RENÉE’S COSÌ—AND OTHERS PART 2

YESTERDAY, WE RECALLED SEVERAL PRODUCTIONS of Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte ranging from the traditional to the A.I.-robotic. Today, we learn what star soprano Renée Fleming has in mind as a new director of this opera buffo.

Renée Fleming; Così’s Fiordiligi being one of her memorable roles. This and following images by Matthew Defeo for The New York Times. 

Renée’s Directorship. Renée Fleming’s efforts are described by Zachary Woolfe in “Renée Fleming, Star Soprano, Tries Out the Director’s Chair,” The New York Times, July 20, 2025. He begins: “A young soprano was rehearsing a difficult aria from Mozart’s ‘Così Fan Tutte’ when the director stopped her and made a suggestion:”

“ ‘I always liked to lay down for this part,’ the director said, ‘because it lets the body relax.’ ”

Soprano Lauren Carroll, left, with Fleming, is singing Fiordiligi, Fleming’s famed role.

Woolfe recounts, “It’s not every opera director who can talk about performing choices in the first person. But on that summer afternoon in Aspen, Colo., the woman staging the scene was Renée Fleming, perhaps the most famous soprano of recent decades. Fleming was passing on a career’s worth of accumulated wisdom to a cast in which the oldest singer is 32.”

Woolfe notes, “Fleming is making her directing debut with this ‘Così,’ which opens on Monday at the Wheeler Opera House as part of the Aspen Music Festival and School, one of the country’s most prestigious summer programs for rising artists.”

Così, a Perfect Choice. Woolfe describes, “When she [Fleming] broached the subject some time ago with Francesca Zambello, a busy stage director who is also the general director of Washington National Opera, Zambello advised her to start with something small and character driven, rather than spectacular and chorus heavy. Also, perhaps, something in which Fleming had performing experience. ‘I said it’s probably easier to look at a piece you have already been in,’ Zambello recalled. ‘But you have to erase everything you know about it. You have to give the artists their freedom.’”

Jonghyun Park, the production’s Ferrando, said of Fleming’s direction: “She came up to me and said quietly, ‘You have to have the courage to do nothing.’ That was such a huge sentence for me.”

A Cape Cod Gym. Woolfe notes that Fleming “came up with the idea of setting the opera… amid the sweaty punches and Lycra lunges of a gym in Cape Cod. The men are ‘Rocky’-style boxers; the women do Jane Fonda-type workouts.”

Figuring Out the Finale. “First, though,” Woolfe describes, “she needed to figure out the finale. ‘Così’ leaves a lot up to the staging. The men successfully seduce each other’s girlfriends while disguised. Do they end up with their original lovers after the plot is exposed?” 

“In Fleming’s vision,” Woolfe recounts, “the two young men are left alone at the end. [Ha! Good for them! They deserve it.] One of their now-exes joins Don Alfonso as a manager of the gym, while his assistant [Despina here], who conspired with him to encourage the bet, takes her money and heads to Boston. Fiordiligi might put on an Equal Rights Amendment T-shirt and start pumping iron—or she might leave in a fury.”

Woolfe says, “Fleming finished describing the flood of action, took a breath and laughed: ‘And that all has to happen in two minutes.’ ” 

All in good 21st-century fun. But where are the Albanians in kilts? ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025