 
Così fan tutte
Don Carlo, Falstaff
Die Fledermaus
Concert 2001
Narrated Music
Shir Ha Shirim
Notes
Paumgartner
Musically insured
who am i...?
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THE INCONSTANCY OF LOVE
Love remains a hypothesis in Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte, the instructive piece about love, provides a lesson
for life. Mozart's music reveals emotional insincerity and shows how the
young couples suffer as a result of Don Alfonso's experiment. And is there
anything to Despina's life motto that all men are interchangeable?
Così fan tutte used to be classified as a frivolous lightweight piece but this view has long since given way to the realisation that the third Da Ponte buffa opera is the true tragedy about the inconstancy of love ... Love remains a hypothesis. And it is not so far from such a cool analysis to the world of the labyrinthine entanglements of Marquis de Sade. As a tragicomedy of existential disturbance Così can best be compared with Kleist's Amphitryon... There are plenty of stagings, however, that make the piece an embarrassment: the men's disguise, Despina's croaking as the doctor and notary - stupid games and hardly ever funny.
The news that Hans Neuenfels was to direct the new Salzburg Festival production came as a sensation. This was not only because he can always be expected to present us with a provocation, whereby the ensuing productions are often magnificent, but also because he was successful in Stuttgart with a superb Entführung. By doubling the figures in that staging their chasms and the great divide between morality, desire and reality became visible. It was to be expected that the disillusionary ambiguity of Così would hold a particular appeal for him.
Moreover: the opera director orientates his production less on the libretto, more on the music and its open and secret driving forces. He is not interested in an ideal world or stylistic unity along the lines of wretched 'spaghetti rococo'. Così is for him a night and nightmarish piece, a negative proof of the existence of god against love and the example of banishment from paradise. A thoroughly pessimistic perspective: there is no such thing as love or true love. For this view from the spirit of Paradise Lost Reinhard von der Thannen designed stage sets that correspond in a very variable way to the laboratory situation of the emotional journey: a variety of kinetics for sets and characters (even for Neuenfels's obligatory movement chorus) and a number of Baroque metaphors. Whereby in the sense of the psycho-drama, inner and exterior, separation and unification alternate kaleidoscopically.
Gerhard R. Koch writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on
31 July 2000
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| Photo: Matthias Horn |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Così fan tutte
sung in Italian
Conductor Lothar Zagrosek
Director Hans Neuenfels
Stage sets and costumes Reinhard von der Thannen
Dramaturgy Yvonne Gebauer
Chorus master Donald Palumbo
Fiordiligi Catherine Naglestad
Dorabella Vesselina Kasarova
Despina Maria Bayo
Ferrando Rainer Trost
Guglielmo Natale de Carolis
Don Alfonso Franz Hawlata
Vienna Philharmonic
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus
Kleines Festspielhaus
Revival:
3 August 2001
7, 10, 14 (7.30 p.m.), 21, 24 and 27 August.
Performances begin at 6.30 p.m.
unless otherwise stated.
Così fan tutte
Tickets are available from the Ticket Office for the performance on 21
August at ATS 3,600 and 4,600 and for 27 August at
ATS 1,800 and 2,800.