Edinburgh Festival Programs Controversial Opera, Then Offers Refunds Before It Opens
Programmed unseen, Christophe Honoré's 'Così fan tutte' has been slammed for "volatile, violent racism".
Arts festivals courting controversy isn't anything new. Arts festivals weathering a backlash when their shows stir up a range of responses isn't, either. However, Edinburgh Festival's reaction to its planned staging of Così fan tutte might just be a first: they're offering patrons refunds before it even opens.
The strange situation, reported by The Guardian, is a result of the fest's organisers programming Christophe Honoré's take on Mozart's and da Ponte's famous opera sight unseen and then checking out its world premiere at France's Aix-en-Provence festival. With the director setting his updated version in east African Eritrea during the 1930s — which was still colonised by Italy at the time — a layer of racial tension was always going to be evident. That it would be labelled a "brutal, shaming experience" with "a volatile, violent racism" by New York Times critic Zachary Woolfe obviously wasn't as expected.
Woolfe's comments partially stem from Honoré's decision to use actors wearing blackface makeup to dress up as African mercenaries to try to test their lovers' faithfulness, as well the inclusion of a rape in its opening scene, plus other graphic depictions of violence and abuse. He certainly isn't alone in highlighting the tough nature of the performance — though his and other reviews have found positives as well. Opera Today's critic called it a "witty comedy" while noting that he overheard "offense expressed at the in-your-face exposition of racism". Opera News described it as "a dense exploration of desire and violence" that alerted the audience "to its own uncomfortable prejudices".
In fact, Edinburgh's programmers used terms like "provocative", "sexually explicit", "stark" and "challenging" in their own synopsis, but obviously feel that wasn't warning enough. And the tale of Così fan tutte has always been considered a little problematic given its sexual politics. It is about a couple of guys donning disguises and trying to trick their fiancées into cheating on them to win a bet about the nature of women, after all — and its title does translate as "women are like that" as well.
Pre-emptively giving customers their money back before they even get a chance to see what all the fuss is about seems a little extreme — then again, so does putting a clearly tricky piece in the festival without really knowing how it is going to turn out. Of course, arts festivals are designed to champion material that tests the limits — but whether Honoré's Così fan tutte is as boundary-pushing as suggested, Edinburgh is certainly charting new territory when it comes to apologising before the curtain has even been raised.
Via The Guardian. Image: Aix-en-Provence.
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