Mozart - Cosi fan tutte [2 DVDs] - Universal/Music/DVD

"Interpreters"
Fiordigli - Ana Maria Martinez
Dorabella - Sophie Koch
Guglielmo - Stephane Degout
Ferrando - Shawn Mathey
Despina - Helen Donath
Don Alfonso - Sir Thomas Allen

Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor
Wiener Philharmoniker
Conductor: Manfred Honeck



Part of the epoch-making release of Mozart's complete operas on DVD, "Cosi fan tutte" is the once scandalous "School for Lovers", whose surpassingly beautiful score only rescued the opera's fortunes in the last half century. The young Ferrando and Guglielmo bet their avuncular but synical friend Don Alfonso that their respective fiancées Dorabella and Fiordiligi will always be faithful. But Alfonso's ingenious game is to prove otherwiese. Ursel and Karl-Ernst Herrmann's production adds an extra dimension, as the ladies overhear the plotting and so enter the drama with their eyes fully open. But the result only demonstrates that love is an eternal but also an eternally dangerous game.