Cosi Fan Tutti

The Glyndebourne Tour offers such great opportunity to see their fabulous productions at very affordable prices – but it offers so much more than that. And this first of the tour season’s programme is the evidence of that. All of the production values are there, the beautiful sets, costumes and inventive staging, the brilliant direction, excellent orchestra and here, on the opening leg of the tour in Sussex, the magic of the Glyndebourne home experience – it’s hard to match. But above all of this the tour offers opera lovers and newcomers the chance to hear some startling new talents. Cosi Fan Tutti had all of this in spades. Bogdan Volkov and Ilya Kutyukhin as Ferrando and Guglielmo have fine voices, very fine indeed but they also had real presence and brought colour and depth to their roles, utterly believable as the young suitors. José Fardilha was equally impressive as Don Alfonso, conniving and convincingly wicked in his game playing. Rachel Kelly made a very convincing Dorabella, beautifully sung and beautifully led astray. Kirsten MacKinnon’s Fiordiligi was wonderfully fragile in character but powerful of voice, in fact massive. Ana Quintans made the role of Despina totally her own and is the real evidence that whilst a great voice is essential, so too is the ability to act in modern opera productions. This is where Glyndebourne always shines, that ability to create musically brilliant great drama and hat’s off to Nicholas Hytner for initially bringing this so perfectly to the stage and to revival director Bruno Ravella for ensuring that this remains both Glyndebourne and Mozart at their very best.

7 October

Glyndebourne

Andrew Kay

Rating: