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The intentions of Edmonton Opera’s new production of Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte are boldly stated from the very first bar of the overture.

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There, in the supertitles above the stage, appears the title of the opera (which means “All women are like that”) but crossed out. Below is a new title, Così fan tutti, and its translation, ‘We are all like that’.

For the avowed intention of this production, which opened on Jubilee Saturday night, was to shake off the fur coat of misogyny in which the opera is so often clothed, and to give women an agency that the music suggests that they deserve.

It promised a lot, with two women – director Kim Mattice Wanat and conductor Cosette Justo Valdés – making their company debuts.

Both designers are also women and their work immediately attracts attention. Deanna Finnman’s costumes perfectly suggest a period that might be described as Jane Austen for older audiences, and pseudo-Bridgerton for younger audiences, with the male lovers in the brightly colored uniforms of the Napoleonic Wars.

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Brianna Kolybaba’s stage designs have a simple and elegant Regency flavor, although the landscape settings suggest more of a fairy tale tone.

But soon cracks in these designs begin to appear. The good Despina, played by soprano Caitlin Wood, is transformed into a kind of Cupid figure, and to show it to the audience, she changes her costume.

She does it not just a few times, but again and again and again, from the side of the stage, finally with a flurry that threatened to break any record for the most costume changes on stage in the shortest possible time. .

These costumes were visually arresting, but the actions were also when they shouldn’t have been. They became increasingly boring, especially when performed during important, introverted tunes. Putting Despina right next to the scene for these shifts was a mistake – the eye is designed to be distracted by movement in peripheral vision.

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It also soon became apparent that the set, and indeed all of the onstage action, simply did not belong on a stage of this size, especially when the chorus had been cut from the opera. The six players were eclipsed and the actions became repetitive and increasingly scenic (how many drinks did they have on stage?)

The worst was the red curtain that came down regularly for set changes, with a few singers in front. Not only was the huge swath of red visually distracting, it was not at all clear why it was needed, especially since some scenery changing elements were intentionally visible.

A black gauze fell briefly at one point for no apparent reason, so couldn’t the scene changes have been made behind that? In fact, that red curtain spoiled the sense of theatrical involvement and broke the flow.

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All of this might not have mattered had there been compelling singing, acting, and orchestral sound. However, these areas also seemed to suffer from similar contradictions: promising elements that were confounded by mixed results.

With two pairs of lovers, each of the four had their vocal moments, especially the pleasant tone of soprano Jennifer Taverner as Fiordiligi and Clarence Frazer’s Guglielmo. But the two brides came across, alas, as rather meaningless women, with little in their body language or vocal acting to suggest anything more fiery. They were given swords to play with, in a fairly obvious Freudian reference, but the sight of Fiordiligi holding hers high like she was a hero queen about to fight the Romans was laughable.

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Those swords were eventually replaced with parasols, which pretty much summed up the confusion in production. As the evening dragged on, the men resorted to increasingly scenic and stereotypical comedic poses.

In the pit, Justo Valdés, conducting her first opera on stage, was hampered from the start by a small orchestra of 19 musicians. Despite some fine instrumental effort, they simply couldn’t produce the kind of sound that Mozart’s score and the cavernous Jubilee demand.

The result was orchestral playing that was pretty much on the same dynamic, with little variation or nuance, not helped at times by very slow tempos.

Luckily, a performance shone through this. Wood once again showed his skills in conveying feelings through voice, as well as his considerable acting abilities and stage presence. Again, however, the production resorts to comedic stereotypes when impersonating the apothecary or notary. We were hoping for something more inventive, but the vocal distortions could have come straight out of a Rossini comedy.

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I couldn’t understand why this production had a disclaimer that it was only suitable for patrons aged 10 and over, unless the Edmonton Opera acknowledged the misogynistic elements. Obviously, the company’s new artistic director, Joel Ivany, didn’t either, as he announced that his eight-year-old son was in the audience.

If only there had been something a little more racy here, to relieve what ended, alas, in a boring evening.

Maybe there will be more shine in the performances on Tuesday and Friday, but I don’t see how that can really save the fundamentals here: misogynistic men, meaningless women, in a laborious, stereotypical world.

I left grateful that we weren’t all like that.

yegarts@postmedia.com

REVIEW

by Mozart Così fan tutte from the Edmonton Opera

Director: Kim Mattice Wanat

Driver: Cosette Justo Valdes

With : Neil Craighead, Clarence Frazer, Jennifer Taverner, Asitha Tennekoon, Stephanie Tritchew and Caitlin Wood

Or: Jubilee Auditorium, 11455 87 Ave.

When: March 19

Next performances: March 22 and 25

Tickets: From $29 from edmontonopera.com