Last week I attended a performance of Mozart's comic opera Cosi fan tutte at the beautiful Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. The two act Italian opera was first performed in 1790 in Vienna with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's music and Lorenzo Da Ponte's libretto and is the third and final opera they wrote together. Its name means 'Thus do all', which translates as 'women are like that' (charming) and it's a twisted tale about two couples, a bet gone wrong and the nuanced nature of love.
Ferrando and Fiordiligi are challenged by their friend Don Alfonso who bets that given the chance their respective fiancées, Dorabella and Guglielmo, would be unfaithful within a day. The story starts with the two men pretending to be called away to war before returning in disguise to pursue each other's lover, when the situation becomes complicated... It's a new production by German director Jan Philipp Gloger, who writes that 'love is not a God-given thing, but something that we have to fight for, find, define, create and dream newly, almost every day'. The young up-and-coming cast includes American soprano Corinne Winters, American mezzo-soprano Angela Brower, German tenor Daniel Behle and Italian baritone Alessio Arduini, and the Russian conductor Semyon Bychkov leads the ever-fantastic Royal Opera House Orchestra. If you'd like to see it but aren't in London, the performance on 17 October will be broadcast live to cinemas around the world, for thousands more to enjoy!
Ferrando and Fiordiligi are challenged by their friend Don Alfonso who bets that given the chance their respective fiancées, Dorabella and Guglielmo, would be unfaithful within a day. The story starts with the two men pretending to be called away to war before returning in disguise to pursue each other's lover, when the situation becomes complicated... It's a new production by German director Jan Philipp Gloger, who writes that 'love is not a God-given thing, but something that we have to fight for, find, define, create and dream newly, almost every day'. The young up-and-coming cast includes American soprano Corinne Winters, American mezzo-soprano Angela Brower, German tenor Daniel Behle and Italian baritone Alessio Arduini, and the Russian conductor Semyon Bychkov leads the ever-fantastic Royal Opera House Orchestra. If you'd like to see it but aren't in London, the performance on 17 October will be broadcast live to cinemas around the world, for thousands more to enjoy!
Così fan tutte runs until Wednesday 19 October
