I’d like to inform any of the Victoria or Vancouver area dopers (or any of the NW Washington dopers, come to that) about a set of upcoming performances that I’m in. I’m playing the role of Don Alfonso in the Pacific Opera Victoria production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte here in Victoria, BC. Full details, including dates, venue, tickets, synopsis and libretto, can be found here at the POV website.
It has been a very fun couple of weeks putting this together - we did the piano dress rehearsal last night and saw the costumes and lighting onstage for the first time. I hope to be able to post some pictures after we’ve opened; this is a remarkable show.
I’d also like to thank the Mods for giving me permission to post this.
The production has been updated to modern times. The set is Escher-esque, with the staircases triplicated in three different planes, a door and a window set in the floor, sideways windows on the walls,… The lighting designer has some amazing stuff to play with, including a large chandelier made from plexiglas wine goblets and a phonograph that looks like a classic Edison with a plexiglas sound horn. The costume designer has made these amazing, sexy outfits for everyone, with lots of leather and high fashion. The sisters have these killer dresses, Despina has a wig that makes her look like Darryl Hannah in Bladerunner, the boys look like motorcycle cops in the first scene and then come back in these rapper parachute suits, with drawn on mustaches and long wigs. I, myself, am going about in a Karl Lagerfeld-like suit, complete with the long grey hair and fingerless gloves.
For all that, the actual staging is grounded in reality - we’re actually doing what we say we’re doing, and it’s about the relationships between the characters rather than a directoral ‘conzept’. That being said, Despina and I get to do a lot of clown/commedia del’Arte based stuff during the disguise scenes.
It’s also an exciting production because 5 of the 6 cast members are performing these roles for their first time - only Ferrando has played his part before. Guglielmo did Alfonso the only other time he has done Così, and I’ve sung Guglielmo twice but this is my first Alfonso. Like I said, it has been a great time since we started rehearsing March 24th…