Music direction, Christophe Rousset
Director, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo
Set  design, Antoine Vasseur
Costume design, Raoul Fernandez
Lighting, Maryse Gautier

Cast

Fiordiligi, Sofia Soloviy
Dorabella, Sophie Harmsen
Despina, Milena Storti
Ferrando, Sergei Romanowski
Guglielmo, Johannes Weisser
Don Alfonso, Peter Rose

Dijon Opera Choir
Les Talens Lyriques

Intro

“Behind closed doors with six characters,” Cosi fan tutte is the story of an old philosopher and a maid “pulling the strings of four marionettes.” It depicts the collaboration of Don Alfonso with Despina alongside Gughlielmo, Ferrando, two naive men, and Dorabella and Fiordiligi, their fiancées. The opera follows the rule of the three unities –time, place and action- summarized a century earlier by Boileau. After the success of the revival of The Marriage of Figaro from 1789 to 1791, the theater of the Court of the Emperor of Austria Joseph II ordered a new opera from Mozart, who completed it in just a few months. It premiered in Vienna on January 26, 1790 and could not have been better suited to its time: marital infidelity is the main theme, along with a common device of the 18th century, disguises.  The opera, to a libretto by Da Ponte, a succulent comedy of intrigue, is indeed a “child of its century”. Cosi strikes a subtle balance between the French civilization of pleasure and the opera buffa genre, and includes some of the most beautiful vocal ensembles in opera history.

New production Opéra de Dijon