Così fan tutte by Mozart, L 15 aug 2009, Alates (2009/2009), Juhatatud Claus Guth, Dirigent Adam Fischer, Haus für Mozart, Salzburg, Austria

“Così fan tutte le belle! Non c’è alcuna novità” – “Thus act all the beauties! No news there,” as the line from Le nozze di Figaro, the first work written together by Mozart and Da Ponte, goes. Four years later, this allegation is put to the test: in their third and last collaboration, Così fan tutte, an experiment is designed to reveal the truth about women’s supposed lack of faithfulness. An ambiguous game begins, exposing deeper and deeper layers of feeling. The clear-eyed view of the confusion of human relations opens up an abyss that seems to go far beyond the framework of a Dramma giocoso. This stage work – in some ways Mozart’s most radical – is not so much a “School for Lovers” as a continuous dissection of hearts. In the tension between love and passion, security and selfnegation, faithfulness and betrayal, the couples get lost in emotional chaos. Mozart’s music traces the inner contradictions of his figures without ever betraying them, and suddenly makes us doubt our confident belief that we can separate playfulness from earnestness, dream from reality.