Annilese Miskimmon's production of Cosi Fan Tutte relocates Mozart's great comedy to a posh hotel somewhere on the British coast at the time of the Boer war. This will prove controversial in some quarters, though by setting the opera during a very real military conflict, Miskimmon makes the men's feigned call-up all too plausible, and the subsequent sexual games horribly cruel.
There is a sense of violent unease throughout. Guglielmo and Ferrando (Toby Stafford-Allen and Thomas Walker) leave for the front amid the gung-ho trappings of imperialism, and return dressed as big-game hunters - an appropriate disguise for two men who view women primarily as trophies. Lillian Watson's Despina, in her guise as the doctor, is covered in blood, as if she has been hauled out of the operating theatre of some ghastly field hospital. Towards the end, the men reappear pretending to be wounded and maimed. They're play-acting, of course, though in the emotionally excruciating finale we become aware of psychological scars that may never heal.
Miskimmon underscores events with a depiction of a society ignorant of the wider issues that affect it. Charles Johnston's Alfonso, got up in flowing magenta velvet, is an Aesthetic movement dandy with little grip on reality. Miskimmon takes a dimmer view of the women than most directors. During the military sendoff, undertakers hover round Fiordiligi and Dorabella (Sarah-Jane Davies and Doreen Curran), proffering their services. Thoughts of mortality, however, are soon shrugged off in indolent games of croquet. Later, the speed with which the two women are willing to change partners is shocking.
Not all of it works. Miskimmon's political glosses occasionally seem heavy-handed and aren't really supported by the text or score, though one is aware of a formidable mind at work, rethinking the opera's implications from scratch.
It is conducted with great passion by Leo Hussain, and for the most part finely sung, though Walker occasionally sounds raw at the top and Curran's phrasing is at times insensitive. Davies's voice, bright and bell-like, might not be to everyone's taste in Mozart, though she's unfailingly accurate. Stafford-Allen and Watson are outstanding.
Despite its idiosyncrasies, this is probing, intelligent music theatre that asks more questions about Cosi Fan Tutte than it can perhaps answer, and challenges our basic assumptions about this greatest of all operas.
· Until July 15. Box office: 0845 2309769.
