Star attractions for this revival of ENO/Improbable's Coney-Island-in-the-1950s Così were sopranos Lucy Crowe and Ailish Tynan, and conductor Dinis Sousa. All three excelled, but so did the other four principals. More fool me for having stayed away previously out of concern that the usual six characters in search of real feelings would be swamped by fairground business. Once or twice, perhaps, they did (start of the Act One finale especially) but the singing and acted projected perfectly from downstage and, let's face it, the "skills ensemble" of circus people were fun, a good idea as it turned out.
Having manipulator Don Alfonso (Andrew Foster-Williams, spruce and smug as he should be) summon them from a trunk during Mozart's vivacious Overture put us in a good mood - the sort of funny business one associates more with Cal McCrystal than Improbable's Phelim McDermott - and the six singers ran with it. You need to like the lovers, including the men who play a dirty trick on their sweethearts, and the high energy of these four made sure of that.
Lucy Crowe is a peerless stylist and a vivid actor, so it wasn't just this Fiordiligi's big set piece of troubled devotion, the aria we know as "Per pietà", which raised goosebumps. "Come scoglio", here "like a mountain", was much more than just a protest-too-much assertion of fidelity. As her more immediately susceptible sister Dorabella, mezzo Taylor Raven had the necessary soprano brilliance (the sisters exist only a third apart, after all, and Mozart wouldn't have thought as we do in voice types, only first and second ladies).
It's feasible that ENO could have cast a sweet English ex-choral scholar tenor as ardent Ferrando, but Joshua Blue brought more meat than usual to the role, powerfully anguished at his betrayal in Act Two but also sweet enough in love-reverie, exquisitely supported by Sousa's tender strings and woodwind. Guglielmo is more bullish, but Darwin Prakash did just fine with the testosterone levels.
Sheer sassy delight came from Ailish Tynan as the sassiest and most unusual Despina you're likely to see or hear. She relished the juice of Jeremy Sams's clever, witty translation - even if it adds an extra layer to da Ponte's often more straightforward rhymes - and proved she could just as well tackle the role of Fiordiligi: one brilliant high note in place of the silly voice as "Doctor Magnetico" in Act One, looking curiously like Maggi Hambling, and a drop from top to bottom in her Act Two aria worthy of the Prima Donna.
Sadly she was indisposed for the dress rehearsal, so there are no photos of her in action; this first-night curtain call will have to serve (she's on the right after her turn as cowboy notary, doing a brilliant routine with Ben Goffe and Fatemeh Sarabani, also pictured right).
Also in the curtain-call photo, in the midst of things as he always was, is Sousa. He follows in the pace-mastery footsteps of that great Mozartian Charles Mackerras, giving space to the tenderness, with lovely inner lines from violas especially always clear, and a clear, high beat up to the singers on stage, keeping the most vivacious ensembles in line. Feelgood with style, just what we need right now.
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