1/ Or COSÌ TOOT FANNY, as we used the call the aftermath of a bean-intensive dinner w lots of little boys at home. Yeah this is COSÌ, but not only updated to C18 Naples to C20 Coney Island, but accompanied by carny action whose relevance to the action is debatable at best.
https://twitter.com/MetOpera/status/1319037395195617283
I’m tentatively labeling this *bad* Regie, qualifying it for entry in the Castorf Crocodile Competition, or, World Cup of Bad Productions. OTOH Amanda Majeski, who ruled absolutely as the Countess in MARRIAGE OF FIGARO, shd be a good Fiordiligi.
Ok gonna revise my estimation of this production upward. The carny stuff does not interrupt the main action. What we’ve got is a defensible updating: from C18 Naoles w two independent sisters whose honeybuns, on a bet, disguised themselves as “Albanians” (actually Turks)...
4/ to woo each other’s girl, to same, except it’s Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, in 1950s, the saddle-shoe-wearing girls are staying at a Coney Island motel, and the boys - Naval officers - disguise themselves, not as Turks, but as greasers.
5) Personal aside: my Mom became devoted to this opera bc she was working at the Opera Guild in early ‘50s when @MetOpera put on a new (more traditional) production. As it happens, at the time she was dating a Naval officer from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn - my father - who...
6/ never ever ever disguised himself as a greaser, or even a Turk, to lead her astray. He was, however, an aspiring stand-up comic: he toured with his act as part of a military talent show that even played on Ed Sullivan. He settled down when they married and he left the service.
7/ One thing that survives the directorial transformation: Fiordiligi (sop.) is the blue-wearing, more reticent, taller, gawkier, and geekier one; Dorabella (mezzo) is the red-wearing, hotter one, and the one with much bigger... Oh excuse me, it’s dinner time.
8/ Oh both couples are up on merry-go-round horses! (But only simulating motion, lest the audience get sea-sick. This is cute! This is...good Regie!
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