A Game of Love and Chance
An outstanding young cast saves an over-elaborate, contrived staging
Six characters in search of an answer to the Così conundrum: (left to right) Daniel Behle (Ferrando), Golda Schultz (Fiordiligi), Jennifer France (Despina), Gerald Finley (Don Alfonso), Samantha Hankey (Dorabella), Andrè Schuen (Guglielmo) Picture © Clive Barda
Is Mozart and Da Ponte’s Così fan tutte a misogynists’ playbook? Superficially it might seem so but, as someone who has always regarded it as the most overtly feminist of Mozart’s ultra-feminist Italian comic masterpieces, I have reacted with consternation when fellow critics and scholars I respect - especially the female ones - screw their noses up as Beethoven and Wagner did at the alleged ‘frivolity’ of the authors’ treatment of women in this piece.
Jan Philipp Gloger, whose Royal Opera production opened in 2016, appears to agree with them, although at least he knows the ‘case’ of Così is far from cut and dried: his illuminated placard of the opera’s title can be displayed either as ‘All women behave in this way’ or ‘Everyone does’. Essentially that’s the message of Don Alfonso’s final aria-cum-trio with Ferrando and Guglielmo. The mastermind behind this Marivaux-like game of love and chance, in which the fidelity of his two young soldier friends’ fiancées is put to the test, attributes the girls’ falling for two exotic ‘Albanians’ to ‘necessità del core’, a necessity of the heart.
If late 18th century audiences were shocked, that should hardly surprise us. A year after the fall of the Bastille, here were the authors of Figaro and Don Giovanni, both shocking enough to the ancien régime, endorsing an amorous form of libertinism. In its original version, the opera virtually disappeared from the repertoire for over 130 years. Today we take a more relaxed view of Mozart and Da Ponte’s ‘school for lovers’, and Così fan tutte is a firmly established favourite - although plenty of seats are available for the current Royal Opera run.
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