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Così fan tutte with Nevill Holt Opera and Royal Northern Sinfonia

Così-fan-tutte-with-Nevill-Holt-Opera-and-Royal-Northern-Sinfonia

Così fan tutte with Nevill Holt Opera and Royal Northern Sinfonia

THIS EVENT HAS PASSED

Nicholas Chalmers conductor
Adele Thomas director

Alexandra Lowe Fiordiligi
Katie Coventry Dorabella
Nick Pritchard Ferrando
Martin Hassler Guglielmo
Carolina Lippo Despina
John Molloy Don Alfonso
Royal Northern Sinfonia
Nevill Holt Opera

Mozart Così fan tutte

Following the storming success of their Figaro last season, Nevill Holt Opera are back in Sage One with Royal Northern Sinfonia for two performances of this high energy tale of love, temptation and partner-swapping. Mozart’s popular opera delights, in this elegant art-deco staging from director Adele Thomas.

Thank you to The Marchus Trust for their generous support of Cosi fan tutte, enabling us to offer £10 tickets to Under 30s, helping Sage Gateshead bring opera to new audiences. You can book these tickets online, over the phone or in person at our Ticket Office.

Cosi fan tutte contains some of Mozart’s most beautiful arias and attractive ensembles. It is packed with both pathos and humour. Take a look at the facts below.

Relationships in music
Much of the opera is made up of ensembles, from duets to sextets, highlighting Mozart’s interest in the relationships between people and their sudden shifts of mood.

Stylistic divide
Mozart dissolves the traditional musical divide between comic opera and dramatic opera and constantly keeps audiences guessing.

Don oboe
Throughout the opera the oboe is associated with Don Alfonso and this is set out in the opening solo of the overture.

Between a rock and a hard place
Fiordiligi’s aria Come Scoglio talks about her being like a rock, unmoved by temptation. But the music tells a completely different story. It spans two octaves and has a number of large musical leaps.

What a mouthful
Mozart’s full name was Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophillus Amadeus Gottlieb Sigismundus Mozart. Tehophillus, Amadeus, Gottlieb, and Sigismundus all mean “beloved of God” in different languages.

Life story
Mozart’s life slightly resembled the story of Cosi fan tutte for a time. A few years before he married his wife Constanze Weber he was engaged to her sister Aloysia.

Swan Song
Written barely two years before Mozart’s early death, Cosi fan tutte stands as his final, multilayered statement in the Italian opera buffa genre.

PG Version
In 1858 a production of Cosi in Stuttgart altered the story so that Ferrando and Guglielmo seduce their original partners, which allowed the women to be faithful to their fiances – a change that presumably made the opera less objectionable to the moral sensibilities of the audience.

Speed writing
Mozart probably composed it rapidly in the final months of 1789.

Lovers tiff
The opera’s full title is Cosi fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti, more commonly shortened to Cosi fan tutte, which can be loosely translated as “they’re (women) all like that”. Da Ponte wanted it to be called The School for Lovers and the two men argued amongst themselves over what to call it.