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Cosi fan tutte

Composer	Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto	Lorenzo da Ponte
Venue and Dates	Großes Festspielhaus, Salzburg (as part of the Salzburg Easter Festival ) April 3, 12 2004
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

Opera News July 2004 , vol 69 , no.1 (Jane Boutwell)

Così Fan Tutte, Mozart’s frothy, sophisticated take on love among the Neapolitan upper class, is traditionally seen as a hilarious spoof of mock infidelity. Not so this spring at Salzburg’s Easter Festival, where Ursel and Karl-Heinz Herrmann (holdovers from the previous Gérard Mortier regime) presented the darker side of a normally robust comic opera. With Simon Rattle leading two-thirds of the Berlin Philharmonic in the pit, and the un-Mozartean expanse of a sixty-foot-wide Grosses Festspielhaus stage, this enthralling fable of two couples who change partners — and may or may not have second thoughts about their actions at the end of the opera — became a strategic exercise in character placement and the use of minimal props on a vast playing field. (Since the directors of Salzburg’s Easter and Summer Festivals are now talking to each other, this new Così will be repeated in August with a largely new cast of principals, a new conductor, Philippe Jordan, and a new orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic.)

The Grosses Festspielhaus stage was surrounded (and made slightly smaller) by a broad black frame. Outside it, hanging high on the left, was a large white feather; on the right, hanging fairly low, was a large grey egg. (When, at the end of the opera, the feather came down and the egg went up, there was considerable confusion about what the directors had in mind.) The girls changed clothes several times behind a second, larger egg that was placed to the right of the stage proper; nearby was a gleaming black piano, with a pianist who played the recitatives. Don Alfonso — the slightly satanic nobleman played with superb command by veteran Thomas Allen, who will repeat his performance this summer — had a small bar at the far left, and a mixed chorus in evening dress compressed into a tight block to march back and forth in celebration of “la bella vita militar.”

Musically, this Così was a brilliant, hard-edged gem. Rattle conducted a frisky, ebullient performance, leaving plenty of space for the recitatives and picking up tempos for the delicious duets and ensembles. Dramatically, the Herr-manns played a trick on the audience by making it clear that the two young ladies, hiding behind a small fence and the large stage egg, overheard their supposedly devoted fiancés plot with Don Alfonso to test their loyalty by departing for a battle and returning in disguise as lovesick “Albanians.” The story ended up as a double deception, with everybody being gloriously insincere.

Cecilia Bartoli, now an established Fiordiligi after previous outings as Così’s Dorabella and Despina, announced herself as the star of the evening with “Come scoglio,” negotiating Mozart’s fiendishly difficult embellishments in her famous velvet-textured voice, which seems to have grown larger (and more soprano-ish) over the years. Tall, willowy mezzo Magdalena Kozená, as her sister Dorabella, brought an enchanting note of silver to ensembles and delighted the audience with the playful “E amore un ladroncello.” Barbara Bonney registered strongly as Despina, the sisters’ earthy, materialistic maidservant, delivering a radiant “In uomini, in soldati.” Kurt Streit (Ferrando) and Gerald Finley (Guglielmo) revealed impressive talents as comedians and as Mozart specialists, acting with flair and contributing clarity and wit to the ensembles. Streit’s lyrical ode to love, “Un’ aura amorosa” was so convincing that it made one overlook for a moment the mischief that Ferrando was planning, while Finley’s robust address to the ladies, “Donne mie, la fate a tanti,” expressed the skepticism that permeates the entire opera.

And how did this Così end? The six principals lined up lovingly onstage to deliver Mozart’s enchanting finale. But this complex, over-sophisticated production, dealing as it does in double deception, left some of the audience confused, because it made fun of genuine emotions and happy endings.

Richard Fairman, Financial Times, 5 April 2004

This will be remembered as the Cosí fan tutte when Cecilia Bartoli played Fiordiligi as the "lady of the limp".

Having broken her foot during rehearsals, Bartoli gamely went on with the show, winning an ovation from the audience but with near-fatal results for dramatic verisimilitude.

This proved to be a peg-legged evening in more ways than one. Yet again Salzburg has brought together six first-rate singers for Cosí fan tutte and then done its best to cripple their chances with a lame production.

More than an hour of Ursel and Karl-Ernst Herrmann's new staging in the impossibly huge Grosses Festspielhaus passed by with barely a laugh or any applause - quite an achievement for Mozart's comedy in the city of his birth, especially on the opening night of the Salzburg Easter Festival, one of the premier dates in the international opera calendar.

Then Bartoli brought down the house with "Come scogli". Clearly she had not sprained her vocal cords and the idiosyncratic Bartoli mezzo somersaulted over Fiordiligi's triplets and leapt up to her top notes. This scorching aria was Fury personified, just as later her lacerating "Per pietà" was Despair.

Alongside her, nobody could complain about the beautiful singing of Magdalena Kozená's Dorabella or fail to be won over by Kurt Streit and Gerald Finley, the well-matched Ferrando and Guglielmo. Expert stage animals both, Barbara Bonney's Despina and Thomas Allen's Don Alfonso must number years of experience between them and they needed every one to overcome the production's sillinesses.

Their ridiculous costumes were only the worst of it. In the Herrmanns' well-worn manner everything was meant to be symbolic - changing clothes (loss of innocence), playing sports (male competitiveness), falling leaves (time passes), all contrived and unfunny, until the singers broke through into true emotions in the last half-hour or so.

A word of advice: sit right at the front, where there is a ringside view of the Berliner Philharmoniker playing under Simon Rattle's inspiring musical direction. Together they make heaven out of Mozart's music and there is not a lame crotchet to be heard.