La Scuola degli Amanti – The School for Lovers – was always the subtitle of Mozart’s and librettist Lorenzo da Ponte’s third collaboration and, accordingly, director Max Hoehn sets Welsh National Opera’s new production in a school. As an educational establishment, it’s decidedly unprepossessing and as cash-strapped as WNO.
Forget any sun-drenched Mediterranean vistas: the single set combines assembly hall, gym and canteen, fish and chips high on the menu. Cut-out Adam and Eve, fateful fruit and serpents suggest the Fall in the Garden of Eden, while biology class is focused on reproduction, pollination via bee and hummingbird, and ancient diagrams of male and female sexual parts. Urinals, wash basins, and changing-room lockers are later wheeled on. So a lot of stuff, plus muddy rugby players, but only two desks.
