Così fan tutte, English Touring Opera, ETO, Hackney Empire, March 2020
Posted on 9 March 2020A delightful production in bright colours with a very fine young cast, all under the baton Holly Mathieson. My review in The Article.
Tag Archives: Cosi fan tutte
Così fan tutte, Royal Opera, ROH, Covent Garden, September 2016
Posted on 23 September 2016This replacement for Jonathan Miller’s gloriously effective production of Così was a disappointment. The new director Jan Philipp Gloger, whose outré Flying Dutchman I saw at Bayreuth four years ago, was trying too hard to be clever, with a potpourri of ideas centred on the juxtaposition of life and theatre. This started during the overture …
Così fan tutte, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, May 2014
Posted on 17 May 2014In this new co-production with the Met in New York, English National Opera has a winner. During the overture a dozen circus performers (strongman, bearded lady, sword swallower, dwarves et al) emerge from a chest and are a continuous background presence, reminding me of the Commedia del Arte figures in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Each …
Così fan tutte, English Touring Opera, Hackney Empire, March 2013
Posted on 8 March 2013If this were Shakespeare we might find our performers to be spirits melted into thin, thin air, for we know nothing about them. They are ciphers on which Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte created a piece of theatre at once frivolous and profound, expressing a joy, playfulness and inanity inherent to life itself. The …
Così fan tutte, Opera Holland Park, OHP, June 2012
Posted on 17 June 2012This was a second hit for Opera Holland Park this season — a great team performance bringing Così fan tutte fully to life. Fine eighteenth century designs by Alex Eales, plus a cheerful sunny set in the centre of the stage, were accompanied by the chorus as an on-stage audience, and bright lighting design by Colin Grenfell that showed …
Cosi fan tutte, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, September 2010
Posted on 11 September 2010A theologian friend of mine tells me that when the angels perform for the new arrivals in heaven they play Bach, but en famille with God they play Mozart.