inevitable changes. Certain dramatic nuances, however, have gotten blurred if not blunted. The current cast--less virtuosic than its predecessor--is often seduced by the quest for an easy laugh, and the problem is aggravated by clumsy supertitles that both coarsen and anticipate Lorenzo da Ponte’s darkly clever jokes.

The difficulties on Monday began in the pit, where Randall Behr stressed brio at the expense of finesse, momentum at the expense of emotional expansion. Compounding the disappointment, the resident conductor elicited surprisingly untidy, rhythmically flabby playing from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. An overamplified fortepiano sounded anachronistically clunky in the recitatives.

Christine Weidinger, the new Fiordiligi, had ventured this daunting challenge only once before, some 20 years ago when she was a student at Cal State Northridge. She commands the requisite range and agility, and that says a lot. She looks lovely in her muted Biedermeier gowns, and enacts the amorous charades with easy charm. Hers is a rather small-scale performance, however, and, at this stage, she finds the noble repose of “Per pieta” less stressful than the fierce coloratura of “Come scoglio.”

Jeanne Piland--remembered for her historic performance of Tchaikovsky’s Joan of Arc 16 years ago in Nevada, not to mention numerous appearances here with the New York City Opera--could not make a star turn of Dorabella as Ewing had. But she did sing prettily and with spunky vivacity, some pitch problems notwithstanding. She also brought steamy sensuality--no mockery here--to her seduction duet with the handsome, swaggering Guglielmo of Rodney Gilfry.

Although Gilfry’s hearty baritone sometimes sounded strangely constricted, especially as the line descended, he compensated for any vocal deficiencies with macho bravado and pointed wit. Richard Stilwell, himself a celebrated Guglielmo not long ago, graduated here for the first time to the mature manipulations of Don Alfonso, which he dispatched with slender elegance, a trace of melancholy masking the cynicism.

The returning veterans of ’88 were Jonathan Mack as Ferrando and Anne Howells as Despina.

Mack performed his bel-canto duties with taste and dignity as usual, but could not disguise the discomfort imposed on his rather dry tenorino by the two great hurdles of the second act: “Ah, lo veggio” and “Tradito, schernito.” Inadvertently, he made one understand why these arias are so often omitted.

Howells, who used to be a winning Dorabella, repeated her delightfully earthy, engagingly vulgar, emphatically anti-soubrettish portrait of the crusty, all-purpose maid. Her still sweet mezzo-soprano did not rise easily to the crests of “Una donna a quindici anni,” but she won all hearts when she dipped into a baritonal chest register for her impersonation of the notary.

The Music Center “Cosi” is gentler and milder yet broader the second time around. Revivals are like that.

* Additional performances are scheduled Saturday, Monday and next Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., April 20 at 1.