The Mayflower Southampton

Welsh National Opera
Così fan tutte
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Thu 1 November 2012

Thu 7.00pm

Mozart tells a story of fickle young love through music of beguiling beauty

Fiordiligi is engaged to Guglielmo, and her sister Dorabella is engaged to Ferrando. The two men are Italian sailors stationed in a British seaside town and their fiancées are coming to visit. Their friend Don Alfonso, a local pier entertainer, believes that by nature all women are fickle and unfaithful, and makes a bet that when tested, their girlfriends will show themselves to be so too. They accept the wager and agree to put themselves under Don Alfonso’s command. Soon doubts set in, their certainties crumble and their relationships become very complicated indeed.

Mozart tells this story with music of beguiling beauty, casting a spell on the audience, from the calm before the storm of ‘Soave sia il vento’, the enchanting aria ‘Una aura amorosa’ to the heartbreaking ‘Per pietà’. Benjamin Davis’s warm and funny Così fan tutte, is one of the most purely entertaining productions of this great opera. The setting of a British seaside in the early 1960s offers a combination of saltiness and sweetness which perfectly complements the opera’s mixture of pleasure and pain. Così fan tutte is brought to life by an exceptional cast of accomplished young Mozartians.

Conductor - Mark Wigglesworth
Director - Benjamin Davis

Cast includes

Fiordiligi - Elizabeth Watts
Dorabella - Cora Burggraaf
Ferrando - Andrew Tortise
Guglielmo - Gary Griffiths
Don Alfonso - Neal Davies
Despina - Joanne Boag

Sung in Italian with surtitles in English.

Cheese and Port

We will be serving a selection of cheeses and a glass of port in our bars pre-show and during the interval.

Price: £7.95 per platter.

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