Così fan tutte

5 things to know about Così fan tutte

1° The School for Lovers

Originally entitled La Scuola degli Amanti - The School for Lovers, Così fan tutte entails a lesson in spite of lighthearted, even frivolous subject matter. After all, isn’t Aflonso teaching the young men the supposed truth about women’s fickleness? Couple-swapping plots were by no means a novelty in Vienna, having seen performances of Antonio Salieri’s La Grotta di Trofonio and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream among others. Yet the partner exchanges in prior works had occurred with supernatural intervention. Here no such attenuating circumstances can be found and the characters have to answer themselves for their change of heart.

2° A lighthearted comedy?

Of the three libretti Lorenzo Da Ponte provided for Mozart, Così fan tutte alone is not adapted from a prior source, no famous play or legendary libertine served as inspiration. Da Ponte had initially offered his libretto to the reputable court composer Antonio Salieri, who turned it down. Mozart, on the other hand, identified the fundamental subject in the seemingly shallow buffoonery. Indeed, Così fan tutte challenges nothing less than the principles of love, virtue and loyalty. According to literary critic Edward Said, ‘Of the three Da Ponte operas, Così fan tutte is most difficult to unlock, precisely because it goes further toward the limits of acceptable, ordinary experiences of love, life, and ideas than either of its two immediate predecessors.’

3° A universe shorn of any redemptive scheme

By the time they collaborated on Così fan tutte, Mozart and Da Ponte were both fundamentally disillusioned with Enlightenment philosophy. The intellectual movement, which had been the guiding light of Mozart’s earlier operas, turned out to be inadequate. Deprived of emotional or moral guidance, the sisters are helpless against the onslaught on their hearts. Although Don Alfonso makes the young couples recite his credo ‘Happy is he who takes the right side of everything, and through all tribulations lets Reason guide him’, it is clear from Mozart’s frenzied music that he for one no longer holds faith in reason. As Said tells us, ‘Mozart never ventured closer to the potentially terrifying view he and Da Ponte seem to have uncovered of a universe shorn of any redemptive or palliative scheme.’

4° The Armani Production

Nicholas Payne, who commissioned the production as the then director of the Royal Opera, remembers the origin of the staging for Covent Garden in 1995: ‘There were two guiding premises: it must be contemporary, as it had been for Mozart and Da Ponte in 1790; and it should take place in the lap of the audience. Jonathan Miller achieved the latter on a tiny budget, but there was no money left for costumes. He had the genius idea of asking Giorgio Armani to provide them, so I despatched him to Milan where he charmed the great couturier into providing them at no cost. The show was a sell-out, so we planned a revival for the following season. But Armani was aghast that it would show ‘last season’s collection’, so insisted on providing a whole new set of costumes for that revival. What we had devised as a short-term solution was so popular with the public, that it was still being revived 15 years later.’

5° An updated version set last Thursday afternoon

Jonathan Miller did not shy away from adapting his contemporary interpretation of Così fan tutte time and again for its numerous revivals. As one would expect, setting an opera among executives and city girls with its fair share of laptops and iPhones can prematurely age a production. And yet, here the overhaul is not distracting, but rather enables the audience to focus on the opera’s underlying theme. ‘I know what it’s about.’ says stage director Jonathan Miller in an interview. ‘It’s not about fidelity, it’s about identity. It’s about when you dress up, pretend to be someone else and find that you are someone else.’