Glyndebourne opened this year's festival with "a new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, subtitled ‘The school for lovers’, will open the 2006 Festival. This masterpiece includes some of Mozart’s most exquisite music, and Così’s now established popularity, following comparative neglect in the 19th century, is partly due to Glyndebourne’s championing of the work since the opening of the Festival in 1934." Here are some initial reviews:
Dispassionate look at young love
By Andrew Clark [Financial Times, 21 May 2006]
Women are like that – when they are in love with love. And so are men. That is the bit Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte left out when they called their opera Così fan tutte. When you are young, love is gullible, superficial, promiscuous. You get carried away with the very idea of being in love. It is puppy love, running the gamut of ecstasy and despair in a day. It blinds those involved but its effects and pitfalls are glaringly obvious to onlookers, usually middle-aged, who know better.
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A wobble at Glyndebourne as bland blancmange is served
Rupert Christiansen reviews Cosi fan tutte at Glyndebourne
[Daily Telegraph, 22 May 2006]
Pleasantly tasteful are the words that spring to mind as I think about this new production of Cosi fan tutte, Glyndebourne's tribute to Mozart on his 250th birthday. The frocks are pretty, nobody sits on the lavatory or wears a Guantanamo Bay jump-suit. It's just the thing for visitors to Glyndebourne who are more interested in its herbaceous borders than the art of opera.
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Glyndebourne `Cosi fan Tutte' Boasts Cleavage, Breeches, No Vim
By Warwick Thompson [Bloomberg.com, 22 May 2006]
May 22 (Bloomberg) -- I've seen Mozart's ``Cosi fan tutte'' (1790) set in a public toilet, in someone's mind, in a cheap diner and in a trendy London cafe. I'd almost forgotten it could be staged where the librettist intended, roughly in the period it was written, with pretty costumes and naturalistic action.
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Cosi Fan Tutte
Tim Ashley [Guardian, 22 May 2006]
The Romantics of the early 19th century detested Cosi Fan Tutte, deeming it for the most part trivial and obscene. Mozart's emphasis on the irrational nature of desire and its attendant dangers, however, in many respects prefigures Romantic concerns - a fact not lost on Nicholas Hytner, whose new production re-imagines the opera as a parable of the threat posed by sex to classical certainties.
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Così fan tutte
Hilary Finch at Glyndebourne [Times Online, 22 May 2006]
Gales, rain and Mozart. It has to be the start of a new Glyndebourne season. But the sun was shining out of the eyes of a company clearly determined to celebrate to the full its first production in Mozart's anniversary year.