08 May 2006
Hello, cruel world
With its mismatched couples and absurd plot, Cosi Fan Tutte is thought of as Mozart's 'frivolous' opera.
With its mismatched couples and absurd plot, Cosi Fan Tutte is thought of as Mozart's 'frivolous' opera.
But it hides a darker truth: the composer's doubts about the Enlightenment.
By Jane Glover [Guardian, 5 May 2006]
Of the great trilogy of operas written by Mozart with Lorenzo da Ponte, Cosi Fan Tutte is often considered the weakest. After the fierce revolutionary fervour of Le Nozze di Figaro, with its profound sympathy and human understanding, and then the shocking violence of Don Giovanni, the couple-swapping of Cosi Fan Tutte seems almost frivolous. Even Mozart's widow Constanze confessed, in her late 70s, that she had never really cared for the plot.