A 1950s carinval fairground is the backdrop for a retelling of Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte, an HD Live from the Met coming to the Salmar Classic on Saturday, March 31.
The music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) continues to enthral audiences worldwide. His achievements in opera, in terms of beauty, vocal challenge and dramatic and societal insight remain unsurpassed. The extraordinary librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838) collaborated with Mozart on his greatest operatic achievements including Cosi fan Tutte, Le Nozze di Figaro, and Don Giovanni. Cosi premiered at the Vienna Court Theater in 1790 and was the final collaboration between Mozart and Da Ponte.
Cosi is a fascinating paradox: a frothy comedy of manners with an intensely dark take on human nature. It is an old story with antecedents in Boccaccio, Shakespeare and Cervantes, among others, but with a startlingly modern tone, and a beautiful score depicting questionable behaviour. Cosi poses unique challenges, and correspondingly unique rewards, for the public today. The story at first seems improbable, but it humorously and imaginatively explores impressions of love —from the loftiest to the basest.
At the heart of the story is a quartet of young lovers and two cunning tricksters. It begins with a bet between two young officers, who believe their fiancées are paragons of female virtue and constancy, and their friend Don Alfonso. The older, perhaps wiser, and certainly more cynical, Alfonso argues that such perfect faithfulness does not exist and that he can prove the sisters are just as fickle as all other women if the young men do exactly as he requests. A wager is made and improbable events are set into motion to the most exquisite music.
In this new production, Phelim McDermott’s imaginative vision sets Mozart’s opera in a carnival fairground inspired by 1950’s Coney island. The six principal characters share the Met stage with sword swallowers, fire-eaters, a live boa constrictor, bearded ladies and a ferris wheel. Manipulating the action are the Don Alfonso of Christopher Maltman and the Despina of Tony Award-winner Kelli O’Hara. Amanda Majeski, Serena Malfi, Ben Bliss and Adam Plachetka are the pairs of young lovers who test each other’s faithfulness. David Robertson conducts the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.
The Salmar Classic showing Cosi fan Tutte begins at 9:55 a.m.
- Submitted by Gabriele Klein