Article published in Manchester Evening News 4 March 2016

OPERA director Thomas Guthrie returns to his old training ground, the Royal Northern College of Music, this month. He appeared here as a fledgling singer in the 1990s, made a career out of it, has now switched to directing – and he’s back to take charge of the college’s big spring show: Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte.

‘Girls are all like that’ you might translate the title. The story is about two young men and their sweethearts and whether being in love really means being faithful. An older, wiser friend, Don Alfonso, and a servant, Despina, help the four of them test their loyalties.

I remember Thomas Guthrie as a performer in two RNCM productions – one a specially commissioned opera by Robin Grant about the English poet, John Clare (he played the central character in old age), the other Benjamin Britten’s evergreen comedy of English village life, Albert Herring (he was Mr Gedge, the vicar).

“I’ve never forgotten that time,” he says. “It was very formative for me. I was lucky to work with Stefan Janski (the RNCM’s director of opera, soon to retire after 30 years at the college) and others who taught me then.

“I would love the students I’m working with now to receive the kind of stagecraft and theatre discipline that we were taught then. Students, even when they’re very capable and work very hard, need to receive a lot.

“But I can talk to them as one who knows what it feels like –  and I’m glad to be here and able to give something back.”

He’s coming to Così Fan Tutte with a clean sheet, he says – he’s sung in Mozart’s The Marriage Of Figaro and Don Giovanni, but not in this one.

“I find it’s really modern, and valid as theatre,” he says. “My approach is actually very simple. There’s always pressure to ‘do something different’ with a piece like this, but I think that’s potentially dangerous and damaging to its inherent value.

“And I’m at the stage in my career as a director when I’m not a beginner any more: I want to do serious work. I’ve no intention of this being viewed as a ‘student piece’.”

“It’s about long-term relationships, but with people who are getting married when they’re very young. That’s why it’s such a modern opera: in the end what they learn is that you need a sense of humour and forgiveness.”