Can women really be faithful? Spurred on by a cynical friend, two young men test their lovers’ loyalty. Mozart’s effervescent music bubbles through this comedic look at relationships in the classic conflict between the sexes.

“A thousand times a day, women change their affections.
Some call it vice, others call it a habit.
To me it seems a necessity of the heart.
The lover who finds himself deceived should blame no one but himself.”
(Don Alfonso)

On a dare, two men test the faithfulness of the women they plan to marry. Their jaded colleague believes that women all are alike, and none of them can be trusted. (Così fan tutte translates clunkily, but it means something like “All Women Act the Same.”) He makes a bet with his friends, and they set about a plan to test their fiancées.

Così disappeared from opera stages for over 100 years because it was considered too shocking. It’s hard for us to imagine how a Mozart opera could be so scandalous, but the premise of Così undermines our basic beliefs about trust and relationships.

Our production examines the curiosity that can lead us to mistrust our loved ones. Is it possible to shake doubt after beginning to check up on someone behind her back? How do we act once we have learned something never intended for us? What do we say when we think we are alone versus when we are with others? Are we truly able to forgive infidelity?

The script (libretto) for Così is masterful, but it skews firmly on the sarcastic, cynical side of the topic. Mozart’s music takes a story line that could easily become snarky or simply pedestrian and imbues it with things that we feel deep in our souls. He makes us laugh, he lets our hearts ache, and he shows us how fragile our connections are.

The orchestral overture to Così has been called the musical equivalent of good gossip. It sets the stage for a story played out against the adrenaline, hormones, and naïveté of youth. We meet Fiordiligi and Dorabella, two sisters happily engaged to (respectively) Guglielmo and Ferrando. Their beaus are convinced by their friend Alfonso that they should enter into an experiment to test their fiancées’ faithfulness. The final member of the story, the girls’ maid Despina, is made a willing but incompletely informed accomplice to the whole thing.

Will the ladies cheat on their men? (I’ll bet you already have your suspicions.) And if they do succumb, what then? Come to the opera and find out.

Conductor – Timothy A. Myers
Director – Eric Einhorn
Scenic Design – Erhard Rom
Costume Design – Mattie Ullrich
Lighting Design – Robert H. Grimes
Hair & Makeup – Elsen Associates

Despina – Alicia Gianni
Fiordiligi – Rena Harms
Dorabella – Jamie Van Eyck
Ferrando – David Portillo
Guglielmo – Matthew Hanscom
Alfonso – Carlos Monzón