Mozart’s Classic Così fan tutte on Stage at Tsai Performance Center
CFA production runs April 21 to 24 at Tsai Performance Center
Mozart’s Classic Così fan tutte on Stage at Tsai Performance Center
Mozart’s Classic Così fan tutte on Stage at Tsai Performance Center
Since its debut in 1790, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte has been embraced for its brilliant, melodic score, and today is one of the staples of the operatic canon, produced on concert stages and in opera houses around the world.
The opera, whose title translates loosely as “Women are like that” and is subtitled The school for lovers, opens with two officers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, singing of their certainty that their fiancées, Dorabella and Fiordiligi will remain faithful. Philosopher Don Alfonso argues that by nature women are unfaithful. The officers accept his wager that within a day’s time, he’ll prove the two sisters—like all women—are fickle. The officers pretend to be called off to war and return in disguise, each attempting to seduce the other’s lover. The women first express alarm that two strange men have turned up on their doorstep, and later succumb to the strangers’ attentions. They eventually find out they have been duped by their fiancées. Happily, in the end, all forgive one another.
The opera’s libretto has been criticized by some as misogynistic, but a new production staged by the College of Fine Arts Opera Institute and School of Theatre—now running at the Tsai Performance Center—shifts the story’s emphasis. The women are given more agency and the opera becomes an exploration of the four lovers’ journey of discovery.
The production bills itself as a “rom-com psychodrama,” mining the libretto and score not only for the opera’s sadness and heartbreak, but for its humor as well, proclaiming that “at the intersection of love and lust resides a coming-of-age story about the battle between naïveté and experience.”
“In our production, we’re trying to go a little bit more into the whole concept of them learning how to love, learning how to have relationships with other people,” says Gabrielle Barkidjija (CFA’22), who plays Dorabella. “Instead of playing into the whole idea that the women are just ignorant of the whole situation, what we’re trying to do in this production is to dive into the relationships between all the characters and how they change over the course of the opera.”
“We get to see their young characters explore and experience life, love, and their own self-actualization through the lens of their own artistic pursuits and endeavors,” says stage director Nathan Troup (CFA’04), a CFA lecturer in opera. “The goal for the audience is to be able to see these characters for what they are and not assume that anything anyone is saying is the absolute final word.”
Così fan tutte is being performed at the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Ave., from April 21 to 24. Performances are Thursday, April 21, and Friday, April 22, at 7:30 pm, and Saturday, April 23, and Sunday, April 24, at 2 pm. General admission is $20. Tickets are free with a BU ID, subject to availability. Find more information and reserve tickets here.
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