Review: Opera NexGen's Virtual "Cosi Fan Tutte"

This weekend marked the inaugural production of a new opera company, which is something I don't think a lot of us were expecting in the midst of a still-ongoing pandemic. Opera NexGen made its first foray onto the scene with a virtual presentation of Cosi Fan Tutte, ambitiously presented with live performances from the singers, to a pre-recorded piano track.

Oh all the things that can go wrong.

I cannot in the least bit hold many of the technical glitches which occurred against the company, cast, or creative team. As we've all learned these past twelve months, these things are difficult and there is no way to be sure of everything working perfectly. There were lag issues, sync issues, sound balance issues, crackling sounds as singers overpowered their microphones, and, during much of the first act, background noise that sounded as though it might have been conversation coming from a control room, which included a little bit of the performance in progress, about two seconds ahead. I do not know how many of these issues were universal across the stream, and how many were specifically on my end.

All that is to say, it was one of the more smoothly-executed performances of this sort that I've seen during this pandemic.

I can see how Cosi Fan Tutte would be an appealing opera for this format. A small cast, a modular recitative-and-aria format, and, the most subtle boon of its construction, the fact that almost all of the arias are clearly directed. There are very few soliloquies, meaning that we do not need to suspend additional disbelief for the video-conferencing format. Virtually everything that is sung is clearly sung to someone else, and so only once did the format beg the question "Wait, if this is video conference, who is this soloist singing to?" Fiordiligi's Act II aria "Per Pieta, Ben Mio" was the odd duck out, not helped by the fact that during it, she presented Tarot cards to camera, despite having no apparent audience for them. It took this moment of awkwardness to draw attention to how smoothly the rest of the concept was executed, but it very quickly occurred to me that within the digital world of the production, in which communications are held exclusively over video conferencing or text messaging, an aria like "Per Pieta" demands a different sort of digital medium altogether: The personal vlog, signified by a Youtube-style framing around the video, with a runtime bar, likes and dislikes, perhaps even reactions or comments popping up on the screen if it seemed in-character with the scene. That is the sort of digital context in which a person might soliloquize, not for a specific audience, but a general one.

Text messages formed an additional part of the digital production's vocabulary, with texts between the characters made visible on the screen, typically to comic effect. I did observe that in Despina's "Una Donna," when images are displayed of Despina's phone screen, the clock showed the time as just after 3PM, which was within half an hour of the actual time at that moment. I wonder if for the evening performance time, those screenshots were changed to read 8PM. That sort of attention to detail that is often likely to go unnoticed deserves to be commented upon.

The one other comment I have about the deployment of the digital format is that, given the displays of text messages and other miscellaneous whimsy, it strikes me as a missed opportunity to not make any of the disguises in the form of Snapchat filters. (It may have been that Despina's flower visor in the doctor persona -- no I will not clarify -- was intended to resemble one.)

It goes without saying at this point that the production was set in the present day. "Traditional" and "in-period" productions are somewhat fundamentally at odds with having to perform over Skype. The location was also changed to America. (A bit of "The Star-Spangled Banner" was even played in the recitative as Ferrando and Guglielmo claimed to be sent off to war.)

The most novel thing that was done in this particular re-setting was that, although the text sung was Da Ponte's, the provided subtitles differed strongly from the Italian text, right up to and including changing the character's names to contemporary Anglicized versions of themselves. Guglielmo became Will, Ferrando Grayson ("Ferrando" may be derived from the Latin "Ferrum" for iron and may roughly mean "Gray," though I'm finding conflicting sources), Dorabella abbreviated to Dora, Fiordiligi transmuted into Lily, Despina into Diana, and Don Alfonso being referred to simply as "Don." The subtitles also referred to selfies, and texts, and all the requisite digital vocabulary that was a part of the staging. This managed to avoid being distracting, I suppose by the sheer overwhelming presence of the digital medium, as made necessary by the format, normalizing it.

The opera was well performed. All of the voices, when there weren't sound issues, were lovely, and everyone played their characters well. I thought the digital direction left something to be desired -- again, apparently a common issue for these sorts of remote performances, and I don't blame directors for having trouble making the adjustment. Most particularly, during group scenes, I was bothered by the fact that there seemed to be little attention payed to the arrangement of the windows -- I counted not one single scene in which all six characters were present and seemed to be grouped on the screen in a way that made sense for who was interacting at that moment. Granted, there might have been more flexibility in the digital blocking had the performances been pre-recorded. I would be incredibly curious to see how this was all handled in the control room, as it is a remarkably impressive feat.

The other main point of direction that bothered me was that "Un'aura Amorosa," Ferrando's Act I aria, was undercut by Guglielmo making funny faces in the adjacent window. Guglielmo made funny faces throughout the production, and for the most part, they work splendidly, as the opera is, after all, a comedy. But I objected to it here on two grounds. First, that "Un'aura Amorosa" is a serious aria, and I see no dramaturgical reason it should not be treated seriously. Second, that "Un'aura Amorosa" is Ferrando's big moment, and I don't think it's fair to the tenor to distract from it so.

Generally speaking, It was the medium-sized scenes -- two to four people at a time -- that worked best. Too many people and the technical issues pile up and become distracting, as well as the number of people displayed equally prominently making it difficult to focus on who's singing. Just one person, and without being able to work on a real stage with real blocking, there is little way to maintain visual interest for as long as a Mozart aria demands. Two to four people in a scene seems to be about right for what works well in this format.

I will admit that I have no great love for Cosi Fan Tutte, and perhaps my lack of strong feelings for it makes my review fairly temperate. I would consider any production a success that presented the music well, and kept me moderately entertained. Aside from technical glitches undermining some of the music, this production succeeded on both counts. (And, as a person who does not love Cosi Fan Tutte, I did not mind the cuts that were made bringing the run time to half an hour shorter than it would normally be.)

According to Opera NexGen's mission statement, virtual performance is what they intend to make their modus operandi, presumably even past the pandemic. Considering the incredibly bold choice to have the singers perform live, I would consider this production of Cosi Fan Tutte to be a good first step toward that aim. Clearly some glitches need to be worked out, but that was always going to be true, as the three words "Live Virtual Performance" present what may as well be a downright impossible task. An impossible task it may be, but Opera NexGen has tackled it head-on, and come to an incredibly promising result, far smoother in execution than I had anticipated upon reading those three impossible words. I look forward to their next efforts in the format, which I'm sure will be equally as bold, with fewer of the technical hiccups.