BARRIE KOSKY ABOUT »COSÌ FAN TUTTE«

In Così fan tutte we see a laboratory of love. Don Alfonso operates here like Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, directing and manipulating Dorabella, Fiordiligi, Guglielmo und Ferrando at will. The question we have to con- front the work with every time is, what motivates him?

It’s clear that the experience is deadly serious for the actors in the experimental setup. The pain that is expressed in the second act is perhaps the worst variant of love’s suffering in all the history of opera.