That it involves footballers and WAGs are the only specifics director Gavin Quinn is willing to reveal about his updated version of Mozart's much-argued-over Così Fan Tutte, writes Arminta Wallace
Così Fan Tutteis an opera that divides people. There are those who say it's a piece of harmless fluff unworthy of Mozart's operatic genius, and there are those who say it's misogynistic and nasty and twisted. It has been chopped up and reworked and lost and revived, and there have been a million arguments over how best to translate that clunky title. This opera, in other words, comes with more baggage than a Ryanair overhead bin.
None of which bothers Gavin Quinn in the slightest. One of Ireland's most successful young theatre directors and writers, he founded Pan Pan Theatre in 1993; since then it has gained a reputation for staging dynamic and challenging work. He has just done a hilarious Chinese-language version of Synge's The Playboy of the Western Worldset in a hairdresser's on the outskirts of Beijing; another recent show, Oedipus Loves You, saw him direct the actors via live radio headsets in an ironic comment on conscious and unconscious behaviour and social responses. And as far as he's concerned, all the hoo-hah that surrounds Così Fan Tuttesimply makes his new production for Opera Ireland even more artistically stimulating.
Talking to Quinn about the piece, it's clear that he has done a mountain of research and that he finds it fascinating. He knows that the opera's plot, which revolves around two men who set out to seduce each other's girlfriends for a bet, is an old, old story that features in Shakespeare, Ovid, and Daoist philosophical parables. He knows that many of the arias are send-ups, deliberate parodies of the highbrow opera seria style, which was regarded as old-fashioned in Mozart's day. He knows that Così boasts some of the most sophisticated ensemble numbers ever to grace the operatic stage, and the most unlikely "happy" ending of all time. His job as director, he says, is to assimilate all that, digest it, and then get on with making a brand-new show that will speak to audiences loud and clear.
Part of this involves cutting through the history to get right back to the beginning. "When you talk about 'the genius Mozart'," he says, "it takes you away from an individual getting people together in an 18th-century theatre to make an opera.
"Think of the original musicians. They were real people, so their personalities come into the dynamic. In the first production the singers playing Don Alfonso and Despina were husband and wife, and Mozart didn't actually like them very much. Then his librettist's mistress got a part - and he didn't like her voice, either. So you have all this stuff going on, which brings you into real Viennese 18th-century society. But as to whether it's feminist or chauvinistic or whatever, it's a bit like Strindberg in that it does actually raise quite strong points, so people will have strong responses one way or the other."
QUINN SAYS THAT when he's directing Mozart operas - and he has already done The Magic Flutefor English Touring Opera and Seraglio at the Hackney Empire - he wakes up at night with the music fizzing around in his head. "I always start imagining this strange little Mozart figure," he says. "A sort of Michael Jackson character; the five-year-old being dragged around Europe doing these amazing concerts and then, as a man of 28 or 30, having to revisit the same venues because he needed the money and his wife was sick and he was having an affair. This troubled, pre-therapy personal life. His music was his therapy, I suppose."
MUSICALLY, QUINN SAYS, Così is sublime. It's the structure that's the problem. The first act is all daft gags and dizziness: Wife Swapmeets Sex and the City. Then there's a sudden change of emotional gear. "Halfway through the second act - halfway through a duet, in fact - it turns into something that's about real human emotions. The women characters are very well drawn, and what happens when they get seduced, or fall, or whatever way you want to put it, is very complex. The morality of it is as contemporary as any debate on morality could be today.
"I don't think the opera makes a comment on desire or romance. But it suggests, through the journey the characters make, that to throw yourself frivolously into different relationships - to mess around with the human heart, or be reckless in terms of how you deal with people - does darken the soul. It's an adult opera, an opera of ideas: do you just live your life day-to-day, or do you have principles? And it's a beautiful rendering of that. It's not didactic or dogmatic. The music is the key. The music does a lot of the work."
For any opera production to be successful, he says, it's vital that the audience should care about the characters. This is especially the case with Così, with its intense focus on just six people: the two couples, Gugliemo and Fiordiligi, and Ferrando and Dorabella; the men's friend, Don Alfonso; and the women's maid, Despina. In Quinn's staging the men are second-division football players from Napoli, Alfonso is the coach, and the girlfriends are frilly, flouncy footie wives. When the lads return in the second act they're disguised as top-notch stars - Zinedine Zidane and Marco Materazzi, say - and the women rise in the fashion stakes as well, from high-street to haute couture.
That's about all Quinn is prepared to say in advance of opening night, because he doesn't want to give the game away. But he stresses that this won't be one of those manic, busy-busy, full-of-gags opera productions beloved of young theatre directors - and dreaded by opera-goers. "I find those very tedious," he says. Is there anything that bugs him about working in opera? "Not particularly. They're the same issues you have with making a theatre performance or a dance performance. When people are afraid of trying something new, or when people say it has to be done in a particular way - that really irritates me. It's like, 'Were you there?', 'Did you see Mozart cut that aria?' I don't like people who think that they own the museum - it has to be done this way or that way. Who says?"
THE FIRST OPERA Quinn directed was a contemporary piece, The Four-Note Opera, commissioned by Opera Theatre Company. "It's an opera about opera," he says. "It's very, very funny but it has great depth to it. I really enjoyed it. I like all kinds of music. I listened to opera when I was a kid - without understanding it. The first piece I really remember liking was the overture to Dido and Aeneas. The very beginning. It's almost like a rock tune; it builds up and up and up. I used to play that over and over again. I'd love to direct that opera. And Oedipus Rex by Stravinsky, partly because I've just done the theatre show, and partly because I love the idea of it sung in Latin. People say opera is old-fashioned - but it's actually the more contemporary of the arts. As a combination of music, theatre and art it's a unified art form, and that's what people are trying to achieve in contemporary theatre all the time."
IT IS, NEEDLESS to say, the centrality of the musical score that makes it radically different to mainstream theatre. "Because the opera has a score, the time is fixed. You can have a sneaky pause here and there, but the score drives it - you can't have a half-hour break. It's like a motor, an engine, or the wings you float on. And singing brings you to another level emotionally. It's deeper - or, at least, it's different. It's certainly beyond the spoken word."
But above all, he says, opera is fun. "At Pan Pan we rehearse shows for two or three months, or sometimes for a year. Then they might tour to 10 different countries. So they last for two or three years in total. These shows, by comparison - although they're touring to Limerick this year for the first time, which is fantastic - but they have quite a short life, just seven or eight performances. So it's kind of relaxing. Così is like . . . " There is an uncharacteristic pause while Quinn searches for the right words. Then he laughs and makes a chewing motion. "It's like having sweets in your mouth."
Così Fan Tutte is at the RDS Concert Hall on May 26; 28, 30 and June 1, and at the UCH Limerick on June 8.
Opera Ireland's spring season also features Donizetti's comic opera Don Pasquale, at the RDS on May 25, 27, 29, 31 and June 2, and at UCH Limerick on June 7