A group of people on holiday in Italy find their relationships under strain and confusion reigns. Yes, it does sound a bit like Series Two of HBO’s The White Lotus, doesn’t it?

The folks at Opera Queensland thought so and while they don’t labour the point their new production of Mozart’s classic opera Cosi fan tutte has some similarities. Echoes perhaps.

Cosi fan tutte is on in the Playhouse at QPAC from August 10 to 24 and while there is a touch of The White Lotus about this production fear not – Mozart’s masterpiece is still intact. In it we meet four young lovers on holiday in Italy, two of whom are soldiers on leave.

Enter the older Don Alfonso who has a cold and dispassionate view of love. He suggests to the men that the women would be sure to take other lovers if they had to return to war. The men are offended by such an idea but agree to test his theory, returning in disguise to attempt to seduce the other’s partner.

Opera Queensland CEO and artistic director Patrick Nolan is helming this production and says despite some frivolity it asks serious questions.

“The gift of an opera like this is that we can delve into the psychology and complexity of what it means to commit long term to another person,” Nolan says.

“The title translates to ‘they (women) are all like that’, is a launchpad to a far more nuanced exploration of the nature of desire and commitment. We are at a point in history where gender and male-female relationships are under the micspscope in a very particular way. Cosi fan tutte is a story that allows us to explore those dynamics and politics in a way that is both joyous and also vulnerable and tender.

The combination of Mozart’s music and Lorenzo Da Ponte’s words move us from the ridiculous to the sublime, from the farcical to a reflective, fragile place.”

For set and costume designer Elizabeth Gadsby the challenge was to contemporize the piece with a nod to The White Lotus while staying true to the story. The original was set in Naples but this time the location is generically Italian. (Series two of The White Lotus which stars, among others, F Murray Abraham and Jennifer Coolidge, is set in Sicily)

“The women have packed for a romantic seaside holiday,” Gadsby says. “There is colour, texture and pattern in their costumes. For the men we are fashioning the flamboyantly dressed heartthrob.

“The trompe l’oeil and architecture reference neoclassical Italian villas from the 1500s, the playful and romantic space will speak of the rose-tinted glasses of early love. But we then progressively strip away the fairy tale facade as the relationships play out between these characters.”

Echoes of The White Lotus? Yes indeed. You don’t have to have seen the series but it will add some spice if you have.

Some of Australia’s leading singers appear in this production including Samantha Clarke, Anna Dowsley, Jeremy Kleeman, Brenton Spiteri and Opera Queensland favourites Leanne Kenneally and Shaun Brown.

Soprano Samantha Clarke plays the role of Fiordiligi and she has watched season two of The White Lotus and says the opera does appear to have “a similar premise”.

“It has that kind of suspended universe that you enter when you are on holiday in some exotic place,” Clarke says, “The parallels appear when the story starts slipping into a grey area. Life is not black and white.”

Clarke is from Perth but divides her time between Western Australia and London. This is her first time in Brisbane and while it’s not a holiday it does, she admits, feel a bit like a working holiday.

She has recently performed the same role in Cosi fan tutte in Britain.

“That was in period costume unlike this production,” she says. “The sets and costumes of this production are amazing.”

Baritone Jeremy Kleeman, who has worked with Opera Queensland on several occasions, plays Guglielmo, the beau of Clarke’s character.

He confesses to watching The White Lotus following the birth of his baby son.

“Actually, it was the first thing we watched after he was born,” Kleeman says. “It has that couples dynamic in common with Cosi. We’ve discussed some of the similarities and you will notice it in the set design, there are definitely elements of The White Lotus.”

But of course, this is not The White Lotus. Still, it is clever to make such a contemporary connection and the audience will hopefully get it.

Then there is, above and beyond all else, the magnificent music of Mozart which will be played by Queensland Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Greek conductor Zoe Zeniodi who is returning to Brisbane for the production.

“I see Mozart’s operas as perfect,” she says. “Not a wrong-placed note. In Così fan tutte, he has created these incredible harmonies using only six voices to create a piece which is so unique and interesting.”

Meanwhile, if you haven’t watched The White Lotus series two yet this opera may inspire you to do just that.

oq.com.au