Regular opera-goers won’t be strangers to the moral comedy that is Così fan tutte. It’s canon programming catnip: arias, duets, ensembles – the stuff (and sometimes bane) of almost every young singer’s opera-school portfolio. It’s arguably what Much Ado About Nothing is to Shakespeare, only with better harmonies and worse decisions.
After more than 20 years, it returns to the Vancouver Opera stage (via Manitoba Opera and Opera Kelowna), relocated to the Canadian Rockies in a 1930s railway road hotel. Three women, three men and a merry-go-round-robin of deception and moral brinkmanship. Two Mounties – Ferrando and Guglielmo (Owen McCausland and Clarence Frazer) – are baited by their older friend, Don Alfonso (Daniel Okulitch), into betting that their fiancées, sisters Dorabella and Fiordiligi (Alex Hetherington and Jamie Groote), will be unfaithful given the right circumstances. The snare – plaid shirts, heroic facial hair and a healthy disregard for emotional consent – is set with help from Despina (Tracy Dahl), the hotel’s world-wise maid.
Hetherington is a vibrant Dorabella – devil-may-care, elegant and a genuine comic creature – taking risks with vocal colour, physicality and gesture. Groote’s Fiordiligi is measured and conscientious, charming and perhaps shy if not guilt-ridden, with a sensibility faithful to Mozart’s graceful writing.
McCausland and Frazer are convincing in earnest, lovelorn righteousness. McCausland’s “Un’ aura amorosa” nearly earns him sympathy (nearly – and then you remember he’s part of the manipulative debacle), and Frazer’s “Donne mie la fate a tanti” lands with enough swagger to be fun… and enough chauvinism to make you roll your eyes.
At the raucous, defiant beating heart of this show, Okulitch and Dahl form an unholy alliance of wit and machination. Okulitch’s warm, rich baritone is the perfect counterweight to Don Alfonso’s trickery – charismatic, charming and not to be trusted. Dahl’s Despina is rambunctious but sympathetic: friend and confidante, architect and executioner, with sharp comedic timing and disciplined creative abandon. She’s as much actor as singer, and she’s an absolute delight.
Underscoring it all, Leslie Dala and the orchestra create a lush, graceful musical playing field – pure balm for anyone coming for a glamorous, cozy night at the theatre. Robert Herriot and the creatives (Sheldon Johnson, production concept and set design; Donnie Tejani, costume design; Jaimie Sweeney, lighting design) build a Così universe with healthy respect for the score and a canny use of nostalgia and spatial intimacy. The story unfolds on a shallow stage, sparse in furnishings except for a floating platform that interrupts the hotel-lobby frivolity and makes every interaction feel immediate and inescapable. The hair gets bigger, the palette turns sepia, and the betrayals, played for laughs, start to land like footsteps in a hallway you can’t quite pretend you didn’t hear.
Photo Credit: Emily Cooper
Tracy Dahl as Despina advises Dorabella (Alex Hetherington) and Fiordiligi (Jamie Groote)
What I’d like to see more of:
Play – The story is funny and charismatic, and the characters are rarely dislikable, but I couldn’t help but feel the whole show still very politely contained. Don’t get me wrong. As it is, this production makes for a very enjoyable evening, and comedic beats are hit well, but it doesn’t feel quite lived-in yet. Let that hair (or beard or two) down a little bit more, and see the stakes rise.
Uncertainty – Così is, at its core, a study in layered psychology. The characters in this production meet their commedia dell’arte outlines with gusto, but the storytelling is most tantalizing when it lets us glimpse what’s underneath – those private seconds of vulnerability where a person cracks. The real dramatic question isn’t whether the deceptions “work,” but how a person changes when forced to face a conviction or a trait in themselves that they’ve been determined to embrace or deny.
A hot take that many of us are probably thinking, but no one wants to say: There’s ANOTHER aria?
Gods FORBID we cut a Mozart masterpiece, but three hours-plus-change is a long time to sustain narrative momentum, and a succession of arias can slow the action to a crawl. For the aficionado, it’s heaven; for the story-first listener, it can be a punishing stretch of back-to-back monologues.
Overall
In the end, this Così succeeds not by pretending the story’s wager isn’t cruel, but by staging that cruelty inside something seductively cozy: a 1930s railway hotel where nostalgia is the wallpaper and human weakness is the main course. With Hetherington’s Dorabella sparkling on the edge of mischief, Groote’s Fiordiligi holding the moral line until it inevitably blurs, McCausland and Frazer leaning hard into lovelorn certainty, and Okulitch and Dahl presiding like genial arsonists, the production makes the opera’s famous “moral comedy” feel less like a relic and more like live wire.
Honourable Mentions
- The supers and the chorus, for making this sepia mountain resort feel delightfully wacky: frisky bartender (Daniel Curalli), world-weary pianist (Tina Chang, also principal répétiteur), a guest who keeps stealing stuff (Henry Chen), and the clutch-clutching ladies giving The Man a piece of their mind (RIGHT ON).
- The casting team, for meaningful employment to local artists and Canadians. ’Nuff said.
- The VO community engagement team, for pairing the production with context—conversations with cast and creatives, scholarly discussions, and the Inside VO pages (including “Isn’t this opera a little sexist?” conversations) that are genuinely worth your time.
Photo Credit: Emily Cooper
Ferrando and Guglielmo (Owen McCausland and Clarence Frazer) return disguised as lumberjacks in director Robert Herriot’s Canadian vision
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