Royal Opera House presents Così fan tutte by Mozart

Ferrando loves Dorabella and Guglielmo loves Fiordiligi – but their friend Don Alfonso is sceptical. He offers the young men a bet: given the opportunity, their loves will prove unfaithful in less than a day. Confident of their girlfriends’ fidelity, Ferrando and Guglielmo accept.

Così fan tutte was Mozart’s third and final collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. Like its predecessors, Così exemplifies the heights opera can reach when the skills of composer and librettist are perfectly matched. But Così’s reception has always been more complex than that of the other Mozart/Da Ponte operas, with the opera variously considered immoral, unfinished, cruel or simply odd since its 1790 premiere. Now finally accepted as one of Mozart’s masterpieces, it is celebrated as much for its nuanced depiction of love as for its glorious music – a near continuous roll-call of favourites, including the terzetto ‘Soave sia il vento’ and the arias ‘Come scoglio’, ‘Tradito, schernito’ and ‘È amore un ladroncello’.

Conductor: Semyon Bychkov
Director: Jan Philipp Gloger