Così fan tutte

It was Zurich’s most sensational operatic event of the 2018/19 season: Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov, whose house arrest in Moscow prevented him from coming to Zurich, staged Mozart’s Così fan tutte at Zurich Opera House with the assistance of his closest collaborators. What had elicited a broad media response even before the première due to the highly unusual situation was then acknowledged after the première as an outstanding artistic event – an extremely consistent, radically contemporary performance that thrilled audience and critics alike. In the revival of this production, which was created in very unusual circumstances, we will again encounter many singers who made a signficant contribution to the success of the performance in the première series: Ruzan Mantashyan as Fiordiligi, Anna Goryachova as Dorabella, Rebeca Olvera as Despina and Michael Nagy as Don Alfonso. Alexey Neklyudov and Konstantin Shushakov will be seen for the first time as Ferrando and Guglielmo respectively, and Ottavio Dantone will be taking charge of the musical direction. Almost all of Mozart’s operas are about the hidden depths of love, but none as exclusively as Così fan tutte. At first, everything seems simple and unshakeable: Ferrando and Guglielmo love their fiancées Dorabella and Fiordiligi. The men will bet anything that the women are faithful to them. They will even bet with Don Alfonso, who is certain that he can prove the opposite to them with an experiment. However, what was planned as a harmless game develops into a cruel, open-heart experiment that ultimately pulls the carpet from the beneath the feet of all concerned. For the protagonists have to acknowledge that what they believe they feel and what they really feel are painfully at odds. Mozart looks deep into the hearts of his protagonists as they are buffeted by their feelings. Unlike any other, he is able to tell us about the confusing complexity of their emotions through his music. At the same time, Mozart is no moralist. He does not condemn his characters; the result is a piece of musical theatre that showcases the inscrutable in a wonderfully light, thoroughly comic way. However, in this piece, it is not only women who are inscrutable – così fan tutti.