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Cosi fan tutte

Composer

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Libretto

Lorenzo da Ponte

Venue and Dates

Berlin's Philharmonie Hall

15 & 17 April 2004 (2 concert performances)

Conductor

Sir Simon Rattle

Production

Direction, stage set and costumes Karl-Ernst and Ursel Herrmann

Performers

Fiordiligi: Cecilia Bartoli

Dorabella: Magdalena Kožená

Despina: Barbara Bonney

Ferrando: Kurt Streit

Guglielmo: Gerald Finley

Don Alfonso: Thomas Allen

Berliner Philharmoniker

European Voices, Chorus master Simon Halsey

Notes

 

What the critics say

Extract from “Letters from Berlin” on operajaponica.org (Uwe Schneider), 31 April 2004

http://www.operajaponica.org/archives/berlin/berlinletterpast04.htm

A much more delightful event took place at Berlin's Philharmonie Hall. Simon Rattle brought his Berlin Philharmonic and six first-class soloists back from the Salzburg Easter Festival for two concert performances of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. To watch and to listen to the Berliners under their chief is always an extraordinary experience. The pure passion of playing is felt by everyone in the hall and even a wilful reading, like Rattle’s of Cosi, can be electrifying. Rattle’s tempi can be extreme in both directions, but they are always homogeneously bound to the whole. He knows to present the various instrumental groups of his devoted musicians and hearing the flashing woodwinds in the overture, the horn section in a prelude or the beats of the march opens a new cosmos.


This joy of making music communicated to the singers, who gave more of a semi-staged than a concert performance. Cecilia Bartoli sang and acted a virtuoso Fiordiligi, adding a trill here and interpolating coloratura there. Maybe too much for purists, especially when her garlands of tones contrasted with the meaning of the text (as in ‘Come scoglio’), but her mastery is uncontested. Magdalena Kozena was an equal sister to her as Dorabella. Though her voice is not as characteristic as Bartoli’s, her technique is of a very high standard and her personality is winning. But best of the female trio was Barbara Bonney’s Despina. Bonney still has that silvery tone, the secure intonation and an incredible variety of colours. She is not the type who peeps through Despina, but gives her a full voice, blooming phrases and a witty parlando.


Kurt Streit has gained a beautiful and substantial tenor during the last years. Combined with a perfect technique, he performed coloraturas with the same ease as he exhaled soft piani. Gerald Finley’s Guglielmo was a sympathetic character with a warm, flexible baritone and great skills of a singer-actor. Together with Thomas Allen’s experienced Don Alfonso this proved to be a vocal sextet which not only satisfied one's hopes, but also shone in a most intelligible and sensitive way, leaving many staged productions far behind.