E la mensa prepariamo con ricchezza e nobiltà

Five years after singing Mariage of Figaro with Opéra des Landes in 2018, the timing of my summer holiday this year allowed me to take part once more in the choruses of the Opéra des Landes for another of Mozart's Italian operas on a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte: Cosi fan tutte. 

Just like in Figaro, the chorus only makes three short appearances on stage and one backstage. I had already sung the piece with Bangkok Opera in 2006, and the chorus was in desperate need of tenors. So I negotiated with the chorus master to let me sing the production with my joining only two rehearsals before the dress rehearsal. It worked! This is a recollection of what happened back- and off-stage.

This production had already been given in other cities and five of the six soloists had already worked with each other and the conductor. On the other hand, the lead tenor and the chorus were discovering the staging and we only had three days to learn our roles and actions on stage. On the day of the dress rehearsal, the props for the stage were still being set up by the stage technicians while the artists were rehearsing on stage.

The trickiest part for everyone was that in the small theatre of Soustons there is no orchestra pit. Therefore, the small ensemble of musicians is always put on one side of the stage and the conductor is also on the far-side. This was problematic for many of us because the stage setting in this production involved an inner central box into which all people on stage had to turn their gaze. When deep inside the box, or on its outside, it was difficult or even impossible to see the conductor. Thus, many of us had to sing by ear and sometimes get off-time, or turn our head towards the conductor but then we would be told off by the stage directors for not looking into the central box! To help out, the stage technicians installed a loudspeaker hidden behind a curtain on the opposite side of the stage from the musicians so that singers on that outer side could hear the music more clearly and in time.

At the dress rehearsal the last change of costume for the two men soloists inevitably did not work out as planned: they failed to metamorphose themselves back from Albanians to Italians in the only two minutes they had backstage. So they cheated by wearing their Western trousers and shirt under their Oriental embroidered livery and turban. They also kept their Oriental shoes on for the final scene. However, given that the whole costume colour scheme was off-white, the audience probably did not spot these details.

All in all, we all had lots of fun and the two shows were close to sold out with a total of 800 people coming to see us and enjoy the show. You can read a French musical critic's viewpoint and see photos of all of us on stage here, and see some film footage of the dress rehearsal taken by the local TV channel here.

Cosi fan tutte
Wolfgang A. Mozart, Chamber orchestra of Europe, Sir Georg Solti, Decca