Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte

Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte: performed by Chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia, Tim Burke (Chorus Director), Royal Northern Sinfonia, Dinas Sousa (Conductor) playing Mozart: Cosi fan tutte; Christina Gansch: Fiordiligi; Alexandra Oomens: Dorabella; Jonas Hacker: Ferrando; Cody Quattlebaum: Guglielmo; Rebecca Evans: Despina; Neal Davies: Don Alfonso at St Mary's Kirk, Haddington on Thu 17 Sept 7pm as part of the Lammermuir Festival. Led by their dynamic music director, Dinis Sousa, Royal Northern Sinfonia fields a superb international cast for this concert performance of the last of Mozart's three great Da Ponte operas. The scenario of Cosi fan tutte (roughly, 'Women are all like that') has on one hand been accused of misogyny, cynicism and opposition to Enlightenment values and on the other celebrated for its fearless psychological truth and philosophical subtlety. But its complex emotional ambiguities, unprecedented in the artificial, comedic world of opera buffa, are more than matched by the insights afforded by Mozart's glorious score. It was his final essay in the Italian comic opera tradition, premiered in 1790, less than two years before his death. The questions it poses about love, reason and human fallibility are hotly contested to this day.