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It vowed a vigorous defense.
Itll take more than a lawyers letter to expunge that legacy.
Here, the answer comes in the form of a dreamscape where fantasy and cheap reality mingle.
But there is a snake in that electric garden.
Outside is cliched romance; inside all is glister, cynicism, and hard-won understanding.
Alfonso is the anti-magician, determined to explain away the trickery of love as just another base instinct.
McDermotts production is strenuously fun and sometimes magical.
I expected a scene of seduction under the boardwalk, but McDermott dodges that cliche.
Instead, Amanda Majeski sings Fiordiligis aria Per pieta as she is hoisted aloft in a balloon ride.
McDermott can get frantic, though.
Mozart and Da Ponte work with emotions that arentAMAZING!
INCREDIBLE!orDEPRAVED!but uncertain, human, and full of shades that get flattened by the glare.
By Act Two, the cast settled in and found its comic rhythms.
The rest of the cast has her back.
Majeski is exquisite and Serena Malfi convincingly playful, if a tad cautious, as her sister Dorabella.
Adam Plachetka makes Guglielmo sympathetically goofy, always willing to be needled, manipulated, provoked, and forgiven.
A cast this supple could have excavated more of the operas wrinkles and ambiguities.
They might, for instance, have made it clear that it circles back to sincerity at the end.
But McDermott doesnt leave much room for characters to grow.
By the finale, he has plunged so far into razzle-dazzle that subtlety just blows away.
Cosi fan tutteis at the Metropolitan Opera through April 19.
